What really happened on deadline day

It was a beautiful winter morning, and Arsene Wenger was in his favourite café enjoying the sunshine dappling the water of the Lido. He’d just treated himself to a chocolate croissant and felt at peace with the world. As far as he knew, Arsenal were still top of the league, nobody important had deserted him and so he was making the most of his winter break. Why not!

He'd been thinking about one of the biggest regrets of his career, a poor policy decision he’d made some while ago. In an effort to attract young players from impoverished parts of the world, he offered to buy them new football boots if they signed up with him. This was fine when he had a lot of youngsters in the team, as he could make them squeeze into children’s sizes and thus avoid the VAT. This resulted in a lot of injuries and blisters but it certainly saved a lot of money! Then when they outgrew their boots, rather than buy new pairs Arsene would just sell the player. But many people had been moaning about his team choice, loudly complaining about him sometimes fielding entire teams whose voices hadn’t broken. “We want big strong men with beards! English men!" they cried.

He’d brought an Argos catalogue with him and was gloomily looking through the boots and kit section. All so expensive now! He decided that next season he’d tell all the players they had to buy their own boots, and maybe even their own kit. It had to be roughly the same colour though.
They wouldn’t like this!

Sighing deeply, he turned back to his crossword puzzles. He’d already done a French and a German one, and was now grappling with the cryptic Guardian. For some reason he’d got up very early that morning for something important, but had forgotten exactly what. Oh well, it would come to him if he relaxed.

Arsene was struggling with a particularly difficult clue. He wrote the letters and blank spaces on the top of the newspaper and tried to crack the puzzle. His eye drifted up to the top of the paper – and then all the blood drained out of his face. He had just noticed the date on the top of the paper – January 31st! “MON DIEU - DEADLINE DAY!!!! I KNEW I HAD TO DO SOMETHING TODAY!" Cursing himself for always leaving everything to the last minute and ignoring the wise advice of his supporters, Arsene grew flustered. Then he relaxed – as always, he had a plan.
All he had to do is what he had always done before, and there was plenty of time. He had an international version of Fantasy Football, and all he had to do was look at ALL PLAYERS in the very cheapest section and simply pick out the top five. Surely one or two would say yes!
He hadn’t heard of any of them – but that didn’t matter, nobody else would have heard of them either. If they were young, he would say they were ‘future promise’. If old, full of ‘mental strength’. If bone-stupid, he would say they had 'grit'. And so on.

Arsene got out his phone to call his buyer. But Arsene being Arsene, he had pay-as-you-go not contract and had ran out of minutes! Damn!
Still, he could get through this. As the only man in football (apart from Graham LaSaux) that can read Latin, he was untouchable. Unsackable! But it was embarrassing.

Then his phone rang. Someone was calling him from abroad!
“Yes, this is Wenger…so you want a job – as a footballer? Okay… what is your name?... okay, Kim – now would that be for the men’s team or girl’s team? I only really deal with the men’s team… it doesn’t really matter what position you play, we’re all the same here…there’s just one thing though – do you have your own boots?... You DO! That’s parfait!... What, you say you even have a spare pair? PARFAIT! What size, if you don’t mind me asking. 47! That is – a miracle! Okay, can you come here straightaway? Good good good!"

Wenger had solved so many problems that day! He had a new little German boy with big feet - size 47 - and really didn't want to lash out on new boots for him. And the supporters would be happy with Kim.

He ordered himself another chocolate croissant to celebrate.