Birmingham City<\/a> boss Rooney admits he went to such lengths to hide his drinking from Sir Alex Ferguson, that he put eye drops in and chewed gum before heading out to training.<\/p>\nRooney said: “I wanted to go out and enjoy my time with my friends and having a night out. It got to a point where I went too far, of course it did. That was a moment in my life where I was struggling massively. With alcohol. Massively struggling and I didn’t think I could turn to anyone.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t really want to, because I didn’t want to put that burden on anyone. I remember going into training and putting eyes drops in, chewing gum.<\/p>\n
“I just drank for two days straight. Go training and at the weekend, I’d scored two goals and then I’d go back and go and drink for two days straight again.”<\/p>\n
Rooney believes Coleen saved his life and he added: “Coleen is massive. It’s bad because we’re two kids from Croxteth, and then we grew up together and obviously we started dating and got married and have kids. But when I was 17 she could see, she knew my mind and she knew I was a bit out there.<\/p>\n
“You know, I loved my football. I was obsessed with football, but also I loved a night out or whatever going out. She’s seen it very early on, and she’s controlled that. Well, not controlled, but helped me control that massively.<\/p>\n
“And at times you’re like, ‘what are you doing? Why do you keep saying don’t do this or don’t do that? I honestly believe if she wasn’t there I’d be dead. I believe that.<\/p>\n
“I’ve made mistakes in the past, which are well documented and whatever, but I’m a little bit different at times and she keeps me on that path. She’s done it for 20-odd years.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former Birmingham City boss has been speaking about his relationship with alcohol and the lengths he went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,1205,748,393,4884,16,15,14349],"class_list":{"0":"post-449316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-birmingham-city-fc","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-wayne-rooney"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115262482454189995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Wayne](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/3_GettyImages-1775149981.jpg\")
Former Birmingham City boss Wayne Rooney(Image: Graham Chadwick\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n