Le Sulk transfer on menu after secret Fergie lunch

THERE was a banner in the Kop on Sunday announcing “we’re supporting the manager as always”. Fair enough.

Though anyone reaching their scally-‘guarded’ cars at 3:25 would’ve heard on BBC Radio 5 “...and we’re receiving many texts saying ‘Rafa out!...” A quicker flip-flop than even their Yank owners performed, in the reverse direction, in Marseille.

Ok, ok, cheap shot: the golden rule here is that you ignore any caller to BBCRadio5, Britain’s national football autopsy, since the very act of phoning up a radio station to spout your tedious and barely-coherent wisdom places you squarely in the green ink and/or pub bore category marked “Flee from, at all costs”.

Suffice to say we enjoyed Sunday: more of the same when the other, slightly less objectionable Scousers turn up at ours Sunday.

By then we will be just a week from the transfer season opening. I said I would only bother you with window-dressing guff if I had something concrete to tell you, so here you go, lads: Fergie may well have been publicly bigging up the potentially ‘explosive’ Saha recently but one suspects it is all eyewash. He has certainly got personally stuck into finding a new striker, which would suggest he isn’t prepared to rely on Louis for much longer. I can reveal here that Alex met Nik Anelka for lunch on Friday December 7 and laid out the situation for him — but as I write, word is that Chelsea’s bigger bucks have come into play.

The same Old Trafford staffer who confirmed the original lunch tale was informing confidants on Sunday night that CFC look to be in pole with a €18million bid. Utd won’t go higher than €12m for the player — or so they are saying for now.

Journalists in the Old Trafford press pack, incidentally, do know about the lunch — hence the amount of hard stories you have been reading recently about United’s interest in Anelka — but none dare to print it, as they fear the hairdryer and/or banning they would get from Fergie at the next press conference, something which yours truly doesn’t need to worry about, thankfully.

For technically, I suppose, it could be said that this lunch might constitute a ‘tap-up’ but, as usual, no-one expects any complaints or action, not least because everyone at the Reebok we speak to has known Nik would be off for weeks now.

Cashing-in is the name of the game, and Chelsea appear to claim they will throw more money at both him and Bolton.

It is suggested Nik might — cough — ‘help’ United get him on the cheap, using all the tactics familiar to wantaway grumps. Certainly, if Anelka somehow end up at United, it’ll speak a lot to his commitment to us. But don’t hold your breath. The sudden ramping-up of the Anelka drive was seemingly sparked by a belief that any Berbatov window deal was dead for now, information that I am informed was transmitted to United on Monday, Dec 3. But with still several weeks of tedious monkeying about to come, all this could yet change, of course.

Besides, as one of my colleagues concluded balefully at the weekend, “I’d be more worried that it was ‘Wes out and Anelka in’. Short-term gain, long-term loss.” Indeed, the inching towards the exit of so-called “contract rebel” Wes Brown disturbs many. The player appears to get more hard-pressed than others by MUFC at negotiation time; nothing to do with his once refusing Jason Ferguson as his agent, I trust. As a local lad who came through the ranks, he gets preferential treatment from the fans, naturally, which his off-field antics don’t always merit.

But if he goes — and bearing in mind Gary Neville increasingly seems to be on a career deathbed — that’d leave only Scholesy and Giggs as ‘our boys’, unless Danny Simpson can establish himself. We’re buying well but, sadly, breeding poorly...

* Richard Kurt, whose career-best “Red Army Years” is only available via [e-mail]