Wayne Rooney at 40: Where does the time go?

I was there with no words to describe it, special moment.

I have no affection for Wayne Rooney whatsoever.

We were financially bankrupt or near to it. Selling off our assets, as we did for many years…

Despite not scoring ("He never scored" was his manager's words when interviewed after the game), I marvelled at this completely magnificent display and looked forward to the ensuing years, absolutely thrilled that Everton had such a complete young scouse-Evertonian footballer.

As those years went by, it saddened me to think that this great young player was the reason the greatest player never to kick a ball for Everton was allowed to continue as the owner of our once great club by selling arguably the greatest young footballer that England has ever produced.

For the reason I have stated in the paragraph above, this is the reason why I wish we never had Wayne Rooney.

However, to adapt the famous line from Casablanca..

'We'll always have Rooney'

His goal from his own half in his second stint vs West Ham wasn't too shabby...

Even then, I remember staying in touch with the match and racing to my hotel room to switch on whatever channel was live reporting (might have been Sky, or possibly BBC?). They said there was big news from Goodison and you just had a sense of what it was going to be.

Then for a little while, he took us on this mad journey where it looked like this young Scouse kid might just transform the fortunes of the club he loved as much as we did.

And then he left. As a young blue, Duncan Ferguson had already broken my heart and turned me into a cynic, so Rooney leaving didn't have quite the same effect on me. But it was a sad sign that the resurgence wasn't coming, even if it turned out that the team went on to achieve more without him.

For all his achievements, I still don't think he ended up completely fulfilling his potential. The 16/17-year-old at Everton was the best young player I've ever seen. He did things that people couldn't believe. Confidence, skill, ability, aggression... he had absolutely everything.

I always believed he should have done one more year at Everton and time hasn't changed that view. Then, maybe, he might have been remembered differently. Maybe we'd have still made it into Europe and he could have grown with the club and achieved something truly incredible. As it is, the late career return barely registers for me.

I was right behind it in my seat in the Park End.

He could have had a hat-trick that day, one of which was an outrageous dipping half volley from the inside right channel that left Seaman floundering. It would have been better than his first.

I saw him in the Everton youth set-up and he's the only Everton player since Kanchelskis who could win a game by himself. He was a force of nature, he was phenomenal.

I'm also convinced that moving to Man Utd under Sir Alex Ferguson was bad for him. He was up there with Messi, Ronaldo, Xavi and Iniesta, but Ferguson just turned him into a selfless runner.

He won it all, but that system never made him into the best player in the world, which is what he was capable of being.

As he was for the first team.

Frustrated as I am, I'm delighted to have watched him play for us.

Might not mean much to overseas fans, but it's a proper club, in proper city.

Rooney joined the Everton youth team at the age of 9 and made his professional debut for the club in 2002 at the age of 16.

He spent two seasons at the Merseyside club before moving to Manchester United for £25.6M in the 2004 summer transfer window, where he won 16 trophies and became one of only two English players, alongside teammate Michael Carrick, to win the Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League, League Cup, Uefa Europa League, and Fifa Club World Cup.

He scored 253 goals for Man Utd in all competitions, making him the club's top goalscorer of all time; his 183 Premier League goals for Man Utd is the third-most scored by a player in that competition for any single club, behind only Harry Kane (213 goals for Tottenham Hotspur) and Sergio Agüero (184 goals for Manchester City).

Rooney's 208 Premier League goals make him the competition's third-highest scorer of all time, while he also holds the fourth-highest number of assists with 103.

That's where his time went, and he loved every minute of it. At least he never went to the red shite, plus while Man Utd were winning everything, he stopped those bastards, and knocked them off their perch. Now I did enjoy that.

Then you hear the stories of why he left; true or not, it doesn't matter anymore.

I missed the entire career of one of England's greatest players and that's a terrible shame.

There's probably a lesson in there somewhere….
I try to like him but it's tough.

My time as a supporter started in the 70s & 80s, so there is no world class player produced by our academy during my time.

We'll probably have to refer to those who witnessed the 60s and before?

From the history books, I can only think of Colin Harvey.

