Exactly How Conspiratorial Do You Wish To Be?
Okay, right...
What if, last year, Sir Ferguson and Michael Owen did a little deal while examining their racecards in the owners enclosure of some racecourse or other?
What if they penned a mutually beneficial win-win scenario?
In a parallel neohyperreality, is it feasible that the arrangement goes something like this...?
* Ferguson and Owen sign deal.
* Owen underperforms massively at Newcastle once Alan Shearer takes over as manager. Owen's duplicitous dichotomousness convinces 'Al that he is hyperreally trying on the pitch when data, statistics and betting market evidence suggests otherwise - check out the images and betting market patterns from the Stoke City away match, for example.
Anyway, Owen failed to score in the last four months of the season, Newcastle were relegated, Mr Minimum Wage took another few tens of millions hit and Sir Ferguson got revenge served cold on Mr Shearer.
* With his market value below zero, in steps Sir Ferguson in the aftermath of this debacle and signs the unsignable with a performance-related two year contract, snapping the little man up from beneath the collective noses of Hull City, managed by another horseracing devotee, Phil Brown. Brown showed what he thought of the 'quality' of Owen by signing Bobby Zamora in his stead - it was touch and go whether Owen or Zamora were the worst strikers in the Premier League last season.
While astute Manchester United fans are aware that they have purchased a non-trier, has Sir Ferguson trumped such concerns via his arrangement with Owen, which might continue thus...?
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Scot scuppers Sassenachs.
The Balance Sheet
Sir Ferguson - Gets Shearer and Newcastle relegated; picks up talented non-trier on the very cheap with suitably placed performative inducements in place; gets the best out of a has-been for one season (the second year of the deal is guaranteed high risk); helps to prevent any chance of England winning the World Cup, particularly if there are also changes between the goalposts.
Michael Owen - Gets Shearer relegated; signs unlikely high profile deal with all the relevant merchandising options; ###############################################
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############################################################### option to continue the project for a second season.
Additionally, the number of occasions where both parties, either singularly or in collusion, might participate in market activities highly correlated with proprietary financial gain is significant.
John Colquhoun, the soon-to-be-disgraced football agent, once told me that Sir Ferguson had £20 million stashed with Goldman Sachs.
In order that we don't have to say anything further on the mechanics of this mammon, it does suggest that Sir Ferguson has been living very frugally over his tenure at Manchester United.
"If you are so smart, how come you ain't rich?"
"If you're so rich, how come you ain't smart?"
Nowadays, it seems like it is always April 1st.
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