Five Cantonas

When Manchester United signed Bebe last summer, I really wanted it to turn out to be some sort of left-field masterstroke, the sort of transfer that only ever happened on Football Manager when you use the cheat scouting programs to find the world-class youngsters in the Tibetan Second Division.

However, turns out that the grinning idiots that support other clubs were right. Bebe isn’t up to scratch and looks likely to be shipped out to Turkey in the next week or so. £7.4 million down the drain, minus whatever we can recoup from Besiktas.

Unless something remarkable happens in Turkey, and Bebe turns into the goal machine that he’s got the physical attributes to become, he’s going to become this decade’s Djemba-Djemba, a symbol of profligacy in the transfer market and, perhaps, even the moment some people will suggest Fergie began to lose the plot, no matter how successful we are in the next few years.

I honestly struggle to think how funny Vitoria Guimaraes must be finding this whole situation. They’ve got a crapload of money to spend on players who are actually decent, and have already brought in 13 players this close season to compliment the 24 they signed last.

In other words, some crappy once-homeless footballer that we took an ill-advised punt on and now need to dump for whatever we can get has funded the complete overhaul of the entire playing staff of an upper-mid table Portugese side.

LOL.