There were moments during Wayne Rooney's 13 years at Old Trafford when he did not seem to have an intelligent thought in his head.
The £51,000 gambling debt he ran up by texting bets to a man he'd never spoken to, and simply knew as 'Mike', was just the start of it. 
A night in the cocktail bar at Southport's Vincent Hotel, bringing the wrath of Sir Alex Ferguson down on him, was one of the relatively mild sessions.
But it is a measure of the contradictions at the core of the player that David Moyes was most struck by Rooney's cognitive ability — his intelligence and powers of communication — when the two of them began working together again in the summer of 2013, nine years after they'd parted company at Everton.




Moyes says he suddenly found Rooney absorbing ideas far quicker. 'You told him something and he got it,' he tells Sportsmail. 'I've always very much wanted to be involved in coaching but what distinguished him was self-development. He'd seen so many situations that he knew how to adapt and improvise.'
He also found a communicator. 'When he started out with us at Everton, he just wasn't good at that,' Moyes says. 'But when I arrived at Manchester United, I saw how that had changed. He went out of his way to prove to the outside world how much he had developed in that respect.'
The story of Rooney and the six-year-old autograph hunter at United's training ground provides similar insight into the way he is remembered at the club which gave him his best football years, and where he returns with Everton on Sunday.





The boy was so overawed that he could not be encouraged to join a group of other children who were rapidly accumulating autographs nearby. Rooney, 24 at the time, saw this and approached him. 'Could I sign your book, please?' he asked — though the boy, paralysed with fear, could not let it go.
'Would you mind . . . ?' Rooney persisted. The book was eventually passed over. Rooney signed it and then asked: 'Can I have my photograph taken with you?'
The episode bears out a collective memory from those inside Old Trafford that Rooney always seemed to know how those on the outside, perhaps lacking his own new-found privileges, might feel.
For all his uncontrollability — which will bring him before Stockport Magistrates on Monday for being three times over the drink-drive limit — it is no exaggeration to say that he is already missed deeply by those within the club.





There were moments during Wayne Rooney's 13 years at Old Trafford when he did not seem to have an intelligent thought in his head.
The £51,000 gambling debt he ran up by texting bets to a man he'd never spoken to, and simply knew as 'Mike', was just the start of it. 
A night in the cocktail bar at Southport's Vincent Hotel, bringing the wrath of Sir Alex Ferguson down on him, was one of the relatively mild sessions.
But it is a measure of the contradictions at the core of the player that David Moyes was most struck by Rooney's cognitive ability — his intelligence and powers of communication — when the two of them began working together again in the summer of 2013, nine years after they'd parted company at Everton.




Moyes says he suddenly found Rooney absorbing ideas far quicker. 'You told him something and he got it,' he tells Sportsmail. 'I've always very much wanted to be involved in coaching but what distinguished him was self-development. He'd seen so many situations that he knew how to adapt and improvise.'
He also found a communicator. 'When he started out with us at Everton, he just wasn't good at that,' Moyes says. 'But when I arrived at Manchester United, I saw how that had changed. He went out of his way to prove to the outside world how much he had developed in that respect.'
The story of Rooney and the six-year-old autograph hunter at United's training ground provides similar insight into the way he is remembered at the club which gave him his best football years, and where he returns with Everton on Sunday.





The boy was so overawed that he could not be encouraged to join a group of other children who were rapidly accumulating autographs nearby. Rooney, 24 at the time, saw this and approached him. 'Could I sign your book, please?' he asked — though the boy, paralysed with fear, could not let it go.
'Would you mind . . . ?' Rooney persisted. The book was eventually passed over. Rooney signed it and then asked: 'Can I have my photograph taken with you?'
The episode bears out a collective memory from those inside Old Trafford that Rooney always seemed to know how those on the outside, perhaps lacking his own new-found privileges, might feel.
For all his uncontrollability — which will bring him before Stockport Magistrates on Monday for being three times over the drink-drive limit — it is no exaggeration to say that he is already missed deeply by those within the club.