'The Year of Our Lord, 2011:

Phil Brown is laughing. The salty tears flow down my eyes. That bastard. That cheating, violent, hooligan bastard has left. Left Phil Brown's glorious England.

Francesc Fabregas Soler. Assaulter of my Brian. Cheater of my beautiful Hull boys. Gone. Departed. Or as he'd say, au revoir.

Off to Barcelona. Bustling, grubby, thieving Barcelona. Made for each other. I remember it well...

It was the Year of Our Lord, 1992. Barcelona's Olympics. Me and Big Sam were there. On Las Ramblas. Me, a soldier (wearing Sean Bean's 'Sharpe' uniform - it were too big for him as he'd lost so much weight on the set of 'Lady Chatterley') and I was sprayed silver, a sparkling metallic silver, I looked like a 'Quality Street' tin. Big Sam (as ever), a magnificent Victorian organ grinder, complete with his monkey (no, not me), a crafty, thieving Iberian Macaque that we'd won in Gibralter after a street pimp and his Toms took me and Big Sam on in an ill-advised game of 'Ker-Plunk'. That were no laughing matter. And neither was it where them marbles ended up. Bet that Tom could shatter car windows afterwards if she weren't careful.

Big Sam and I played the Las Ramblas crowd. Played it like a punt upfield to a big target man. Me, statuesque, posing lifeless on the sidelines, as tourists and the muggers that follow them like pilot fish, took picture after picture. Occasionally, I would sing brief 'Beach Boys' choruses, bringing whoops of delight and impromptu Flamenco dancing outside la Boqueria market. Big Sam and that thieving, brooding, miserable bastard of a monkey, grinding his organ, his large, thrusting organ as I stood, glinting in the Catalan sun, as the foreign money poured into our doffed caps. Eating out of our glorious Northern hands.

I digress. The long and the short of it is that some bastard robbed us. I don't know if it was during Big Sam's ill-fated dalliance with that lobster, or when I was distracted by several bottles of Sangria, or when we decided to become Baroque jack-in-the-boxes and got wedged into our hiding places, but some thieving bastard stole our hard-earned. The monkey deserted us, and sodded off back down the poxy coast, it were last seen playing with itself in front of a bar in Tarragona. Me and Big Sam trudged back home; me to resume my star-turn at Bolton Wanderers - England's greatest un-capped right back I'll have you know, Big Sam to his second glorious stint at Preston North End, now my Preston North End. Bonded we are. Bonded like that thieving city and that hooligan bastard Fabregas.

So Cesc Fabregas is welcome to the place. And they're welcome to him.

Phil Brown will just laugh. Laugh at that poor sod who now has to live there, in that shite-hole of a city.'