Listen, mate, I've got a problem. You might have seen me on the telly during the week when Man Utd played Bayern. I was the one who snuck onto the pitch and posed with the Utd players for the team photos, dressed as one of the team. There was a dodgy moment out there when Keano twigged that I was an impostor, but he was too busy focusing on the game to do anything about it.

Here's the trouble. You might remember that the game didn't go well for Utd. Bayern scored early, and Utd were always struggling to get back into it. About midway through the second half, Sir Alex called me down out of the stand and told me he was sticking me on in central midfield with Keano. He said that the team had become complacent, and he was going to bring in new blood, starting with me.

I didn't need to be told twice. Out I ran onto the pitch. It was my dream realised at age 35!

But I was useless out there, Gaffer. Try as I might, I just couldn't keep up with those professional players. The last time I played a game of football was in sixth form. Since then football's strictly been something that other people did. All the same, I always reckoned it couldn't be that hard to be a professional. Little did I know. I was wheezing for breath in a couple of minutes.

Bottom line is, I didn't boss the midfield the way Sir Alex told me to. We lost the game despite my presence.

Sir Alex flipped his lid. He blamed me for the defeat, saying my performance was "craven". Chased me around the park, he did. I hopped up into the stand, snuck through the crowd, and legged it to the airport.

Now that I'm back in Manchester, I hear that he's still roaming the streets with Keano, looking for me. They're going to kick the crap out of me when they find me. I'm living in fear.

Gaffer, how can I get back into Sir Alex's good books?

Karl Power

Yeah, I saw you on the box, mate. You weren't even convincing in the team photo, never mind in the centre of midfield. I reckon Alex is losing it in a big way, throwing on lads like yourself and that other geezer, looks like Tom Petty... what's his name?... Luke Chadwick, that's it.

Anyway, I'd advise you to get out of town and stay out, mate. Alex is well cheesed off with you, and I know how he feels. When I was manager of Laos, we had a similar incident during a friendly against New Britain in the runup to the World Cup qualifiers. The match was a few minutes old when, unnoticed by anyone, someone from the crowd snuck down to the side of the field and sat in the physio's bench. As we later found out, this was local New Britain practical joker, Clifton Keeoowaana. He'd picked his moment well. A minute before, our physio, Billy Kwouk, had rushed back to the dressing room with a severe case of Chief Tahamula's Revenge, which kept him on the throne for the full 90 minutes. Nobody noticed that the individual on our physio's bench was an impostor.

Midway through the second half, our star striker, Anh Chi Woong, went down with an ankle injury. Keeoowaana ran on and started dousing Woong's leg with what looked like the physio's bottle of magic water. After a few seconds, however, Woong started howling with pain. No one knew what was wrong at the time, but his leg started to turn purple. Later, at the hospital, it turned out that the magic water had actually been high-concentration weedkiller belonging to the groundskeeper.

Amateur video footage of the match revealed the culprit, who had fled the country to neighbouring New Ireland. From there, he claimed to the press that it had all been an accident. We knew better. We'd heard that Keeoowaana had bet heavily on a New Britain win in his local bookie's.

The entire Laos squad took the next ferry over to New Ireland, found Keeoowaana's motel, and gave him such a going over that he ended up in the same hospital ward as young Woong.