"In 2011, I heard rumours about the owner of American wrestling company WWE, Vince McMahon, trying to buy Newcastle United," says Morten Hansen. "Is this true? I also heard that he had plans of moving one or two home fixtures to the States, and he wanted to showcase professional wrestling matches as half-time shows. Has there ever been other instances of owners who wanted to move home fixtures for a specific team to another place, or owners who wanted who wanted to promote his other companies in half-time?"

It's hard to tell where the rumour linking Vince McMahon, the chairman of WWE described by the Mirror as "a bona fide, 110% certifiable maniac", with Newcastle came from, but it didn't take long to spread all over Twitter and start to creep in to the football news consciousness. The Newcastle Chronicle duly put the question to the club, but the official response was to brand the story "nonsense" and refuse to comment further. So the whole thing died almost as quickly as it had sprung in to life. And really, it's difficult to see how a rumour linking Sensible Mike Ashley's club with the man in charge of this sort of pantomime can ever have gained any traction.

Despite Harry Redknapp's insistence that same year, that English football was bound for a world tour, it hasn't really happened; owners take their teams away for pre-season warm-ups (Liverpool played Roma at the home of the Boston Red Sox, also owned by John W Henry, while Steve Kean took a miserable Blackburn Rovers squad to India at the behest of Venky's) but have yet to insist that their February meeting with Stoke City be transplanted from a wet and windy Britannia Stadium to foreign shores.

Half-time is a different matter, though, as anyone who was at Fulham's home match against West Bromwich Albion in September can tell you. Shahid Khan, who bought Fulham from Mohamed Al Fayed in the summer, is also the owner of the NFL outfit the Jacksonville Jaguars. Keen to promote the Jaguars' visit to Wembley in October, Khan arranged for the Jaguars' cheerleaders, The Roar of the Jaguars, to perform with local competition winners at the interval. If you watch the official video, you can also spot the Jaguars jerseys on sale in the Fulham shop. The Knowledge's favourite bit, however, was the two clubs' mascots jigging about to the music – now that's a crossover market we can buy in to.

LOANEES WITH FIRST-TEAM NUMBERS

"I notice Gerard Deulofeu has been given the No10 jersey for Everton this season. Have there been other instances of loan signings wearing the No10, or other such traditional first XI numbers such as 7 or 9?" asks Saurav Samaddar.

The Knowledge likes nothing better than an excuse to roll up its sleeves and crack open one or 92 squad lists – a happy new year indeed! And it turns out that there are quite a few loanees in first XI shirts throughout England's four professional divisions (and three more of them even wear No10). Besides Deulofeu, there are four more in the Premier League: Sunderland's Danny Graham, wearing No9 for Hull City; Goran Popov, on loan from Dynamo Kiev and wearing the No4 for West Bromwich Albion, where Manchester City's Scott Sinclair is currently donning No10; and Swansea's Ki Sung-yueng, who's in the No4 for Sunderland. That means that of the 29 loan players with shirt numbers in the Premier League (give or take, the window is open, remember), five have a first XI number: about 17%.

It's a slightly different story in the Championship, where a third of loan players have first XI numbers. Watford top the list with Hector Bellerin (Arsenal), Essaid Belkalem (Granada) and Alexander Merkel (Udinese) playing at No3, No5 and No8 respectively. Birmingham City have two loanees in the first XI, with Kyle Bartley of Swansea City at No5 and Manchester United's Jesse Lingard playing No9.

At Nottingham Forest, Chelsea's Nathaniel Chalobah wears the No7 shirt; Bolton Wanderers' Keith Andrews has the No4 at Brighton and Hove Albion; Todd Kane, the Chelsea defender, is wearing No2 at Blackburn Rovers; Liverpool's Jack Robinson is currently Blackpool's No3; Jozsef Varga, on loan from Debrecen, is Middlesbrough's No8; the Norwich City midfielder Andrew Surman has been wearing the No4 shirt at Bournemouth; and at Barnsley the No3 shirt has been given to Peter Ramage, on loan from Crystal Palace.

At Queens Park Rangers, Tom Carroll is assigned the No10 shirt. Carroll is on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, who currently have three players on loan and in the first XI at League One's Swindon Town: Grant Hall (No5), Ryan Mason (No8) and Alex Pritchard (No11). In fact, that's all of the loan players at Swindon, who are currently ninth; it should thrill and fascinate you to know that none of the top six in League One has loan players in first XI kit. Walsall, currently seventh, have Milan Lalkovic (Chelsea) wearing No9. Carlisle United have kitted out Hull's Conor Townsend in the No2, while at Oldham Athletic the No1 goalkeeper's shirt has gone to Hull's Mark Oxley. Numbers 7 and 8 are worn by loan players at Notts County, going to the Aston Villa midfielder Jack Grealish and Celtic's Callum McGregor respectively.

At present Shrewsbury Town have Preston's Nicky Wroe in No10, but as Ian Meredith points out, Reading's Gozie Ugwu also had the No7 shirt for a bit of this season (seven appearances, in fact). Town opted not to renew Ugwu's loan, though, because boss Graham Turner reckoned that "he could have worked harder for the team."

First XI loanees are less common in League Two, it seems, with a mere six to report at the time of writing: Burton Albion's No1 Benjamin Siegrist is actually Aston Villa's; the Plymouth Argyle No9 Reuben Reid belongs to Yeovil Town; the Hartlepool midfielder and No4 Matthew Dolan is in fact on the books at Middlesbrough; York City borrowed their No3 Ben Davies from Preston; Blackburn forward Anton Forrester has the No9 at Bury; and Wycombe Wanderers' No3 Charles Dunne is on loan from Blackpool.

