August 18 - Nutter Knighton Nearly Nabs United

WITH the daft sums of money being branded around the Premiership by Russian oligarchs, Texan bond barons and former Thai despots it seems crazy that Manchester United were hitting the headlines today in 1989 when they accepted a bid of just (!) £20m for the club.

The man with his eyes on the Old Trafford prize was Michael Knighton, one of those unique and eccentric characters that football seems to attract far too often.

At the end of the 1980s English football was not in the best of shape. The game was attempting to put it’s house in order following the Hillsborough disaster and it would be three years until Rupert Murdoch would ride in on his white horse, splashing his Sky TV money all over the shop.

Despite his family having controlled the club for over 25 years Martin Edwards was all-too ready to give up his position at the head of the club, that had not won the League for 22 years and were pondering whether to give their manager Alex Ferguson the boot or not. Five years earlier Edwards had resisted the charms of Robert Maxwell when the media mogul and boating enthusiast waved £10m of his employees pension savings his way.

Coming in with the cash this time was Michael Knighton. Once a promising young footballer, Knighton’s dreams were dashed when he ruptured a muscle in his thigh whilst at Coventry City, which led to him becoming a player in the property game, where he would make his millions.

Once accepted, Knighton’s offer for United was the biggest in British football history. Fans at Old Trafford were first alerted to Knighton’s ways when they turned up to their next home game to see him dressed in a full team kit performing a series of keepy-uppies. If only the gnome-alike Malcolm Glazer had done the same 16 years later.

Knighton promised to invest £10m into redeveloping Old Trafford, but in a move they surely now regret, his financial backers pulled out. If his trying-to-hard show in the United centre circle wasn’t enough, then the moneymen probably caught wind of his other passion: UFOs.

In the 1970s Knighton and his wife claimed that they saw a UFO zipping around the sky at their Yorkshire home before it telepathically told him: “Don’t be afraid, Michael.” Right. And we thought Ken Bates was an odd ‘un.

When the takeover fell through, Edwards kept control of United until he accepted another offer in 2005, this time from Florida billionaire Malcolm Glazer. The price this time? An estimated £800m, so it appears that Edwards is having the last laugh.

Knighton meanwhile took ET’s advice and wasn’t scared to get back into the beautiful game, buying Carlisle United in 1992. Carlisle were in the fourth tier of English football, but that didn’t stop Knighton boasting that the Cumbrians would soon be playing the likes of Manchester United in the top flight.

After two promotions and a relegation found them in Division Two, Knighton let his ego get the better of him when he sacked popular manager Mervyn Day and took over as manager himself. Anyone with half a brain cell would’ve been able to tell you how this would end, as the club were relegated back to Division Three and Knighton could go back to watching the skys.

Despite witnessing one of English football’s most dramatic moments when Jimmy Glass scored in 1999, Carlisle fans had to endure more farcical going-ons at the hand of Knighton until John Courtenay took over the club in 2002 after they were put into voluntary administration.

Sadly we can’t find any footage of Knighton’s Old Trafford ball-juggling, so we’ll use this as an excuse to remember Carlisle’s most famous moment.