The day we brought a canon to a gunfight.

For all his achievements, he fell well short of what he could have been.

I remember Barcelona hitting Man Utd with a fast counter-attack during one Champions League Final, and when the ball was pushed down the line to Messi, he just failed to keep the ball in play.

Suddenly, he was wacked from behind and, when he turned around to remonstrate, he saw it was Wayne Rooney, and just shook his head and started clapping his hands.

I read this as Messi, clapping his hands at the sheer determination of the little scouser, and shaking his head as if to say, "Why on earth do Man Utd have their best player doing so much donkey work for their team?"

We all see different things and, while it's been suggested that Rooney's lifestyle probably took a few years off his career, the thing that is rarely mentioned is how much of his game was played on the very edge.

I loved the kid myself, heard about him a few years before I saw him, his reputation was well known to many in the Norris Green and Croxteth areas of the city.

Then I saw him in a youth game v Spurs along with about 3,000 other fans in the Upper Bullens. None of us could believe the skill, endeavour and sheer power of this 16-year-old kid!

He took his sheer ability in his stride like it was no big deal. Then he came and went and gave that tremendous ability to another club while saving the club he left from a financial collapse. I still loved the kid and never begrudged him one second of his successful career.

I didn't want him to come back — that older Wayne was a mere shadow of the young kid who left — but I would have put the real Wayne in any Everton team of any era, he was that good.

But the second debut goal against Stoke and the magnificent hat-trick goal against West Ham made the second spell just about worthwhile for me.

"I'm also convinced that moving to Man Utd under Sir Alex Ferguson was bad for him. He was up there with Messi, Ronaldo, Xavi and Iniesta."

This is spot on, Nick. I remember thinking at the time that he was the first player I had seen in an Everton jersey (I started going regularly in 1966) who was likely to become as iconic as Pele or Cruyff. With apologies to Ball and Young.

Neville Southall was probably the only other player who you could make a case for as being the best in the world. But goalkeepers will never get the same level of acclaim as outfielders.

Thanks, Kenwright. Cunt.

The Bolton game, Tony. What a performance. Best I've seen anyone play in Blue.

The 60s and 70s teams were littered with homegrown excellent players. Perhaps not world class but nevertheless fine players.

Royle, Husband, Whittle, Wright, Hurst, and Labone, to name but a few. Oh that we could produce even a couple of that calibre now.

Steve McMahon, David Johnson (even though they both ended up at the dark side), Derek Temple, and Billy Kenny.

What a waste of a great talent he was.

What a team and what an absolutely incredible 18 months they gave us (it was longer I know but those initial 18 months were simply brilliant) but that day against Bolton, Ryan, the 17-year-old Rooney, was simply mesmerising.

It was during the Christmas period (an author called Graeme Johnson wrote a book of short stories about different incidents regarding young footballers on Merseyside and the one he wrote involving Rooney and his pals' shenanigans later on that same evening was definitely the funniest story in the book for me) it was silly bet time and I remember putting a bet on Rooney to score a hat-trick.

He could have had five that day but, although I wanted to win, it didn't really matter to me simply because I had never seen one player entertain me as much as Wayne Rooney did that day.

It's got me thinking about Lukaku when he put his old team to the sword in what became our last FA Cup quarter-final victory at the old lady.

Just give us a trophy, Everton -- give everyone something to celebrate… please!

I remember that goal against Stoke City, it was a very good header from a great move started by Davy Klaassen who played an inch-perfect pass to Martina running on to it. He didn't have to break his stride but made a perfect centre-right on to the in-running Rooney's head who made no mistake with a bullet header.

If I remember correctly, Peter Mills described that Klaassen psss as a perfect one or something similar with his post on the game, did the game finish 1-0?

We must be the most boring, pointless football club in the Premier League. What do we actually offer?

We don't have a style of play, we're not renowned for any exciting players, we've had about 5 top quality players in the Premier League era...

Anyway, I've got a great photo of Rooney stretching with Campbell jogging, everyone in the Park End was turned towards Rooney, not watching the game and on the hoardings in front of the Park End it says "Our city, our future, our club..."