Charting the Football Pie - February 2006
The amount of the football pie a club can offer to new talent is dependent on the distance between where they are and what they can get away with multiplied by the volume of the owner's bank vault. An example is that of young Nigerian hotshot John Obi Mikel. Mikel agreed to a contract at Manchester United, his favourite club since birth. Then something changed. "I woke up in the middle of the night to find Peter Kenyon and Jose Mourinho of Chelsea dressed up as large sacks of cash, dancing around my bedroom singing 'Money, Money Money' by Abba. I presumed I was dreaming but they assured me that they were really there and simply 'monitoring developments' in my deal with United. Now I'm really confused. What could it mean?"

It's made more complicated by the fact that Manchester United will not be offering a huge piece of the football pie to Mikel - it's more of a mince pie wih an old sixpence in the middle. Peter Kenyon on the other hand has baked a huge organic money pie which would last for ages as long as it's kept in the fridge. Mikel has subsequently discovered that in fact he has been a Chelsea fan since birth and that he only signed for Man Utd because he was scared of Gary Neville.

"It's his moustache, and the way he kisses his badge a lot that intimidated me," squeaked the youngster. In a desperate throw of the dice Fergie is now offering a used VHS of United's treble winning season of 1999, some bits of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's old ligaments that he no longer needs and two tickets to the 2006 FA Cup Final at Wembley, accompanied by Sir Bobby Charlton (though if it takes place in Cardiff then Sir Bobby is busy). Now Sepp Blatter has smelt the football pies and is coming round to see what's going on. Sir Alex will be hoping that he takes away some of Chelsea's pie and bans Peter Kenyon from the kitchen.

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This feature first appeared in When Saturday Comes