SOCCER: MARY HANNIGANon why Rooney's decision to go is perhaps the most grievous blow ever for United's wily supremo

THE STEPS to the attic have nearly been worn away the past few years.

Dumped there now is a whole heap of merchandisable memories of past loyalties, an Andrei Kanchelskis lampshade, a Jaap Stam alarm clock, David Beckham pyjamas, Roy Keane slippers, a Ruud van Nistelrooy dressing gown, a Carlos Tevez shower cap and, after yesterday, a Wayne Rooney duvet cover.

And unless the duvet cover reconciles with the Alex Ferguson pillow case it will, alas, be available for purchase in the January transfer window. Euro only, so Manchester City and Chelsea can keep their hands in their pockets. Barcelona and Real Madrid? Get your bids in.

Needless to say, it’s 100 per cent polyester, but that’s 10 per cent less than the Manchester United faithful assumed was the lad’s commitment to the cause. Yesterday, then, in terms of jaw-dropping incredulity, was the departure of all of the above, plus Paul Ince, Cristiano Ronaldo and Eric Cantona, rolled in to one.

“Ah, there’s no loyalty any more,” you tell your Evertonian pal.

“Indeed,” he says, attaching that “Once a blue, always a blue” photo of Rooney to his reply. Well, fair point.

The Liverpudlian was no less inhumane. “Ha, karma,” he chuckled, still smarting from that yarn about the ‘above us only sky’ sign at the Liverpool John Lennon Airport. (‘And below us only West Ham’).

“Laughing me arse off, like.”

Ferguson, though, was struggling to find a funny side to it all yesterday, sporting a defeated look in his interview with MUTV. For, maybe, the first time, he actually looked like an old man.

True, when it comes to bouncebackability, few have rivalled the fella over the years, but quite how do you bounce back from – possibly – losing the player around which your team is built when, unlike bygone days, you haven’t the funds to replace him?

The club, after all, is financially banjaxed. And it’s far from just Wayne Rooney they need to replace.

That old line about no player being bigger than the club, well, you suspect even Ferguson doubts whether that applies this time around.

He’d have trouble convincing himself, never mind the supporters, that with, say, Anderson, Bebe, Darron Gibson and Michael Carrick on board they’ll be grand, and that Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville have bright futures. Without Rooney he most probably fears that United’s immediate future is so bleak they’ll need a torch to find tomorrow.

Not that he’s contributed much this season, at times managing to make Dimitar Berbatov look like an all-action Tevez-like terrier, and Nani a midfield enforcer, but he’ll get his form back. Where he’ll be when it happens, that’s the €60 million question.

Maybe he’ll still be persuaded to stay, the reaction of the supporters when he next appears will have a hand in that, but Ferguson’s references to his private life and professional standards yesterday suggest the bridge is well and truly burnt.

The manager described himself as “dumbfounded” when he was told in August that Rooney wanted to leave, finding it “inexplicable” that any player would choose to move on from Manchester United, despite having already waved goodbye to Ronaldo.

“It’s a club that no-one can deny is one of the most successful in British football,” he said. “We have won 40 major trophies, been to countless cup finals, we have a fantastic history.”

No disputing the history, but what of the future? Through its dalliance with the Glazers, the club has lost the financial ability to build on that history, the bulk of the money they received for Ronaldo simply going towards servicing the interest on their debt. And its youth system has largely been firing blanks since the days it produced Giggs, Scholes, Beckham and Co.

“The only way is down when you leave Manchester United,” they used to say, but that’s hardly the case any more. Ferguson’s insistence yesterday on that still being a truism was, it has to be said, a little forlorn.

When Rooney has Nani to the right of him, Berbatov (Marco Van Basten in one game, Garry Birtles in the next half dozen) alongside him, and Giggs and Scholes (combined age: 71) behind, maybe he just reckoned his footballing life was too short.

Or maybe he just wants a heap more loot? Well, United are hardly in a position to lecture him on greed.

Or maybe he fancies a spell abroad? “When it comes to an understanding of life overseas, Rooney is more Sarah Palin than Michael Palin,” wrote the Telegraph’s Henry Winter yesterday. Ouch. Maybe he just wants to get away from the British press?

Roy Keane advised his old buddy on Monday to look after number one, “players are pieces of meat”, he reminded him – so, you’d imagine, he nigh on choked on his lunch when Ferguson declared yesterday that “this is a club which bases all its history and its tradition on the loyalty and trust between managers and players and the club”.

True, everyone in professional football is a piece of meat, not least the supporters, but the problem for United is that Rooney is their sole piece of prime fillet beef, most of the rest of the herd having all the flavour of a cheap cut.

The timing of it all, though, is curious. If Rooney had any sense he’d have slapped in a transfer request when he was given the role of Ronaldo’s ‘water carrier’, his talents utterly misused and unappreciated.

But now, when United never needed him more, when he’s the heart of the team, he asks to leave? Puzzling. Only he knows why.

Good luck to the fella. He’s made a bags of his personal and professional life of late, his disloyalty to his wife a whole lot more noteworthy than his desire to kick a ball for another team. But that’s their business.

When he gets his act together he’ll be a joy to watch once again, whatever shirt he’s wearing.

For Ferguson it’s a stark enough realisation, one that has clearly floored him, that he and his club just don’t have the power they once had. Maybe he’ll bounce back, or maybe this is the beginning of the end of an extraordinary managerial career?

Either way, life goes on. Anyone know where you can get a Javier Hernandez duvet cover?

“For Ferguson it’s a stark enough realisation, one that has clearly floored him, that he and his club just don’t have the power they once had. Maybe he’ll bounce back, or maybe this is the beginning of the end . . .