Early Doors doesn't know whether Wayne Rooney is a fan of Greek mythology, but his latest metatarsal-related lay-off should give him a chance to get his chops around Homer's Iliad (Put your 'D'Oh!' jokes away).

Said poem focuses on the Wrath of Achilles during the Trojan War. Achilles was a notorious hard case, and when in battle experienced "consuming rage".

Homer adds: "His anger is at some times wavering, at other times absolute." Remind you of anyone?

Achilles was also known as the most handsome of all the Trojan warriors. The Rooney parallels go on...

Achilles went on the rampage against the Greeks, killing Hector (the Kaka of his day) before being struck down - spookily enough - by a blow to the Achilles.

The warrior had been made all but immortal when his mother dipped him in the river Styx as a baby but, as she was holding his heel, that part of his body remained vulnerable to injury.

All of which circuitous back story brings us to Rooney, whose three foot breaks in three years leads Early Doors to wonder whether he was being held by the metatarsals when dipped into a vat of magical chip fat when he was a tot.

And seeing as nobody likes the word 'metatarsal' anyway, Early Doors hearby commences its campaign to have it renamed 'Rooney's Bone'.