In their greedy pockets that is. Wayne Rooney has really taken it personally over the three game suspension dished out to him by a collection of over officious amateurs at the FA and has sent a letter through his representative Paul Stretford informing the FA of his decision to consider withdrawing his consent for his image to be used in any further FA commercial marketing programmes.

What this amounts to is financial withdrawal of service as Rooney knows he is the most recognisable figure left in an England squad bereft of David Beckham and that it is commercial suicide for the FA to consider any marketing campaigns, either for themselves in concern of ticket sales or for their strategic partners and sponsors, without being able to use either images of Wayne Rooney or have Rooney available for public events.

It seems like the modern day footballer has finally found a way to hit back at the institution running the game when they subject them to unfavourable (and plainly wrong) disciplinary action. Steve McLaren has said what a mistake the FA has made and how it has hurt his attempts to forge closer links with big clubs like Manchester United and both players and staff within Old trafford are seething at the blatant attempt to punish Wayne Rooney more because of his public image than because of his indiscretions (or lack of them) on the pitch.

This could really come back to hurt the FA in more ways than one and there could be a few red faces at Soho Square before the latest Rooneygate scandal is concluded.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Manchester United. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.