A prologue, starring Sheikh Mansour and Roberto Martinez

… as Lord Sauron of Mordor; and Isildur, High King of Gondor and Arnor, respectively. (Editor’s note: Darshan is probably one of the most creative writers to ever write about football, not to mention contribute to AFR. This season, we’re letting him go deep into the unknown. Enjoy)

By Darshan Joshi, writing from Sydney

It is fair to say that the idea of the foreign owner is not something that will be unanimously loved across European football. The odd purist would cite Aristippus: “It is better to be a beggar than an ignoramus. If the first one doesn’t have money, the second one doesn’t have a human nature”, while the fan of the sugar-daddied empire would rebut with some Plato: “Wealth isn’t blind, he is perspicacious”. Of course, this is a far-fetched theory that affords the typical football fan a bit too much respect. The conversation, or rather, the crass tête-à-tête is likely to start with ‘piss off’ and conclude with ‘you filthy rich pricks’, and an unwholesome finger gesture. The point being, the unknown quantity of the foreign owner is not one that everyone will be glad to see. If voodoo dolls existed, he would be mutilated within minutes of the announcement of his arrival.

In that sense, the foreign quantity is Sauron – arriving in a land not his own, and undeviatingly actuating a malice, and a lustfully bloodthirsty hunger into any who would be seduced by his desire for power.

It isn’t fair to label Sheikh Mansour as this one reincarnation of Sauron – Roman Abramovich, the Glazers, Randy Lerner, and a few others are also guilty of whatever crimes this tale insinuates they have committed – but let him and the rest of his Abu Dhabi convoy act as a synecdoche for foreign ownership. After all, they are the fairest of them all…

No, they are not. We know the story; a last alliance of men (shall we say, Wigan?) and Elves (leaning towards Everton here) marched onto the Black Gate of Mordor (Eastlands, duh. Well, it’s Etihad now). Something about Dave Whelan being clobbered by Mansour, before Roberto Martinez took his [father’s] half-broken blade and sliced the Ring off Mr Abu Dhabi’s well-oiled finger… it’s all fantasy, but you get the point.

Martinez is penetrated by the thought of this ceaseless power, and he undergoes a mutation so severe that it would leave Charles Xavier re-paralysed from his waist down. Once known as the nice guy of English football management, he flourishes into an obsessive, crazed silhouette of what he once was, until Carlos Tévez releases an arrow into his back while complaining about the lack of sunlight in Mordor. Typical Tévez: he frets about the abysmal work conditions while doing his job exquisitely. The ring, the one thing Mansour poured all his strength and vengeance into, endures in the pit of the Thames, and as a result, his very spirit lingers.

There is a silence that persists over thousands of years, before pair of brothers, Phil and Gary, come across this pretty little golden thing. Only Gary emerges from this curious situation, with a little birthday present wrapped around his index finger. He looks better than ever – invisible. He is not heard from again, though rumours of his existence in a cave beneath some faraway mountains radiate through the winds. Meanwhile, in the mining town of Mordor, Mancunians commenced the building of a tower, or a Burj.

Murmurs of an amplifying shadow in the North start to migrate through the lands, instilling a deepening, darkening fear in the hearts of the rest of the world.