It is going back a few years now but the journalists who cling to Manchester United’s coat-tails on their journeys around Europe still remember the time they were drawn against Nantes in the Champions League and it quickly became apparent the people of this French town were going to treat their visitors like football royalty. A banquet was laid on at a chateau by the Loire. There was a civic reception for the club’s staff and media and enough people to make sure your glass was always filled that a French-v-English kick-about the next morning was notable for one of United’s old boys turning green and having to substitute himself.

These kind of receptions often happen when United are visiting new places and it might be that they are not always fully appreciated judging by the time nobody from Old Trafford turned up to the one that Olympiakos’s directors had arranged on a yacht in Piraeus harbour, meaning David Meek, the distinguished Manchester Evening News correspondent, had to take emergency action and pretend he was from the club in an expertly disguised thank you speech.

Yet that one in Nantes was probably the most extravagant. The mayor was there. There were speeches and gifts and it was such a lavish occasion that Paddy Harverson, United’s PR chief back then, decided the club ought to do something in return for the second leg and went to speak to the relevant people to see what they could stretch to. The invitation went back to France the following week and it is fair to say it probably wasn’t United’s finest moment. Dress code: casual. Venue: Harry Ramsden’s in Salford.

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Nothing against a plate of chips and a glass of dandelion and burdock, of course, and United are not the only ones in football who might surprise you sometimes with the ways they try to keep costs down. There is one club I know of who are not averse to splashing out on huge transfers but whose directors went several weeks before agreeing to foot the bill to get some hot water back into the dressing-room showers. Another one turned down the manager’s request for extra training ground mats and when there is so much money swilling around it doesn’t say a great deal for football’s priorities that the current Premier League champions, Manchester City, and the FA Cup holders, Arsenal, both have form for employing match-day staff who are earning below the minimum wage.

It is certainly strange how the top football clubs can be so careful with their money in some ways, yet so extravagant in others. United, for example, might have been tempted, one assumed, to bring down their ticket prices for the FA Cup replay against Cambridge on Tuesday, in the same way that City routinely do for their cup ties. That assumption was plainly wrong. Supporters started receiving texts that the full whack, up to £53, would be debited from their bank accounts, under the terms of the club’s “automatic cup scheme” within minutes of the final whistle at Cambridge. Another message brusquely announced that if it was not done by 8pm on Wednesday their season tickets would be “suspended” for the game against Sunderland on 28 February. This scheme is not new but it is no wonder sometimes that United’s match-going supporters feel dislocated from their own club.

Then we come to the latest financial figures from Old Trafford and the slightly jaw-dropping revelation, buried in the final few paragraphs of a 26-page document, that Sir Alex Ferguson was paid £2.165m in retirement last season because of his new role as a “global ambassador”.

The figures jump out of the page, especially when taking into account they cover only the first eight months – 13 October 2013 to 30 June 2014 – of him agreeing this financial package. There is a grey area about whether his pay was backdated to when the role was announced the previous May but, if not, that makes it possible his annual salary might actually be closer to £3m. To put that into context, it would be more than Roy Hodgson earns as England’s manager, more than Antonio Conte’s basic salary when he won three successive scudetti with Juventus and even more than Joachim Löw earned, before bonuses, in the year when Germany won the World Cup.

Even if not, Ferguson was still paid better than the majority of the Premier League’s current managers – not least the manager of the year Brendan Rodgers. Ferguson might be marginally behind the average top-division footballer’s wage of £43,717 a week but, then again, his arrangement with the club apparently stipulates he has to work only 20 days. That works out at £108,250 a day, yet possibly much more depending on his total annual sum. Sir Bobby Charlton is paid £105,000 a year as another of the club’s ambassadors and, though you would naturally expect Ferguson to get an extra chunk on top, it certainly prompted a double-take here to discover his salary is at least 14 times that of the prime minister. In fact, you could add the chancellor of the exchequer, the home secretary and almost every other cabinet minister together and their combined pay might be roughly what he comes out with in a year.

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No doubt there will be United supporters who don’t begrudge him a single penny either bearing in mind the joys he has brought them, his authentic greatness during 26 years as manager and the overwhelming sense – if we are going to be blunt – that the team could still do with him in the dugout. It is also easy to imagine his response to anyone being impertinent enough to question the arrangement and, almost certainly, it would be the same volcanic rage as when a couple of us first wrote about Bébé and the fact a player signed for £7.4m was so obviously out of his depth they did not even trust him at first to play for the reserves.

