It’s bizarre to say the least, that there was a story on the Sports Direct news site today, the company owned by Newcastle owner Mike Ashley, that suggested Newcastle United were after want-away Manchester United star 27 year-old Wayne Rooney.

Wayne Rooney – in action against Newcastle

But later today senior Newcastle United sources have comprehensively denied that Newcastle have any interest in the England International, who handed in a transfer request last week, that was immediately turned down by the Red Devils.

The transfer fee is around £25M, which is about two and a half times the maximum transfer fee paid out by Mike Ashley since he has owned Newcastle United, but Newcastle simply couldn’t afford Wayne’s wages, which are said to be more than £150K a week.

The news was on sportdirectnews.com and that story has now been removed from the web-site – so a good question is who put the story up there in the first place and why?

SportsDirect News suggested the Magpies were interested in Wayne Rooney, and had made some low-level initial inquiries, but there have since been apologies to Wayne Rooney and his agent for a story that was untrue.

This is the statement issued by Sport Direct News:

“SportsDirect News wishes to express its sincere apologies to Wayne Rooney and his agents Triple Sports and Entertainment Group for publishing the article ‘Newcastle in shock Rooney bid’, which was formulated and published without authority, merit and is untrue.”

This seems bizarre to say the least and we’d love to know who put thew story up in the first place.

If we’d take a guess we think Wayne will stay at Manchester United – once he thinks things over – but Newcastle are in no position to sign a player with the wages Wayne Rooney earns.

In the summer of 2004, when Newcastle desperately needed to strengthen the defense, then Chairman Freddy Shepherd tried to sign 18 year-old Wayne Rooney from Everton, but at the last moment Manchester United came in and bought the player and a few weeks after that Freddy fired manager Bobby Robson.

We couldn’t afford him then either, but that never stopped Freddy Shepherd from buying players for Newcastle – as the debt continued to rise.

The bottom line – we couldn’t afford him then and we cannot afford him now.

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