HOW DIMITAR LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE SIMPLE LIFE

Dimitar Berbatov does not play football. He has not played football for four years. He has no interest in it. He is above it. Instead, he has wandered the streets of Manchester, just being Dimitar. It is more than enough. Existence is enough. Dimitar is enough. Sometimes he goes to a cafe and has a coffee. Sometimes he has a coffee and a cigarette. Sometimes he has a coffee and a cigarette and a think. Shall I have another cigarette after this cigarette, he wonders. Maybe, maybe. Should I ask the waitress to top up my coffee? Perhaps – but what is coffee? And why is waitress? There are no answers. There are no questions. So no coffee for Dimitar. Existence is enough. He lights another cigarette. Hmm, mouth's a bit dry with all this smoking, he notes. I could do with something to wash this fag down.

Dimitar is a performance artist. He is a serious man. He makes Eric Cantona look like Michael McIntyre. A couple of times during his stay in Manchester he has staged situationist happenings. On one occasion, he sauntered down a length of turf at the Old Trafford stadium and nonchalantly kicked a ball into a net against Blackeye Rovers. Another time, he hovered above the turf and guided a ball into a net against Liverpool. You would know these artistic stunts as "goals". Dimitar is aware they are known as "goals", too, but he also knows they are not goals. They are his interpretations of goals, via the medium of goals. Football fans may consider them goals if they wish, but they are pigs. To Dimitar, these goals, which are not goals, are studies of time, space, energy, humanity. They are his philosophic digressions, poems, novels. Full time score: Blackeye Rovers nil, Ekphrasis one.

But while Dimitar is reaching new levels of maturity and depth of expression in his work, he can be a bit moody, and some senior figures at Manchester United have been wondering whether he's been worth the investment. After all, for only an extra £4.5m, they could have got themselves a nice uncomplicated lad who'll smile all day if you give him a bottle of beer and pelt a ball at his head every now and then, like Liverpool did. All of which may explain why United are shovelling poor Dimitar out the door today. He was expected to go to Fiorentina in a £4m deal, but it seems he has instead decided to join Fulham, where he is having a medical right now. "Hopefully everything is good and that means we are doing the business," says Fulham boss Martin Jol, impatiently rattling a box of Swan Vestas in his pocket.

On the face of it, opting for the London club over the Serie A giants seems a strange decision by Berbatov. Fiorentina are based in Florence, amid the rolling hills of Tuscany. Paintings by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Botticelli hang in the local galleries. The team wear metro$exual purple. Fulham are based in London, where people say "gertcha" and "fack", and were once owned by a comedian in a pork-pie hat. But remember: Berbatov has played under Jol before at Spurs. Also, people change. So with the big Dutch manager liking nothing more than the odd puff himself, perhaps Dimitar is looking forward to hanging out with Jol round the back of Craven Cottage after training, puffing away like schoolkids, providing they don't set any alarms off. Gertcha! chirps Dimitar, both thumbs aloft, a big, simple, Carrollesque grin plastered across his face. Fackin nice one!

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I am excited but calm over this move. I will discover another world" – with Joey Barton potentially heading the other way, QPR will fulfil their need for a nonsense-spouting midfielder with Marseille's Stephane Mbia.

HOMESICKNESS, WITH RICHARD WRIGHT

6 July 2012: "I've only been away from home for a few days and I know already that I cannot live that far away from my family" – Richard Wright quits Preston, 254 miles from his home in Ipswich, after just a week saying he can't live so far from home.

30 August 2012: Richard Wright undergoes a medical – freak accidents notwithstanding – at Manchester City, deciding that a hefty pay … sorry, being based 22 miles nearer is fine.

GET 50% OFF I AM THE SECRET FOOTBALLER – EXCLUSIVE OFFER FOR FIVER READERS

From today until 31 August, Fiver readers can get I Am The Secret Footballer for just £6.50, saving 50% on RRP.

