Football has graciously taken a back seat so far in this marvellous summer of sport but, like the distracting and vaguely annoying murmur of a bluebottle somewhere in the room, the unfathomable Wayne Rooney transfer saga has been creating a low hum that is impossible to ignore.

One presumes it is a transfer saga, because that is what it looks and feels like, even though Manchester United insist the player is not for sale and Rooney has yet to make it clear he wishes to leave. That is part of why the events of the past few weeks are so unfathomable. United say they value the player but behave as if they don't. Every footballer is for sale, particularly a 27-year-old international who is finding it hard to hold down a regular first-team place, and when David Moyes began his United tenure by spelling out that Rooney was not going anywhere he really needed to follow it with an indication that the player was happy to go along with this programme.

He did not, and neither did he promise Rooney more games or suggest that he had a role for him in the team now that he has fallen behind Robin van Persie and Shinji Kagawa in the pecking order, so most people formed the conclusion this was merely a ploy to keep the eventual price high. A selling club should never be seen to be too keen to get rid of their players, otherwise the bidding starts low, but whatever his intentions Moyes did not appear anxious to hang on to Rooney when he made his now infamous comments about his importance as back-up should Van Persie become injured.

When Chelsea made a bid it was a serious one, despite the early confusion about player exchanges and the club's annoyance about their £20m offer being made public. United turned it down, both to appear consistent and to see if anyone would come back with a better offer. What United would not have been expecting was for José Mourinho to make Rooney his only remaining transfer target of the summer, and to promise personally he would be back with another bid. So the current position is that Mourinho rates Rooney very highly indeed, while United appear not to. What is a chap supposed to do?

There is a school of thought that Rooney is not the player he once was, never will be again, and United would have been better off cashing in when he asked for a transfer two years ago. There is also a reasonable argument that the player himself is to blame for the present state of affairs, having gone off the boil to the extent that Sir Alex Ferguson felt it necessary to bring in Van Persie, and leave Rooney out for the crucial Champions League game against Real Madrid. All fair enough, except that the manager of Real Madrid at the time was one J Mourinho, and it now appears he must have been extremely glad to see Rooney absent from the team-sheet.

Mourinho is not making a bid for Van Persie as his main striker, he is making a bid for the player he displaced, which means that either he or Ferguson has wrongly assessed Rooney's ability and potential contribution.

Ferguson is out of it now, it is Moyes who is feeling the heat from one of the few unresolved issues bequeathed to him by his illustrious predecessor. Ferguson fudged his first falling-out with Rooney, ending up giving the player an enormous pay rise that his form at the time scarcely merited, and dumped his most recent one into Moyes's lap, though few imagine the new United manager is not receiving advice and information on the matter from the old one. The situation by itself may have been hard enough for Moyes to handle, but Mourinho's interest raises the stakes much higher.

United cannot afford to pack Rooney off to Chelsea and see him turn out a success, because that would not only impinge on their own trophy aspirations but make the first big decision Moyes had to take look a bad one. So now when they say Rooney is not for sale it is much easier to believe them.

Chelsea is the last place on earth United would like Rooney to end up, and quite possibly the club they least expected to table a determined bid. Should they succeed in prising Cesc Fábregas away from Barcelona, delivering a snub to Arsenal in the process, it would show United are still seen as the major player in English football, the club most players dream of joining. It would perhaps be unwise for Rooney to turn his back on all that, and some of his friends are advising him not to, yet many of the Old Trafford bridges are already burned. And for a player in Rooney's position, how flattering it must be to know Mourinho is keenly interested. Chelsea have won the Champions League more recently than United, after all, and Mourinho is the sort of manager who can make things happen fairly quickly.

All of which adds up to a headache for Moyes, who needs to act swiftly and decisively to prevent the Rooney camp setting the agenda. That is difficult enough when you are in Australia and news is leaking out of Manchester, but probably not as tricky as being caught in a Ferguson-Mourinho sandwich. It is not the introduction to top-level management Moyes might have wished, although the job description does imply the necessity of outsmarting top-level managers. As if following Ferguson was not a sufficiently tall order, Mourinho's aura is threatening to make Moyes look weedy before a ball has even been kicked.