In my opinion there is nothing wrong with him doing what he does. He has a contract and his agent wants to get the best out of it for him. Why shouldn't he? Rooney is clearly not a huge United fan. He loves football and did great for us, but that's that. I don't think he thinks that he owes anything to United. He could've gone elsewhere to win trophies as well and probably would've fit in at any club in his early twenties. And if now he has a contract where he is to earn 15m per season, then it's not his fault if he doesn't want to get a much smaller paycheck if that's possible.
That's what I call sitting on two chairs at the same time...
But hey, if United was ready to let him walk on a free and also pay him a goodbye fee, then it was only his conscience and class (or lack of it) to decide.
I like Rooney much more than Zlatan, but remember that the latter had our offer on the table before he got injured. He was still in time to sign/accept it and stay at United for one more year with huge wages, just recovering from a bad injury. However, he had the decency and common sense not to use such opportunity, as it would be a dirty thing to do. That's what I am talking about here - you already have millions and millions, your grandchildren's children are settled for life, so you don't really need those extra 5 or 10.
Said that, I just want to underline that I still think/hope this isn't true and that Rooney didn't really ask United for a "goodbye fee".
In the end this was a result of Moyes wanting to work with him and Gill leaving at the same time. I'm sure that Rooney would've been sold at the time if Fergie had continued. I don't know if Fergie was certain about how things would turn out, but he knew that this would be good for the long term of the club. And he was right. After that Rooney hasn't had a great season and that summer we would've got a lot of money for him for the time. Instead we committed to paying him huge wages and didn't really get a great return on the pitch. And it was a deal that was one or two years too long certainly. His agent did a good job for Rooney and took advantage of the club being weak at the time and now we're paying for it.
I agree with this - more/less my thoughts as well.
Old Fergus knew exactly when to sell a player. Maybe the only example of his mistake was Jaap Stam, who was sold too early.
I don't think it has much to do with Rooney to be honest.
I think it does with his agent first of all, but Rooney himself also got half of brains as well and he can at least tell right from wrong.
Anyway, I don't care if we did pay him extra couple of millions, at least he'll be able to buy some extra Everton pyjamas, given that he's been using them a lot in the last 15 years or so :)