To order your book, visit the Guardian bookshop or call 0330 333 6846 and use promo code SECRETFIVER.

FIVER LETTERS

"Regarding Colin Murray morphing into Sue Perkins (yesterday's Fiver letters), I've watched Sue Perkins a lot (let's face it, some nights she's unavoidable) and to date I have never regarded her as the very epitome of everything that's wrong with the modern football show, she's never made me feel nostalgic for every other person who's ever presented a football show ever (except Tim Lovejoy and Spoony) and I've never harboured even a vague anger that Sue Perkins was being paid lots of money to spout essentially sub-606/ShoutSport caller level opinions and knowledge of football in that horrible faux-matey way that the same people who are doing it now used to rightly take the mick out of when Saint and Greavsie were 'pioneering' it back in the day. So no, he isn't morphing into Sue Perkins, he remains exactly what he always has been since he was Edith Bowman's radio sidekick" – Jason Tew.

"Can I be the first of 1,057 pedants to point out to Robert Nugent (yesterday's letters) that 'you are the Fiver subscriber' would simply suggest that one was the sole subscriber of something called 'Fiver'. The seemingly self-important, wannabe 'grammar N@zi' Mr Nugent should perhaps realise that getting your facts straight is imperative to successfully gaining that warm air of smug satisfaction he was after, as opposed to the inevitable backlash and subsequent embarrassment that he now so rightly deserves" – Rex Bibendi (and 1,056 slightly less militant pedants).

"My efforts to get Terry Brown out, in reference to AFC Wimbledon's manager, seem to be going nowhere on Twitter (#BrownOut). They seem to get mixed in with references to disagreeable singer Chris Brown and to power cuts happening in various locales. I am hoping that the Fiver will help bring my campaign to a wider audience, or at least to your subscriber, one Robert Nugent" – Scott Henderson.

"Re: the Fiver's assertion that Theo Walcott is deeply unpopular because of his inherent 'niceness' (yesterday's Fiver). Curiously, despite coming across as deeply unpleasant, misanthropic, troubled, anti-social and boorish, the Fiver enjoys similar levels of public antipathy. Maybe there's a balance in the middle, somewhere" – Matt Dony.

Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver.

GET UP TO £50 ON SELECTED LOSING BETS WITH BLUE SQUARE

Saturday: West Ham v Fulham – get your money back if Kevin Nolan scores at any time; Manchester City v QPR: get your money back if QPR score in the first half.

BITS AND BOBS

Arsene Wenger claims Theo Walcott isn't obsessed by money, despite turning down a new Arsenal contract worth £75,000 per week. "I think Theo loves the club," cheered Wenger.

Spurs will be forced to consider playing two training dummies at centre-back now that their defensive reserves have been further depleted by Younes Kaboul's four-month absence to recover from knee-knack.

QPR's attempts to buy every player in the world this summer continue apace after the club's bid to sign Esteban Granero was accepted by Real Madrid.

Liverpool have agreed a fee of around £1m to sign the striker Samed Yesil from Bayer Leverkusen.

And fans of alliteration have been cheered by the news of Stephane Sessegnon's £6m-switch-sinking Sunderland contract extension.

STILL WANT MORE?

In this week's Classic YouTube, 20 minutes of Romario goal bongo and Maicosuel's Panenka pain.

And Sid Lowe meets the Chelsea goalkeeper who will be hoping his club lose against Atletico Madrid.

JOIN GUARDIAN SOULMATES

We keep trying to point out the utter futility of advertising an online dating service "for interesting people" in the Fiver to the naive folk who run Guardian Soulmates, but they still aren't having any of it. So here you go – sign up here to view profiles of the kind of erudite, sociable and friendly romantics who would never dream of going out with you.

SIGN UP TO THE FIVER

Want your very own copy of our free tea-timely(ish) email sent direct to your inbox? Has your regular copy stopped arriving? Click here to sign up.