NEWS ROUND-UP:WAYNE ROONEY has not given up hope of being involved in Manchester United's potentially season-defining game at Sunderland on Sunday.

Rooney, the Professional Footballers’ Association’s newly crowned Player of the Year, is once again ahead of schedule in his rehabilitation and refusing to accept he has no chance of being involved in a match that could go a long way to determining whether the championship trophy stays at Old Trafford or goes to Chelsea.

While Alex Ferguson said at the weekend that Rooney would be missing for two or three weeks with a groin strain, the player has a more optimistic timescale after several days of intensive treatment. Rooney has strained the abductor muscle at the top of his leg, but the Premier League’s leading scorer is encouraged by the fact that he is a quick healer.

United’s doctors have given him an outside chance of playing at Sunderland and Rooney will almost certainly be available for the home game against Stoke City the following weekend. He is said to be surprised by some of Ferguson’s public statements.

The last time Ferguson said Rooney would be out for up to three weeks, after he had damaged his ankle in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Bayern Munich, the striker played in the return leg the next week.

He lasted 55 minutes and the gamble of playing him has led to concerns, predominantly at the English FA, that the fitness of England’s most accomplished striker is being risked with a World Cup looming. The player himself has no qualms about the way his initial injury has been handled and has told associates that he has been pleased with the support and expertise he has received from the club’s medical staff.

Elsewhere, Manchester City are trying to persuade Birmingham City to allow Joe Hart to return to Eastlands for the final three games of the season after requesting special permission from the Premier League to help them out of a goalkeeping crisis.

Hart is on a season-long loan at St Andrew’s but Birmingham’s vice-chairman, Peter Pannu, said last night he would “consider it favourably” even though the manager, Alex McLeish, has made it clear he is against the idea.

Pannu said: “I understand their (Manchester City’s) concerns. I am very sympathetic to City.”