Cross-town rivalry at the heart of things

SOCCER:For Manchester City this is a chance to engineer a stunning power shift, argues PAUL HAYWARD

THE SMART money says this will end with Wayne Rooney in a Manchester City shirt. Thus the spectacular PR debacle of his hunt for a higher wage will permit City to field two strikers who tried to shift the blame for their acquisitiveness to Old Trafford.

Carlos Tevez sang the blues on the way out, claiming the club’s love done left him, when the truth was he and his “owners” were made an un-refusable offer by sheikh Mansour’s men. Up went the “Welcome to Manchester” Tevez billboards, quickly followed by the mercury when the clubs next met.

Rooney’s convenient excuse is that United lack “ambition”. After 11 Premier League titles and two European Cups in the Alex Ferguson era, this is akin to telling Winston Churchill he was not fighting the Germans hard enough.

For City this is a chance to engineer a stunning power shift. Despite a non-committal statement from United, Rooney is still thought to be angling for a move. The Tevez defection was a blow, but Rooney crossing to the other side would attract the curiosity of John Le Carre.

The damage to United’s team would be surpassed only by the symbolism. City would like us to think they are building a dynasty in a nice, quiet corporate way. But no club with such grand designs could resist the political open goal of pinching two big shots from a cross-town rival who have tormented them for 20 years.

If the vibes are right, and United sanction the move to maximise their income from a sale, City would hack at the knees of their neighbour, poaching England’s best player. United will say knees are reparable and that City could never hurt their soul.

This was the message of Ferguson’s oratory before Wednesday’s Champions League tie with Bursaspor and again after the match. “Potential” was their religion. Common cause was found with Arsenal. The club would endure any and every loss.

But there is no mistaking the scale of the provocation. Over the last two decades United have squared up to Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal and the appropriated Russian wealth of Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea. But this is another kind of class conflict. The enemy is not without but within, luring stars from Salford to Eastlands, threatening a rewrite of the great Manchester footballing story.

Whatever turned Rooney’s head in August, it was not disquiet over United’s inability to persuade David Villa to leave Spain or the arrivals of Javier Hernandez and Chris Smalling. The attempt by his camp to portray him as the guardian of United’s aspirations prompted Mark Lawrenson to say with exquisite disdain: “He needs to remember where he came from.”

Rooney is no existentialist, no rolling stone. You will not find him on the hills of Cheshire seeking a release from the torment of not knowing where to go. He is a man with a plan. And the word on the street is that plan A involves a pay-rise from the current €100,000 to €290,000 a week at City.

Real Madrid present a serious impediment to Roberto Mancini’s plan to strengthen his forward line with a striker more dependable than Emmanuel Adebayor. Rooney’s advisers are known to have considered Real an attractive destination – given Spain’s appealing tax system and the prospect of resuming his partnership with Cristiano Ronaldo – but the manager, Jose Mourinho, is talking as if a move in January would be impossible, and probably feels not even Real could win a bidding war with Abu Dhabi.

It is amazing to think football hailed the signing of Robinho in the early days of sheikh Mansour’s ownership as a “statement of intent”. Compared with the plan to buy Rooney it was a stroll to the corner shop. Inside Old Trafford, however, you still encounter monumental stoicism in the face of this assault. United really are falling back on the values articulated by Ferguson. They know they must strike in the market for a household name to reassure their followers but are standing by the policy of youth recruitment.

The best narrative in club football is not this burlesque but the struggle between Mourinho’s Madrid and Barcelona. But if it is civic strife you like, look no further than Manchester.