Scot also reveals he had to discipline his star in 2011 after a night out.
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Former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has claimed in his new autobiography that front man Wayne Rooney did ask to leave Old Trafford at the end of last season, according to reports in the Daily Mail.
The 71-year-old says that the England international came to see him in his office at the club training ground in Carrington the day after the Red Devils had won their 20th top-flight title following a home win against Aston Villa.
And according to the Scot, the forward demanded to leave the club because he was unhappy at not being played in his favoured central striking role, a request that his agent then also apparently repeated in a phone call to chief executive David Gill.
“He came into my office the day after we won the league and asked away,” writes the now retired United boss in ‘Ferguson: My Autobiography’.
“He wasn’t happy with being left out for some games and subbed in others. His agent Paul Stretford phoned David Gill with the same message.”
Ferguson goes on to claim in his chapter on Rooney that the 27-year-old needs “to be careful” with his conditioning and that his skills as an attacker can get “swallowed up by a lack of fitness”.
Meanwhile, Fergie also criticises the current England head coach Roy Hodgson for allowing Rooney to go on a week’s holiday with friends in Las Vegas just prior to the 2012 European championship in Poland and Ukraine, a tournament for which the forward was suspended for the opening two group games, saying the decision was “not wise”.
And finally, the Scot goes on to suggest that he started to notice how last season Rooney began to find it hard to get the better of opposition markers because he had “lost some of his old thrust”.