Manchester United were in grave danger of breaking their unbeaten streak in the Premier League but skipper Wayne Rooney managed to find the back of the net late at the BET 365 stadium in Stoke at the weekend to rescue a point.
That equalizer for a historic moment for the player and the club as Rooney surpassed Sir Bobby Charlton’s record of the most goals scored in the league for Manchester United.
The former Everton man is still the skipper of the Old Trafford outfit but he is far from the first choice for Jose Mourinho this season.
Rooney has not been starting games regularly for Manchester United for a while now and a number of Chinese Premier League clubs are ready to offer him record wages to lure him to Asia. The manager is not going to stop Rooney from making a move away from the club but the 31-year old wants to stay, he said in a recent interview.
Speaking to the media recently, Rooney revealed that he is currently happy to fight for his place at the club and that he is not really thinking about a move away from the club anytime soon.
“I’m committed to the club,” he said.
“I’ve still got two years – a year with an option year – to go. I’m happy at Manchester United. I’ve been at the club a long time. Ofcourse I want to play more games, but I’m in a happy place at the moment,” Rooney added.
He went on to talk about his role in the side and revealed that though he is not happy to be warming the bench, that he is more than ready to fight for his place in the starting XI under Jose Mourinho.
He said, “You want to play every game if you can but it doesn’t always happen how you like it. Once you lose that ambition to play every game then you are sort of accepting a different type of role which I am not ready to accept yet.”
The English striker also spoke about the effect of the former Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho on the squad and felt that he is the perfect manager to get Manchester United back to its previous best.
“I’m 100 per cent certain Jose will bring titles back to the club. I’ve been here a long time and you do get a feeling of what is going to happen in the next two or three years,” he said.
“Jose is certainly the right manager for the football club and in the next few years the club will be very successful,” he added.
Manchester United are currently in the 6th place in the points table 14 points off Chelsea at the summit and Rooney was quick to dismiss any title talk at this point of time.
He felt that it was important to keep the positive results coming and that they had to think about the team that is just above them before they can think about catching up with Chelsea.
“It is too early to talk about a title challenge. Chelsea are doing really well and we need to keep picking up points to stay in touch with the teams just above us, and overtake a few them first, before we can even look at catching Chelsea,” Rooney added.
It is now clear that the Manchester United skipper wants to stay at the club and the insane money from China is not tempting him. However, it will be interesting to see if Manchester United exercise the option of prolonging his contract in 2019.
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