Paul Watson: Five famous managers’ props that should be listed on Ebay

If press reports are to be believed, the last ever piece of chewing gum that Fergie masticated like a bulldog during his United reign has sold on Ebay for £390,000.

We didn’t exactly need it, but it’s proof that there are some extremely weird people around and in this case someone who would rather own a soggy piece of decade old chewing gum than, say, a three-bedroom house.

It’s also a real testament to Sir Alex’s magic touch that he could increase the value of a pack of chewing gum, while David Moyes’s mashed up gum would be worth significantly less than its retail value of 5p.

News of the sale will surely see a flurry of furious searches for other pieces of ‘once in a lifetime’ managerial memorabilia that may have been discarded as if junk.

So what gems are we hoping to see showing up on Ebay within the next few weeks?

1. Tony Pulis’ baseball cap

Picture Tony Pulis. Now, try and picture him without a baseball cap. Exactly, it’s impossible.

The Welshman has spent the best part of 30 years with a cap on his head, all that changes every year or so is the logo on it. Some people even believe that the cap is in fact a part of Pulis’ head and that removing it would require complex and dangerous surgery.

We can be pretty sure that he does everything with his trusty baseball cap on – and we mean everything.

With that disturbing image in mind, surely any proper football fan would max out their credit card to get hold of an authentic Pulis cap, wouldn’t they?

2. Steve McClaren’s umbrella

It may have taken a while, but we’ve finally got to a point where England fans can look back and laugh at McClaren’s England reign and that Croatia defeat at Wembley.

The image of an overrated, spineless England team failing to reach Euro 2008 in the rain at Wembley isn’t complete without Big Steve cutting a forlorn figure under his umbrella – a decision as baffling as many of his tactical switches which led to the indelible nickname ‘The Wally with the Brolly’.

There must be a fair few Scottish fans out there who would love to hang that memento of when England were brilliantly shit in their living room. The seller wouldn’t be able to guarantee that owning the umbrella might not have serious long term side-effects such as believing you’re able to speak Dutch.

3. Marcelo Bielsa’s bucket

Marcelo Bielsa is well on his way to becoming a God in Leeds. The club are already cashing in on his penchant for sitting on a bucket instead of a seat by selling ‘replica buckets’ for a staggering £80 in the club shop.

But if a replica is worth £80, can you imagine what a bucket that has been graced by Bielsa’s actual buttocks must be worth? It has to be in the thousands.

Leeds would only need to churn out a production line of buckets and have Bielsa dutifully squat on them one at a time for a few days and they’d have their Premier League war chest right there. Would the value increase if Bielsa’s bare cheeks sat on the bucket? There’s only one way to find out.

4. Maurizio Sarri’s fag butts

After the news of Sir Alex’s chewing gum sale, you can be sure that Chelsea’s staff have suddenly started rounding up Maurizio Sarri’s discarded cigarette butts just in case.

It’ll need a change in fortunes for the Italian to become a Stamford Bridge legend, but if he does there will be more than enough fag butts to sell for years to come.

Besides, a recent estimate speculated that Sarri smokes 22,000 cigarettes per season, so even if you could knock them off for £1 a pop you could make a reasonable living from following him around. And surely the mountain of discarded cigarettes outside Wembley Stadium after the Carabao Cup and the Kepa incident must have some historical value?

5.  Christian Gross’s tube ticket

Pretty much the only thing anyone remembers about Spurs’s Swiss flop Christian Gross is that he brandished a tube ticket at his first press conference and said he wanted it to be ‘the ticket to his dreams’. It turned out it was actually a standard Zone 2 travel card and the machine spat it out repeatedly when he tried to get home to Zone 4 with it.

Gross never managed to master the underground system and his reign was blighted by frequently turning up for games two or three hours late having got lost on the Northern Line, thrusting a crumpled tube ticket at the players and referring to it as ‘the ticket to my nightmares’.

An authentic Gross train ticket, warped by his sweaty grip would surely raise some money from Arsenal fans looking to relive that glorious period in the club’s history when Spurs tried to copy Arsene Wenger by landing the first foreigner who showed up for an interview, albeit several hours late after getting stuck in Cockfosters.