Rooney’s future

With new England boss Sam Alladyce reviewing Wayne Rooney’s role with England, which could see the player out of the national team, there are also many doubts back at Old Trafford. Jose Mourhino has a wealth of talent at his disposal and the team is much stronger than last season. The arrival of Zlatan Ibrahimovich and Henrikh Mkhitaryan up front and competition from Antony Martial and Marcus Rashford, Juan Mata, Jesse Lingard, Maroune Fellaini, Memphis Depay and Ander Herrera in midfield, Rooney will have his work cut out to stay in the Manchester United team. It is not impossible that he might be moving on sometime soon if he doesn’t respond. However, on arrival at China’s Shanghai airport, for their pre-season warm up matches, Rooney went straight on to do a press interview promotion for Gulf Oil, explained that his favourite Chinese food is Egg Foo Yung and then, to impress the manager he went to a swelteringly hot stadium and trained for an hour without the other players.

Jose’s comradeship

On that flight to Shanghai, to begin pre-season friendly matches, the players and Jose Mourhino travelled Business Class. However, on learning that the Man Utd coaching staff were in economy, Jose gave up his seat and joined them at the back of the plane.

Pardew prays

Crystal Palace manager Alan Pardew, the physios and management are eagerly watching Wilfried Zaha’s fitness. He had to sit out a pre-season friendly against lowly Colchester because of an ankle injury he suffered on the club’s tour of America earlier in July.

Down at the Chelsea training ground I heard whispers that Carlos Tevez is on the transfer shopping list. Antonio Conte knows the player well from his time in Serie A at Juventus where Carlos scored 50 goals in 95 matches and the club won two home Championships and made a Champions League final. The player, at 32 years old, is however settled at the Argentine club Boca Juniors but he might be persuaded if the deal is a good one.

Messi’s new look

I had to laugh when I saw Lionel Messi with blond hair and a beard! It appears he is looking for a new image. Barcelona are training at the National Football Centre in readiness for matches against British teams in the International Champions Cup. They play Celtic tonight, which will be a test for new Celtic manager Brendan Rogers, and then Leicester and Liverpool, at Wembley, on August 6th.

Nolito’s faith

It appears that Nolito turned down a chance to rejoin Spanish champions Barcelona because he wanted to play for Pep Guardiola at Manchester City. He signed last month from Celta Vigo in the Spanish La Liga for £13.8million. He said, “I spoke with my family and we decided it was the best decision for me and my career.” Only time will tell but we wish him luck. Pep is still trying to sign John Stones from Everton but the asking price of £50million is too high. The manager apparently has no faith in Eliaquim Mangala, the French centre-back who has failed to impress since his £42.5million transfer from Porto two years ago and sees Stones as adding strength to his defence. Pep also rates highly Vincent Kompany however he is very injury prone, playing only 18 games last season, and needs backup. And at Liverpool, it was manager Jurgen Klopp who convinced Georginio Wijnaldum to turn down Everton and Tottenham to become Liverpool’s new £25million man. Wijnaldum said, “Klopp told me that he likes my style of play and he wanted me in his squad.” That convinced me to come to Liverpool because when a manager gives you such confidence it means you can play to your best ability.” My contacts at Juventus have told me that Chelsea’s Nemanja Matic is top of their list to replace Paul Pogba if he goes to either Man Utd or Real Madrid where Zinadine Zidan has the backing of the owners to approach Pogba’s agent Mino Raiola who does not have a good relationship with the Spanish giants. Should Matic escape Juventus’ ambitions to sign him they will target Newcastle’s Moussa Sissoko - he was a failure last season when Newcastle were relegated from the Premiership but impressed during the Euros.

Arsenal are not planning to buy any “name” signings prior to the new season about to start in August. Despite being under pressure to bring a title to the Emirates Chief Executive, Ivan Gazidis says that Arsene Wenger’s squad is strong enough to win the Premiership. Only Borussia’s midfielder, Granit Xhaka and Bolton’s defender Rob Holding have joined since last season.

Antonio’s delight

I hear that Antonio Conte is very pleased with his Chelsea squad and has ditched his favourite 3-5-2 line up used with his last club Juventus and the Italian national squad. Instead, a tactical sheet, discovered after a training session, shows that he is switching to 4-2-4. That would explain why he fought hard to sign N’Golo Kante from Leicester where he was noted for covering a lot of ground during a match.

Coaching failure Matic top notch

Roy Hodgson, the ex-England manager, paid for Euro failure with his job. I was sorry for him but having heard many bad things from inside the England camp I am not surprised that the campaign failed. It appears that the players were confused with Hodgson’s tactics. Hodgson and Gary Neville, the assistant coach, had many big arguments about how best to play and at one stage during a match one of the players ran to the sideline and asked where another player was supposed to be playing on the pitch! That disorganization is ridiculous and so were England’s efforts in the tournament. Let’s hope new manager Sam Alladyce gets things rather better.