David Moyes and Wayne Rooney: the next chapter begins at Manchester United No matter how many euphemisms Rooney is afforded by the author (he preferred "young and confident" to the more accurate "cocky and ill-disciplined") there are enough clues as to why even the most experienced manager would have found the 16-year-old prodigy unmanageable. This was a youngster, Moyes once said, who tended to reply to the affirmative with a grunt. "I would have gone almost anywhere just to get away from David Moyes," Rooney wrote. If no one had come in I would have joined Newcastle. To me he appeared overbearing, just wanting to control people. I wasn't bothered about upsetting him or answering back. There was only one person who seemed a bit upset and envious of what was happening to me - and that was Moyes. It is fair to say such swagger from a precocious upstart (he was still just 20 on the book's release) reflect more on Rooney than his new manager. The most provocative passage saw Rooney falsely accuse Moyes of leaking sensitive conversations about his private life to the Liverpool Echo. In 2007, Sir Alex Ferguson made an effort to prevent this row reaching court. Given the events of the last 48 hours, Ferguson's intervention could be perceived as, even then, a concern his post-retirement plan could be undermined. "It is not nice to read about it," Ferguson said in 2007. I wish the case was dropped. I don't think it does anyone any good. Instead, Moyes was awarded undisclosed but substantial damages with £500,000 legal costs. "Wayne phoned me to apologise for his book and to say that the things he'd put in it were wrong and that he had made a mistake," Moyes said in 2010. For me, it showed his maturity and he thanked us for the help that had been given to him at Everton. In the intervening years, the animosity has continued to give way to mutual respect. "It has been interesting watching him develop," said Moyes last season. A lot of people had said David Moyes couldn't control or handle Wayne, and he'd be better going off to Sir Alex at Manchester United, but I think Sir Alex has had his problems with him as well at times. In retrospect, when the arrogant teenager met the hardline disciplinarian, it was inevitable the fusion would veer towards the nuclear. Moyes justifiably feared Rooney was so good he would be considered bigger than Everton to the point his authority was undermined, while the striker felt early on Goodison could not satisfy instant ambition. A politically tolerable exit almost took Rooney to Chelsea before United's bid was accepted, but the revenue from his sale assisted Moyes" subsequent years of stability. Today, the duo acknowledge how they helped each other, Moyes with the courage to thrust Rooney into the Premier League astonishingly young and the striker elevating the profile of his club and manager as much as himself. But those recent proclamations have been from a safe distance, neither really knowing if or when they would be confronted with a day-to-day teacher and pupil liaison again. If Rooney was resistant to Moyes as a 16-year-old, one wonders if much will have altered now he is an all-knowing 27. Everyone gets a little older and wiser," Moyes said of Rooney last season. That is true, but there is always a bi-annual transfer story to contend with. Moyes inadvertently found himself the subject of an incendiary chapter in the first edition of Rooney's autobiography. It will become clearer after July 1 how much the tone will have changed when he gets around to penning the next volume.