Coleen Rooney has turned her famous sleuthing skills to football's biggest off-pitch controversy, starring in a new Paddy Power sketch that sees her investigating Manchester City's Financial Fair Play (FFP) case.
The 39-year-old wife of footballer Wayne Rooney, whose own high-profile detective work earned her the nickname 'Wagatha Christie', has teamed up with the Irish bookmaker to announce its record-breaking 'Justice Refund'.
In the video, Rooney heads up a satirical 'Investigation Department', tackling a variety of mock cases with her trademark no-nonsense approach.
Set in a fictional office, she examines tongue-in-cheek complaints including whether 'nothing beats a Jet2 holiday' and the 'latest refereeing conspiracy theories' by Arsenal fans, before uncovering a suspicious phone call from a 'Mr Howard Wobb' praising VAR.
But the sketch's big moment comes when she turns her attention to football's long-running FFP saga, presenting her own 'verdict' with a knowing look to the camera: if the game's authorities won't sort it out, Paddy Power will.
The Paddy Power 'Justice Refund' is a payback scheme giving money back to all punters who backed a team that finished second to Manchester City in the Premier League since 2011.
Spanning 14 years, the initiative covers eight seasons, meaning Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool fans who placed title bets in those years will have their stakes returned.
More than 100,000 punters are set to benefit - including those who backed United in 2011/12, 2017/18 and 2020/21, Liverpool in 2013/14, 2018/19 and 2021/22, and Arsenal in 2022/23 and 2023/24... despite an official verdict on City's alleged 115 financial charges still pending.
The sketch plays on a real-life saga that has been gripping football for more than a year. In February 2023, the Premier League charged Manchester City with more than 100 alleged breaches of its financial regulations following a four-year investigation.
The charges related to a period stretching from the 2009-2010 season to the 2017-2018 campaign and centred on claims that the club failed to provide accurate financial information, including full details of sponsorship revenue, commercial deals and operating costs.
Manchester City were also accused of not fully disclosing the remuneration paid to then-manager Roberto Mancini between 2009 and 2013.
Further allegations involved breaches of UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules from 2013-2014 to 2017-2018, as well as alleged failures to comply with the Premier League's own profitability and sustainability requirements.
The league also claimed the club did not cooperate with its investigation from December 2018 onwards. However, City strenuously denied any wrongdoing, insisting they had 'irrefutable evidence' to support their position.
Meanwhile, Rooney's turn as a football investigator is a playful nod to the saga that made her a household name beyond football circles. In October 2019, she shocked social media when she revealed she had conducted her own sting operation to find out who was leaking stories from her private Instagram account to The Sun.
Rooney explained she had blocked all followers except one, Rebekah Vardy's account, from seeing certain fabricated posts. When those fictional stories appeared in the press, she shared her findings in a now-famous online statement ending with the words: '…it's Rebekah Vardy's account.'
Vardy denied leaking the stories and sued Rooney for libel, leading to one of the most high-profile celebrity court cases in recent memory. The trial took place at the High Court in May 2022, attracting wall-to-wall media coverage and cementing the 'Wagatha Christie' nickname in the public imagination.
In July 2022, the High Court ruled in Rooney's favour, finding her accusation was 'substantially true' and concluding that Vardy was likely to have known of, condoned or actively engaged in the leaking of private information to the press via her agent.
As a result, Vardy was forced to pay an estimated £1.5million towards Rooney's legal costs as well as her own - bringing the combined total to an estimated £3m.
Therefore, Rooney's new sketch with Paddy Power draws on that very reputation for meticulous detective work, placing her at the centre of another high-profile football mystery.
