Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho has declared that the club’s captain, Wayne Rooney will not be leaving in the January transfer window.
The England captain is struggling to find his feet under the Portuguese and interests are already coming in with his former club Everton in the forefront of signing him back.
Everton gaffer, Ronald Koeman, has become the first Premier League manager to express an interest in signing the England captain that left the Merseyside in 2004 for Old Trafford.
But Mourinho has come out to kill any hope of the 31-year-old England all-time highest scorer to leave the club in January.
The former Inter Milan boss, said he also expects the experienced veteran to play a key role in his attempts to return United to the top of the English game.
He told pre-match press conference ahead Saturday’s Burnley clash, “I know he can still play at the highest level. I know he’s the type of player I need.
“He can play at the top level. I can’t say what’s going to happen when he’s 32, 3, 4, 5 but what I can say is that he’s a very good player, a very important player for us. He’s going nowhere.
“We like him, he likes us. He’s not happy in the last matches because he was on the bench but I think he is even unhappier when he’s not on the bench because he’s been injured and has to stay in the stands.
“There are no problems at all. He’s my captain. He is the team captain. He behaves like that.
“In all my career I have had just a couple of players, they didn’t want to play and sometimes they wanted to hide when things got hotter”, he said.
The Everton boss had earlier indicated strong interest in Rooney, who left Goodison as a 19-year-old in a £20 million transfer in the summer of 2004.
According to Koeman, “Even when we get one time the possibility that Rooney is an option for Everton, I’m very pleased.
“I am not at United, I don’t see sessions and every game. It is a decision of the manager of Manchester United.
“But he is 31, he is not finished, he still has two or three years at least at the highest level.
“Wayne Rooney is a top player and, of course, if there is one day when he is available of course we would like to have him but it is too early and I don’t like to speak about players who are under contract at other teams.”
But Mourinho responded quickly, dispelling such suggestions, although admitting that the forward, who also lost his starting place on the national team shortly due to bad form with his club, has found this a trying period in his career.
He added, “I think he’s a human being like everybody else. He has family, like everybody else,” he said.
“He has kids, the oldest one at an age where he can read, he can feel, he gets affected by that.
“It’s just human nature but I think he’s a big boy, a big character. He copes with the situation.”
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