Pedersen

Our eccentric chairman (more about him later) had set some very stringent financial constraints. In assembling our debut squad of 20 players, we had a maximum wage budget of £100,000 - more than enough to attract some talented players - but a transfer budget of £500,000. Effectively, this limited us to targeting unattached "free agent" players for now.

The experts say that you shouldn't build a team around one player, and yet that's what I set out to do. The man at the top of my "must-buy" list was talented Norwegian midfielder Morten Gamst Pedersen. His agent's asking price was a modest £230,000; nevertheless, that equated to nearly half of my transfer budget. But with a scouting video like the one below, who's to argue?



After a lengthy and promising chat with his agent, Morten travelled down to Hampton to meet with me, and to hammer out the terms of his contract. This was where the hard part started.

"Nice to meet you, Mr Studd," Morten declared.

"Call me gaffer," I smiled hopefully.

"So... when do I get a chance to meet up with the rest of the Hampton squad?"

I tried to think of the best way to tell him that we didn't have a squad, that he'd been my first phonecall, and I was relying on his signature to encourage other players to join the club. In the end, it came out as a muddled lie: "Er, they're all... in our sauna."

"Oh, great, you've got a sauna?"

We didn't have a sauna. I don't know why I lied by making a bigger lie.

"All in good time, young Morten," I said divertingly. "Let's get down to the nitty-gritty. You like the club, and you like the wage package?"

The Scandinavian nodded. "I'm looking for a club where I can be guaranteed a first team place. Do you think you can offer me that?"

At last, a chance to tell the truth, and a sentence which sealed the deal: "Morten, dear boy, I can safely say that right now, you will have absolutely no trouble getting into the team."