The Mirror with a warning to Rooney:
‘The ghosts of destroyed greatness hovered around Wayne Rooney and his genius at Old Trafford on Saturday afternoon as he drove England a step closer to his first World Cup finals.
‘George Best, a pathetic figure bloated on his own ego and tortured by his lost years, sat in the stand, gazing out at the boy who is the closest thing we have found to his reincarnation. Norman Whiteside was there, too, as guest of honour. A phenomenon at 16, a cocktail of booze and injury and Sir Alex Ferguson finished him by the time he was 24. And in our minds always is the spectre of Paul Gascoigne, the man-child whose agonies have overtaken the joy he brought football fans in the short time his flame flickered.
‘The fear that haunts us is that Rooney will tread their path, too, that he will fall into one of celebrity's grisly man-traps and never get free no matter how desperately he wriggles. "I said from day one that Rooney's problems would be off the pitch," Best said. "He's going to get it every time he goes out - adulation on one side, nutcases on the other."
‘He got that in a Manchester bar called Tiger Tiger at the start of the week. There was a fracas. A student made allegations. Later, quietly, when the damage was done, the student dropped the charges against Rooney. And at the end of the week, Rooney dazzled us with his brilliance against Northern Ireland.
‘Best, Whiteside and Gascoigne represent Rooney's chronicles of deaths foretold. We must do everything we can to protect him from their fates.’