RONALDO SWOP FOR ROONEY AND £25MILLION

I HEAR from my spies at Old Trafford that Sir Alex Ferguson may indeed be planning to show Wayne Rooney the door.
The relationship between the United boss and his star player has been an uneasy one for some time now.
Recently, Fergie dropped him for being overweight and out of condition - and as we watched Wayne labour for England in the Euros we could all see that the self-styled 'big man' was not fit.
Now, as Fergie enters the last two years of his dictatorship at United, the boss wants to leave with one (or even  two) final Champions League trophy wins.
That was why he bought Robin Van Persie - to secure the goals that would ensure United would not be dumped at the group stages once again.
The Champions League remains the holy grail for Fergie, as I discovered when I did his biography two years ago.
He believes that a team and manager are ultimately judged by their domination (or lack of it) in Europe. That a team like United should have won the trophy five or six times on the run, rather than just three overall (including two under his tenure).
That is why all the whispers behind the scenes at United are now concentrated on WHEN Ronaldo will return and not IF.
The big problem, of course, for Fergie is that the Glazers would never sanction the £80million transfer fee Madrid would want for their star man...a like for like cash return on their investment after they paid that for the Portuguese in 2009.
That is why Fergie bought Van Persie - to replace Rooney, not to work alongside him. The idea is that he could use Rooney as part of the carrot to bring Ronaldo back. Rooney would be rated at £55 or even £60 million - so the Glazers would have to fork out a further £25million. Fergie is allowed that figure for incoming transfers each summer, so could take it in one early slab in January as long as he agreed he would not spend anything in the summer unless he sold someone from his existing squad to bring in cash.
That plus Rooney would pay the fee for Ronaldo - but then you have the problem of his wages. United are working on the plan that the commercial value of Ronaldo would provide  a hefty chunk and that they could also offload Nani for £25million to make up the difference in cash coming in and the freeing up of his salary.
The Glazers are up for the plan - it would in one swoop get many of their critics off their backs and leave them looking like heroes for once. They would be the men who brought back to United their best player since Georgie Best.
And the partnership of Van Persie and Ronaldo would lead Fergie to those final two Champions League wins he so craves before he retires - while the fact that Ronaldo was back at Old Trafford would provide yet another justification in Mourinho's mind that he too should quit Madrid to take over at United in the summer of 2014.
Truly a case of trebles all round!

FRANK WORRALL