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

like myself, Ronaldo and Darren Fletcher are still learning about breaking down teams who are desperate to defend. We don’t yet know how to see out games, we haven’t got much patience and it’s costing us silly points.
    I do everything I can to make it easier for myself. I always watch our next opponents on the telly in the week before a match, just to get a feel for what I’m coming up against. One Saturday night in October I have a Chinese takeaway with a glass of wine;
Match of the Day
is on the telly and I take a look at next week’s team, Boro’. They’re terrible; they lose 2–1 to West Ham.
    We should beat these 10
–
0 next week.
    When we kick off seven days later at the Riverside Stadium in the cold and the wet, they’re like a different side – faster, stronger, hungrier than they were the previous week. They’ve been transformed. It’s like the thought of playing us has turned them into a better team. It does myhead in. We can’t get a grip on the game. In the opening minutes, their defenders target me and Ronnie and I can’t influence the play at all. Suddenly their midfielder, Gaizka Mendieta, hits a hopeful long-range shot which Edwin should save, but instead it hits the back of the net and the whole place goes mental. Boro’ are so pumped up that they then score another three and we get properly thumped.
    The Manager is furious afterwards.
    ‘That was not a Manchester United performance,’ he screams as all of us sit in the dressing room afterwards, staring at our shoes. ‘You’re not fit to wear the shirts.’
    He’s right and we know it. It takes half an hour before anyone can muster the energy to get into the shower.
    It’s not been much better in the Champions League, either. Our lack of experience and impatience means we can’t break down the likes of Benfica, Villarreal and Lille in the group stages. Against Villarreal I lose my temper and sarcastically applaud the ref (Kim Milton Nielsen, the bloke who sent off David Beckham for England in the 1998 World Cup game against Argentina) when he books me for a late tackle. He then shows me another yellow and sends me off. We only win one game in the group and lose three, but it’s weird because going into the last match of the group against Benfica we know that if we win, we’ll qualify. Instead we lose and finish bottom of the table. Serves us right for not knowing how to break teams down when they sit back against us.
    I’ve been on the other side of it, though. Whenever I played for Everton against United it always felt like amassive game and we were always determined to defend. At Goodison, the fans were louder and players pushed the ball around at a higher tempo. When we went to Old Trafford, we battled like it was a fight to save the club. In October 2002 we even kept a clean sheet, well, for most of the game.
    I was a sub that day. It was funny because when I came off the bench with 15 minutes to go, the game at 0–0, the United fans gave me loads of stick. They had their reasons, I suppose – I was a Scouser and lots had been written about me in the press. There was plenty of hype flying around about the sort of footballer I could become and it probably didn’t help that I was an aggressive lad on the pitch and I loved a tackle. The boos started straightaway, but I knew that was because we were clinging on to a draw and they didn’t want me to nick a winner.
    Then, on 86 minutes, United scored the first of three goals.
    Three!
    Once they got the opener, there was absolutely nothing we could do to stop the battering. Our legs became heavier, our touch went out of the window. We were wrecked. The first goal blew us apart, like a pin bursting a balloon.
    An equaliser against this lot at Old Trafford? No chance, pal.
    Their second and third goals went in shortly afterwards. We were done in.
    It’s funny, some of the lads at United don’t see the difference in our opponents – how they up their game when theyplay us – but