L´article du Daily Telegraph:
Solskjaer injury could spark Rooney deal
By Sam Wallace ( Filed: 10/08/2004)
Manchester United look likely to step up their pursuit of Wayne Rooney in the New Year after it emerged yesterday that striker Ole Gunnar Solskjaer´s career has been virtually ended by a knee injury that will prevent him from playing this season.
The end? Injury threatens Solskjaer´s career
Sir Alex Ferguson has been planning to start the season without the Norwegian international but the news from Solskjaer´s consultation in Sweden at the weekend was so bad that the United manager will now have to make long-term plans to find a replacement. Sources at United are adamant that no offer for Rooney, who is also injured, will be made before January.
How long it will take Rooney to recover from the broken metatarsal bone in his right foot he sustained against Portugal at Euro 2004 is still not clear, although the striker has already been ruled out of England´s World Cup qualifiers on Sept 4 and 8. With that injury sure to reduce Rooney´s price, United have resolved to wait until he is fit.
Although Solskjaer´s role had diminished last season after he suffered the injury during a match against Panathinaikos on Sept 16, he is still highly prized by Ferguson, who signed him from Molde for £1.5 million in 1996. He remained a central part of the Scot´s plans this summer to build a group of four strikers along with Ruud van Nistelrooy, Louis Saha and Alan Smith.
Even when Solskjaer missed five months through injury last season, Ferguson continued to talk about the 32-year-old as a player who would figure prominently in his team this season. With Diego Forlan still not considered a strong enough candidate to contend with United´s three other international strikers, investment in Rooney would complete Ferguson´s overhaul of his attack.
The prospect of putting together a transfer fee – something in the region of £20 million – as well as a competitive salary package for Rooney would be a long-term project that would have to be voted on by United´s plc board. They have known for some time about Solskjaer´s appointment with a knee specialist in Sweden and the diagnosis will focus minds on the next step to replacing him.
The club announced that Solskjaer had undergone an arthroscopic procedure that had " confirmed persistent damage to the articular cartilage of his right knee". The problem could bring a sad end to the career of a player who will always be remembered by United fans as the man who scored the winning goal in the European Cup final against Bayern Munich in 1999.
Solskjaer dealt comfortably with the role of substitute for much of his time at Old Trafford. It was the player´s sense of the greater good that appealed so much to Ferguson who encouraged Solskjaer in a new right-wing role during the 2002-2003 season. The Norwegian´s success in that position was one of the factors in the decision to sell David Beckham.
Ferguson said recently that United were resigned to going through a " second phase" in Solskjaer´s recovery even though he returned to the United team in February and went on to figure in 13 more games for them at the end of last season. Ferguson said: " It´s just unfortunate that a player of that calibre and such a great professional is missing out the best years of his life as a player. It´s only in the last two or three years he became a consistent first-team performer.
" He was always the player we brought off the bench because he was so good at it. He was probably the best sub of all time, a player who could analyse football just by watching it and understood his role."
