Free Wayne Rooney: My Decade in the Premier League by Wayne Rooney Page A

I do my thinking before a match my head will be ready when the action starts.
    I think if Everton’s defender, Tony Hibbert, is weak on one side, I can exploit it. Then I see the Gwladys Street End, I see Ronaldo moving quickly out wide and firing in a cross towards me. I see how I’m going to move once the ball comes my way. My first touch is perfect, I’m getting a shot off at goal. It flies past their keeper, Nigel Martyn.
    1–0!
    My eyes start to get heavy, I’m drifting off to sleep. Physically, I’m winding down, but mentally I’m like a golfer standing over his ball: I’m visualising shots, living perfectresults in my head. The thing is, I have to visualise everything in the right kit, otherwise it’ll throw me out of sync if we’re wearing different colours when it comes to kick-off the next day.
    Everything’s happening in a red shirt, black shorts and black socks.
    In my mind I watch a long ball from our defence landing at my feet. I’m on the edge of the Everton box. Their skipper, Phil Neville, is coming towards me. I know he’s committed, putting his tackles in hard all over the park. He dives in, skidding across the grass. I shape to shoot with my right, dropping a shoulder, before chopping the ball back inside as he passes me. I bang the ball past Martyn with my left peg.
    2–0!
    The next day when I wake up, I know I’m fully prepared.
    Red shirt, black shorts and black socks.
    When a chance comes my way, I’ll be ready for it.
    Funny thing is, when the game starts for real the result in my head is right, only the details are different. Before the match, the boos are louder than ever before and everyone’s lobbing stick at me. Then Ruud puts us one-up in the 43rd minute and everything goes dead quiet.
    Only seconds after we come out after the break, Everton defender Joseph Yobo has the ball in their half. I can see he’s looking to knock it back to Nigel Martyn, and as he plays the pass, I anticipate exactly where it’s going to go. I’m on it in a flash.
    I’m 12 yards out with only the keeper to beat.
    The ball’s running nicely into my path; Nigel Martyn realises he hasn’t got the advantage in distance so he stands still.
    He’s not coming off his line; I’ve got buckets of space to aim at.
    I make my choice.
    Bottom left.
    The ball hits the net and Goodison Park goes silent again. The boos that rang out every time I touched the ball in the first half have stopped. It’s great.
    I love the silence here as much as I love the roar of 76,000 fans at Old Trafford.
    I had it in my head that I was going to get a lot of stick this afternoon and I promised myself that if I scored a goal I wouldn’t celebrate, but the abuse was so bad in the first half that it’s been hard for me not to get emotional and wound up.
    Sod it, I’m celebrating.
    I run towards the United fans, sliding on my knees, screaming my head off as the rest of the team jump on me. Right now, I’m the only happy Everton fan in the country.
    *****
    As the season moves from August into September, the one thing I notice after a full year at United is that everyone tries so much harder against us, especially at Old Trafford. I expected it when I first signed – even The Manager and players like Gary Neville warned me that teams often up theirgame against us, but it takes a bit of getting used to. Players I competed against in a blue shirt a couple of years back seem so much more fired up when I compete against them in red, it’s mad. Like Blackburn, who come to our place in September and win 2–1. They shouldn’t be beating us, we’re a team of top players, but we give away a couple of silly goals.
    I suppose some of it is down to inexperience; we’re a bit naive. Everyone knows we’re a team in transition. Sure, we’ve got seasoned players like Giggsy, Scholesy and Gary Neville in the team; Edwin van der Sar has joined us from Fulham and he’s a top goalie. But there’s plenty of inexperience as well. Players