Roo-mance has its price

YOU can come up with all the hashtags and slogans you want, there is one indisputable truth about the Wayne Rooney and Romelu Lukaku transfers.

Manchester United signed Everton’s most valuable player and Everton signed a Manchester United player whose best days appear not so much behind him as virtually out of sight.

It would be a lovely story if the greatest English player of the past decade and more can have a golden finale to his career at the club that is in his heart, that is in his soul.

Only the mean-spirited would not want to see it work out.

But this move was as much about convenience as it was about romance.

It might be his lifelong love, but do not lose sight of the fact that Everton was the biggest club interested in taking Rooney.

How romantic would he have been had he been playing well and Manchester United wanted to keep him for another few years?

How romantic would he have been had Barcelona or Real Madrid called?

How romantic would he have been had Everton offered him 20 rather than 120 grand a week?

Want to know what would have been really, really romantic?

Had Rooney not walked out of his beloved club in the first place to take the Manchester United shilling.

Understandably, that was never going to happen.

That was a career move, nothing to do with romance.

Exactly the same as the move back.

JOCKEY James Doyle says he will have to ‘work hard on it going forward’ after his FIFTH whip offence in six months.

Surely it can’t be that hard to refrain from hitting your horse with excessive frequency.

And what would make it easier is if the horse was disqualified and the owners lost their prize money.

Doyle would be unemployable unless he stopped whipping his horse too many times.

He would soon stop.