It is a tricky subject when the point can also be made, justifiably, that there are other people in football who enjoy fat-cat salaries without contributing even a fraction of what Ferguson has to the sport. But equally, is it not legitimate to consider it an extraordinary amount of money when it appears he might not just be earning more than a World Cup-winning manager but also more than the guy who actually runs the club (Ed Woodward’s £2.521m salary, incidentally, making him the best-paid chief executive in the industry)?

Ferguson’s latest autobiography has been updated to cover his first year in retirement and tells us he has been on a cruise around the Hebrides, partied in Barbados as a guest of Dave Whelan and gone on various other holidays with Cathy and the family. There was a book tour and various signing sessions in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Dublin and Aberdeen. He has been to the Oscars, clinked glasses with Samuel L Jackson, Reece Witherspoon and various A-listers at a Vanity Fair party, doubled up with Eamonn Holmes on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” and talked tennis with Serena Williams.

Good luck to him as well after all those years of rising at unspeakable hours and getting into work with his hair still damp from the morning shower. Ferguson has been on the Charlie Rose show on PBS and pulled out the balls for the Scottish Cup draw. He has worked his way back from a hip operation and his book explains in detail the challenging nature of his new roles at Harvard Business School and as an ambassador for Uefa. There is a story about Rio Ferdinand and Patrice Evra going to see him to discuss their positions at the club and another revealing little passage recounting his conversation with David Moyes after a particularly galling home defeat against City. “Just David and me. Private.”

There is not a single line, however, to expand on his United role, what it requires and where he has been, but the old fellow is certainly doing very well for himself. The last time I saw him was outside Huish Park after the FA Cup tie at Yeovil, being picked up by a helicopter that created so much noise and dust Gary Johnson had to delay his press conference and it felt like the temporary press marquee might also take off. But it did make me smile a few weeks back to hear him complaining about the role of football agents. “The only time you hear from them is when they want money, a new contract or a player to move,” Ferguson said. His son, Jason, was an agent, lest it be forgotten, and now cuts Ferguson’s deals. Very good he is at it, too.

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The fall and fall of Wigan

What a desperate situation it is unfolding at Wigan Athletic. The chairman is currently serving a six-week ban for one Bernard Manning moment too many, the manager is waiting to hear back from the Football Association’s disciplinary department and the team that started the goalless draw at Ipswich, leaving them second from bottom in the Championship and seven points off safety, did not feature a single player from the side that defeated Manchester City in the 2013 FA Cup final.

Wigan were the first club to win the Cup and be relegated in the same season. They are now on course to drop into League One before reaching the second anniversary and a personal view is that there was so much scrutiny on Roberto Mancini losing his job at City the winning team never actually received the acclaim they deserved. Wimbledon’s victory against Liverpool in 1988 is often remembered as the greatest shock in a final. Yet Wimbledon had finished seventh that season and sixth the year before.

Wigan, in stark contrast, were always dicing with relegation. Their previous best was getting to the quarter-finals in 1987 and they were facing the Premier League champions and most expensively assembled group of footballers in the country. Ben Watson’s goal, after 90 minutes and six seconds, should be revered just as much as Lawrie Sanchez’s header or Dave Beasant’s penalty save.

Watson has now left for Watford whereas Shaun Maloney and Callum McManaman have also gone in this transfer window. As the Wigan Evening Post have pointed out, that’s the man who scored the winning goal against City, the player who put over the corner and the guy who won the corner in the first place. Four other players have joined the exodus while two have arrived on loan and another two have signed permanently, and that is a remarkable amount of business bearing in mind the FA’s ban stipulated Dave Whelan could not even be consulted about potential transfers.

Maybe he genuinely has no idea and it is all going to be a terrible shock for him when he checks his phone; in which case, there might be a few awkward conversations when he returns to work in a couple of weeks. His grandson, David Sharpe, was added to the club’s board on Christmas Eve and the common suspicion is that he will take over as chairman in the next year or so. Yet Sharpe is in his early 20s and it isn’t easy to understand what qualifies him for the position other than having a wealthy granddad. Sharpe was initially in charge of the family restaurant, Sharpy’s, outside Wigan’s ground before it was boarded up last year because of a lack of customers, costing Whelan £1.3m in the process. For Wigan it could be a long way back.