LockerRoom: Dear Dermot, Many thanks for fixing it for me to play one game with the club of my boyhood dreams. No really, I mean it, many thanks.

By the time you get this letter I will be far away. Maybe in a Tibetan monastery. Settling into a witness protection programme, perhaps. The nature of grief is such that you'll probably think you see me here and there, a glimpse of me on a crowded train going past, dashing across at a pedestrian crossing neath an umbrella at dusk on a rainy evening, or playing for Real Madrid when you watch La Liga.

Please don't come after me. It's not you, Dermot. It's me. I'm not ready to be your sweet sixteen. So, please, please, don't get too upset about it. I'm not, what's the word Dermot, I'm not decrepit enough yet for this life. I thought I was but I never dreamed, and please don't take this the wrong way Dermot, that it could all be so bloody awful and depressing.

Make me a promise. Promise you'll forget about me. Go back to the things you love, Dermot. Take up again with little Gordon, try to rebuild that special thing which you two had before I came along.

Gordon once said in a TV interview that it felt like there were three in this marriage. Now there are two again. I hope some day that the pair of you will look back on these crazy few weeks and share a little laugh and perhaps even raise a toast to the memories of the innocent Irishman who signed on thinking that Clyde was a bloke and not a place.

Tell Gordon I said to remember that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I could have killed him, but I didn't.

Oh, I've been a fool, Dermot, a complete and utter fool. I came to you on the rebound, my head full of romantic ideas about skirling bagpipes and manly kilts and the Sean Connery patois and of course most beguiling of all, large up-front payments. I realise now that there's much less to Scottish football than that.

People will judge me harshly, I know, but in my heart I know what I am doing is for the best. I have to get my head to a better place, a place where I can come to fully grasp the meaning of what just happened.

Losing to Clyde means not getting to play the next round at Gretna. Am I too dead inside to truly feel that pain? Why Dermot? Why? You are a dear, sweet man, Dermot, I won't insult you or make things worse by sending you back all the money. It was never about that. Instead I send you a severed limb from your new Chinese centre half. Please accept the gesture in the spirit in which it was intended.

Thinking of you at every sunset,

Roy

Dear Alex,

I had to let it happen, I had to change.

Couldn't stay all my life down at heel

Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun

So I chose freedom

Running around, trying everything new

But nothing impressed me at all

Especially not Wei Du

Don't cry for me, Mr Ferguson

The truth is I never left you

All through my wild days

My mad existence

I kept my promise

Don't keep your distance.

And as for fortune, and as for fame

I never invited them in

Though it seems to the world they were all I desired

They are illusions

They're not the solutions they promised to be

The answer was here all the time

I love you and hope you love me

Don't cry for me, Sir Alex

Don't cry for me Argentina

The truth is I never left you

All through my wild days

My mad existence I kept my promise

Don't keep your distance

Call me on the mobile,

Roy

Dear Michael,

I am writing this postcard from a Wimpy near Cumbernauld, in Clyde. They have three varieties of coleslaw in the salad bar. I wish you were here.

Have you ever been in Cumbernauld, Michael? I don't think so.

Michael, I've been trying to remember. You know those times when you came to my beautiful home in Cheshire and we'd throw wads of money for Triggs to fetch and we'd light those big old stogies with real money and all that. (Remember the day you stripped off and covered yourself in honey and then rolled around in the bale of £100 notes? Class!) On any of those happy occasions do you remember me saying that I'd love to play in Cumberbloodynauld? Again I don't think so.

Was there some confusion Michael? Did I say to you perhaps that you were to take a double-barrel shotgun and place it to my temple and blow my brains out if there was ever any chance of me playing in a "big" cup tie in Cumberbloodyfreezingnauld. I may have asked you to do that because I have always known that were it ever the case that I was to be found playing in such an annex of hell I would no longer be the man I once was. I would not like my wife or family to see me that way. I would be begging them not to look at me, shredded of my dignity.

Was there some element of that sentiment that I didn't express clearly, Michael? I only ask because I have just played in Cumberbloodyshoveitupyourassmichaelnauld. There were 8,000 people there, Michael. The haggis sandwich brigade. Imagine the pre-match nerves, the anxiety, the fear. You could see it on those 8,000 faces. I was indifferent though.

At half-time we had porridge and shortbread. After the match we were allowed use a hose to wash the mud of ourselves. My "new friends" especially John Hartson (where is Henrik Larsson by the way?) got quite playful with the hose but I found the whole thing vulgar. I don't think they care enough.

Michael, I'd like you to think back and ask yourself what have I ever done to you to deserve this? In an hour when we leave Cumberbloodyohlookit'sthemarchofthepenguinsnauld I will be driving to the airport and catching a flight to Spain. I would like a contract with Real, one of those big contracts like I had at Manchester United. Make sure I only have to play home games. Until then you are dead to me.

Have to go, Hartson is pestering me as to whether I'm going to eat my pickle. Again vulgar.

Thanks for nothing,

Roy