It is a picture that surely sums up the past few days in the Rooney household.
Deciding against taking her sons to watch husband Wayne’s Plymouth Argyle on Sunday, self-confessed ‘soccer mom’ Coleen, and three of her four boys, sat instead at their beloved Everton’s ground Goodison Park to cheer the team on against Nottingham Forest. Alas, Everton lost, leaving Coleen and the kids – Kai, 15, Kit, eight, and Cass, six – stony-faced and glum.
Sealing the gloomy mood in the Rooney’s £20 million Cheshire mansion, so too did Plymouth Argyle – 2-0 to Oxford United – in what we now know was Wayne Rooney’s last game as manager of the Devon side.
In fact, Wayne was sacked from his £500,000 a year job at Plymouth in a phone call shortly after 9.30am yesterday. Not yet 40, he has now failed at four managerial roles, including stints at DC United in the US, Derby County and Birmingham City.
Friends of Wayne say he is ‘gutted’ at losing his job, though recently felt it was inevitable.
And what of Coleen’s frame of mind, so soon after her triumphant second place in this year’s I’m A Celebrity? Sources close to the family say she too will be devastated by the turn of events at Plymouth.
Friends of Wayne Rooney (pictured yesterday in the stands) say he is ‘gutted’ at losing his job at Plymouth, though recently felt it was inevitable
‘Coleen was so keen for Wayne’s managerial career to work out. She knows how much he wanted it and she knows how much he loves football. On the outside, life for the Rooneys is all fancy restaurants, vodka cocktails and expensive clothes, but actually football is so important to Wayne. It keeps him busy. She worries about him, and football keeps him out of trouble.’
Talking of which, Wayne, 39, once again found himself in a spot of bother on Monday, when a video emerged of a woman apparently going into his ‘bachelor pad’ in the seaside town of Salcombe, which – pre-dismissal at least – he shared with assistant Plymouth coach Pete Shuttleworth.
Footage posted and viewed more than two million times on X allegedly shows Wayne opening the front door of the apartment for the unidentified woman. It then cuts to the former Manchester United star, who is wearing a baseball cap and tracksuit, standing in front of a large television.
The video was also accompanied by pictures of him with two unknown women drinking in a pub, though there is no suggestion that either of them is the woman pictured with Wayne at his flat.
Understandably, both Wayne and Coleen were said to be ‘furious’ at the video’s circulation – so much so that Wayne quickly took to social media to profusely deny the accusations levelled at him.
Footage posted and viewed more than two million times on X allegedly shows Wayne opening the front door of his apartment for an unidentified woman
With the help of his PR team and management firm Triple S, Wayne wrote on Instagram: ‘The video shows a man and woman looking around my apartment. The couple kindly gave me a lift home and were in there at the same time as my son who was visiting.
‘The footage is from last summer. It is annoying that at least one online newspaper has chosen to edit the footage to make it appear as though a woman entered the apartment on her own. That is simply not true.’
It was a convincing rebuttal, though of course Wayne’s past is very far from being squeaky clean. Sadly for him, most of us remember the visits to a ‘granny’ prostitute when he was 18, while Coleen was his girlfriend, followed by a threesome with escorts Helen Wood and Jenny Thompson in 2010 at Manchester’s Lowry hotel, when Coleen, now 38, was pregnant with their first son.
Then in 2017 he was arrested for drink driving while behind the wheel of Cheshire estate agent Laura Simpson’s car, for which he was banned from driving for two years.
Each time he admitted his mistake and each time Coleen forgave him, and I can reveal that this time it will be no different.
‘Coleen knows Wayne is a target for women,’ said a source close to the star. ‘Especially in a town like Plymouth. He is hugely famous and he loves a chat when he has had a drink and perhaps in the past, he has done stupid things.
The Rooney family look happy and festive were matching pyjamas in a Christmas photo
‘But more recently there seem to have been times when people have got the wrong end of the stick or even been taken advantage of [by others].’
Another source tells me that Wayne and Coleen are actually in ‘a very good place’, having matured significantly since meeting as teenagers in the Croxteth area of Liverpool.
But will that be enough to save the fly-on-the-wall documentary planned hot on the heels of Coleen’s impressive I’m A Celebrity performance? You can only imagine her fury should all her hard work in the jungle be compromised by what seems like potential naivety on her husband’s part.
Prior to this week, the couple have been at the centre of a bidding war between Amazon and Disney+ for their ‘At Home With The Rooneys’ style documentary, which promises to give an inside glimpse into the most talked-about UK footballing family after the Beckhams.
With Wayne’s long-serving manager Paul Stretford in charge of negotiations, industry insiders have suggested that the couple could get as much as £5 million for the show.
Now, however, rather than starring Wayne as one of the country’s most high-profile football bosses, the programme will likely feature the former star licking his wounds at home as he once again comes to terms with being unemployed. More damaging still, will fans of the Rooneys – and of football – feel that Wayne’s reputation has been tarnished following the emergence of the video?
‘Football is central to the Rooneys’ daily lives,’ says an insider. ‘The boys love it, and Coleen is always ferrying them around to their matches. OK she has no choice, but she absolutely loves it.
‘Part of the charm of the show [would be] Wayne’s successes as a manager, but now it seems he will be getting under her feet rather than being a football coach.
‘Coleen did so well in the jungle, she opened up about the trials and tribulations of being a WAG and, despite their wealth, how normal they all are.
‘You can’t help but feel this unfortunate video could be a distraction. Both Wayne and Coleen are well aware of the attention that his misdemeanors attract from the public, and that they remain in the public consciousness for a long time.’
On the upside, when the cameras roll, at least Coleen will know her husband can be found somewhere within their sprawling mansion. During his short stint at Plymouth, he seemed to enjoy his nights out.
A regular at the Monday quiz night in the city’s Seco Lounge cafe-bar, he has also been spotted belting out hits at the Cider Press pub’s karaoke night, where a video of him posted on social media went viral. ‘Make some f***ing noise, baby!’ he shouted out to the assembled drinkers.
Coleen recently appeared on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
Jarrod Styles, assistant manager of the Cider Press bar, said: ‘He was definitely a better footballer than he is a singer.
‘He was an ideal customer, he was just chatting to people then he got up and sang Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You. He was working the crowd telling everybody to join in.’
The nearby Rakuda Bar also shared photos of two visits from Wayne on Facebook, describing him as ‘Rakuda’s new regular’.
Meanwhile, Coleen and their sons remained in Cheshire, with Wayne making the 600-mile, ten-hour round trip once a week by car. Sources say that despite her sadness at Wayne losing his job Coleen will be ‘happy’ to have him under her feet again.
‘She misses him,’ a friend of the star tells me. ‘They have been through so much, but she adores him.’
And, next time the Rooney boys fancy a trip to watch Everton play, their dad will be able to join them.