Rooney Stalls on New Deal

Chelsea have been alerted to growing concerns at Everton that Wayne Rooney will opt against signing a new contract with the club, leaving the Merseysiders susceptible to any substantial bid for the England striker lodged after Euro 2004.

Everton have prepared the most lucrative contract in their history to replace Rooney's initial three-year professional deal, signed in January 2003, but have not received any indication either from the player or his representatives, Proactive Sports Management, that he is willing to open discussions. That has merely fuelled rumours of Rooney's imminent departure.

The Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has been quick to express his admiration for the England forward in the past though, realistically, Chelsea are the only Premiership club with the financial clout to bid for a player who is likely to cost up to £30m. There has been no formal contact from any interested club as yet, but the uneasy stand-off with Rooney is increasingly undermining Everton's position.

The club would be reluctant sellers even for an English-record amount. To that end, they are willing to break their recently imposed £20,000-a-week wage ceiling to inflate Rooney's salary from a basic £13,000-a-week to nearer £35,000-a-week on a new five-year deal.

The three-year contract was the maximum length the striker could sign as a 17-year-old, but the club have been working on the longer deal since Rooney turned 18 last October.

For all that they are saddled with heavy debts and are stifled in a dated and relatively decrepit stadium, Everton remain acutely aware of the nightmare scenario that, should the striker run down his current deal to its conclusion in the summer of 2006, the "development fee" they would recoup from Rooney's new club might only be a fraction of his market value.

The new Everton chairman Bill Kenwright, the club's owner, was anxious to resolve the uncertainty over the striker's future but must now wait until the player returns from Portugal before he can make any headway. Yet Kenwright, like Proactive, remains acutely aware that potential suitors are likely to be encouraged by the sight of Rooney excelling at Euro 2004.

Proactive's procrastination is born of the understandable belief that their client's value, both in terms of any potential future transfer fee and his overall earning power, will soar on the back of a successful tournament. Future interest in the striker is seen as inevitable and may prompt Chelsea to make their long-standing interest concrete with an offer Everton will find hard to resist.

Rooney, as an Everton fan, would instinctively prefer to remain at Goodison Park rather than endure the inevitable supporters' backlash. Yet he remains intensely ambitious and is understood to be willing to resist the club hierarchy's urgent desire to tie him down. Furthermore, he has endured an increasingly strained relationship with his manager David Moyes.

Moyes has earned deserved praise for his attempts to keep the youngster's feet on the ground, shielding the forward from the media in an attempt to allow him to grow into his role both with Everton and England. Yet he was perturbed by Rooney's burgeoning commercial tie-ups - he endorses Mastercard, EA Games, Pringles, Coca-Cola, Ford and Nike - and, with the club struggling to avoid relegation last season, frustration occasionally boiled over into very public squabbles.

The striker made no attempt to hide his disgust at being substituted in the 2-0 defeat at Bolton Wanderers last November and was similarly dismayed when Moyes moved him to the right of midfield upon introducing a third striker at home to Aston Villa in February. Rooney's sporadic form reflected those trials and he mustered only nine goals as Everton finished a lowly 17th.

Yet his form for England attracted potential buyers with Moyes, braced for more interest after Euro 2004, conceding this week that only Chelsea could afford to buy England's youngest goalscorer. "If he does well [at the tournament] the surrounding hype will be inevitable, but we want him to have a good championships even if it creates new speculation about him leaving Everton," he said. "My belief is that there is only one club in the world at the moment who could afford him."