Rooney apologises to Manchester United fans… finally

Wayne Rooney has apologised to Manchester United fans for his controversial contract negotiations last month and has insisted that joining Manchester City was never a possibility.

United fans had been waiting for a public apology from Rooney for declaring that he wanted to leave the club before performing a dramatic u-turn and signing a five-year deal at Old Trafford.

His manager Sir Alex Ferguson had promised that Rooney would publicly apologise to the fans after his contract saga, but bar a couple of monosyllabic interviews on the club’s in-house television station MUTV, Rooney kept quiet on the matter.

Speaking after the Champions League victory on Wednesday night, however, Rooney tried to set the record straight.

"I feel like I have apologised to the fans but everyone keeps saying that I haven't," said Rooney.

"If that is the case, then I apologise for my side of things.

"I have made my point clear since I signed my contract that I am committed to this club for the long term. I want to be successful here.

"Everyone is saying that I was definitely going to Manchester City. Believe me if I had gone it wouldn't have been in England."

The philandering England striker also admitted that leaving the Red Devils could have turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

"Of course," he said. "You see so many players leave this club and not do so well so I am delighted to have stayed."

Rooney also insisted that he had been given assurances about the future of the club, something he had expressed concerns about when initially expressing his desire to leave, by Ferguson and by chief executive David Gill.

"I spoke with the manager and David Gill. They reassured me the club was moving forward and from that it took maybe two or three hours to negotiate my contract and sign it," revealed the England forward.

"It wasn't a distraction to my football because I haven't played that much but it was a distraction overall. I am just happy it is all over now. I want to put it behind me and look forward."

Rooney also doesn’t subscribe to the theory that his poor form on the pitch is down to the off-field problems he has experienced due to the tabloid revelations about his liaisons with prostitutes.

"Mentally I have been okay," he said. "Because the football has not been going well and other things have happened, everyone has put it down to not being mentally strong enough. But I am.

"Obviously the most important thing for me at the minute is to play and score goals."

The former Everton man is confident that he will regain his form sooner rather than later and admits that he has felt the benefit of a week’s conditioning work in the United States, which seemed a strange move on the club’s behalf at the time.

"I wasn't going to argue with the manager," he laughed.

"I needed to get the training in and if that is what they wanted me to do I was happy to do it.

"Going to the States has helped a lot. Normally when I have been injured it has taken me four or five games to feel I was back to full fitness and I would feel it in the last 20 minutes of matches.

"Against Rangers I felt good in the last 20 minutes."

"People are saying how bad I have been playing but I haven't played enough games for my form to be a disaster," he said.

"With everything that has happened, the reaction all goes a bit overboard.

"But I have been through patches before when I haven't played well and come through them.

"I know 100% I will come through this one."