Brian Read in the Mirror:
‘Evertonians, due to two decades of brutal disappointments, are the most hardened of cynics. But seeing Rooney change overnight from the fanatic who turned up for a Liverpool trial in a blue shirt, who had the club crest in his bedroom window, who said running out at Goodison to Johnny Todd sent shivers down his spine, who swore to always be a Blue, has felt like a kick in the solar plexus.
‘Because try as they will, they just don't get it. And they have every right not to. When they said he could have been a God but he became a Devil, they meant it. He really could have been the greatest Evertonian of all. Bigger than Dixie and the Golden Vision put together.
‘And they can't figure out how someone so young and so soaked in their tradition can prize that above playing for a rival club down the road, on the same salary, simply because he'll get the odd game against European opposition.
‘United are delivered the brightest talent in world football to cover-up for their own stuttering youth policy, Bill Kenwright gets a hug from the bankers, Rooney takes his soap opera to a new level, and Stretford waltzes away with £1.5m. Meanwhile what have Everton got to stop them sliding out of the Premiership? £10m. With the shops shut.
‘As for the fans Wayne used to feel so proud standing among, they've been left feeling like they've just been screwed by the Auld Slapper. They're aching with anger and disillusion. Not just with Rooney, Stretford and Everton. But with football. And it runs very deep.
‘The fact that this move is deemed so inevitable and acceptable simply exposes the cancer biting at football's soul.
‘It blows away the pretence that the game is anything other than a cash cow for unprincipled businessmen and their obscenely overpaid young clients who siphon hard-earned wages out of a foolishly loyal public.
‘And if the "experts" can't see the dangers here, then they are more cosseted from reality than first thought. Because it's not just at Everton. Feel the disgust among Newcastle fans at the way Sir Bobby Robson has been treated by young upstarts and middle-aged sharks.
‘Meanwhile Robson's reward for trying to do what's right is to be driven out of the club he's loved since birth by a sleazy chairman who once bragged in a Marbella brothel of his joy in charging thick Newcastle fans £50 for shirts that cost £5.
‘But the "experts" sigh and ask what do you do? Well if you want football to exist simply for leeches to bleed dry, you think like the experts. If you want it to exist for the fans, you think like them.
‘So I will wish Rooney well. And hope that if there's any justice left in the world, he will do as well as the last Scouse superstar striker to move to Old Trafford. Peter Davenport.’