But what of the past? you say. Well, off the top of our heads, we came up with Landon Donovan, who revelled in the No9 shirt on loan at Everton in early 2010 and 2012. Oh, and Jozy Altidore, who travailed in the No9 shirt for Hull City back in the 2009-10 season. (Of the other prominent MLS players loaned to the Premier League, Thierry Henry played in No12 for Arsenal and Clint Dempsey has been given the No23 shirt for Fulham.) "Nicholas Anelka was given the No9 shirt during his loan spell at Liverpool, from PSG, in the 2001-02 season," chips in Michael McCarthy. "Sadly, his move wasn't made permanent and the prestigious number ended up on the back of El Hadji-Diouf the next season (sob!)."

"Aldershot Town have allocated one or more numbers between one and 11 to a loanee a few times," says Pete Stanford who comes, you'll not be too surprised to find, from Aldershot. "In 2004-05, Jake Robinson, on loan from Brighton, wore No4. In 2005-06, Jonny Dixon (Wycombe Wanderers) was No10. In 2008-09, Ben Starosta (Sheffield United) and Andy Lindegaard (Cheltenham Town) were both allocated the No2. In 2009-10, Stephen Henderson (Bristol City) was the No1, while Damian Spencer (Kettering Town) was No9. This season Jake Goodman (Millwall) and Adam Webster (Portsmouth) are wearing numbers 5 and 6."

And there's a Celtic theme to Duncan Souter's email: "Robbie Keane wore the No7 shirt when on loan to Celtic from Spurs in 2010," he writes. "When Georgios Samaras arrived on loan from Manchester City in January 2008, he was given the No9 shirt. Badr El Kaddouri wore the No4 when on loan from Dynamo Kiev in 2011. On loan from Standard Liège in 2013, Rami Gershon wore No5. Fraser Forster wore the No1 shirt during his first two seasons at Celtic, when he was still on loan from Newcastle United. And Miku wore No7 while on loan from Getafe in 2012." (Out of interest, Celtic don't have any loan players at the moment, and of the 15 loan players listed in senior squads in the Scottish Premiership only two are wearing first XI numbers: Blackburn's David Goodwillie, who is Dundee United's No7, and Jackson Irvine, who is at Kilmarnock from Celtic, and wears No5.)

While we've stepped out of England, why not hear from Morten Hansen again? "There is currently two cases like this in the Danish league," he tells us: "Frederik Ronnow playing in No1 for Esbjerg, being loaned out from Horsens. Also Alexander Szymanowski playing in No7 for Brøndby, being loaned out from Recreativo Huelva."

"It's rare for my team to bring players in on loan," says Arsenal supporter Rael Roberts, "however, the most high-profile one I can recall from recent years is Julio Baptista, who wore the cursed No9 shirt for the 2006-07 season. As with most other incumbents of the shirt in the past 15 years (Park, Eduardo, Reyes, Jeffers, Suker), he struggled to make much of an impact and was shipped back to Real Madrid at the end of the season." Is that… can you smell? Yep, there's another Knowledge question right there, kids.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

"During the recent match between Cardiff and West Brom, Cardiff almost scored via a bizarre free-kick where Peter Whittingham and Jordan Mutch both made simultaneous contact on the ball. Has this routine ever been attempted before, and gone in?" wonders Steve Booth.

We've seen one or two routines in which the attacking side tries to kid the opposition defence in to thinking that two players both want to take the free-kick and get in each other's way – but never seen it more brilliantly executed than RW Essen did it in September 2012.

But two players actually hitting the ball? Here's Brendan MacCarron: "David Beckham and Ryan Giggs did something similar for Manchester United against Aston Villa, in one of Peter Schmeichel's first games for Villa. They didn't score, either, Schmeichel saving it." The match ended 1-1, if we're remembering right, with the ever-prolific Own Goal providing an equaliser for United two minutes into injury-time.

"I have a related question," says Mr MacCarron. "Is this strictly legal? Can two players touch a dead ball at the same time?" Well, as you can see from the comments on that YouTube video of Giggs and Beckham, there's going to be debate about who actually struck and directed the kick, as the chances are that one of them got there fractionally before the other (in fact we're pretty sure it's the free-kick that the Times match report credits to Giggs alone). There's nothing in the rules about two players hitting the ball at the same time, so as long as neither player kicks it twice (without a touch from the other in between) they should be fine.

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

"After watching the Thierry Henry/Robert Pires penalty shambles at the weekend, I was wondering if the Johan Cruyff/Jesper Olsen incident was the only previous example of the 'two-man penalty'?" asked Lee McGleish, back in October 2005. James Dart was on hand to answer:

Well, Lee, despite Monsieur Henry admitting to having taken his inspiration from the Ajax pair's famous spot-kick in 1982, there are three far earlier examples of the cheeky 'tap penalty'.

On 21 November 1964, Plymouth Argyle beat Manchester City 3-2 in a Division Two game at Home Park. The winning goal came from Mike Trebilcock – after the referee gave the Pilgrims a penalty, Johnny Newman tapped the ball sideways, enabling Trebilcock to race in and fire home. The following link has a detailed match report from the game, as well as video footage of the incident – perhaps it should be forwarded on to Arsenal to show Thierry and Robert how it's done.

According to the accompanying article, however, Argyle had already employed the trick once before. And some further digging reveals that Newman was involved again – on 6 February 1961, in the 5-3 League Cup fourth-round, second replay defeat to Aston Villa. This time, Wilf Carter nudged the ball for Newman to run in and crash home.

Yet the nearest variation to the 'two-touch' penalty can be tracked back even further; all the way to 5 June 1957 in fact, when Belgium entertained Iceland in a World Cup qualifying tie. Already leading 6-1, Belgium were awarded a 44th-minute penalty. Up stepped Rik Coppens to take it, but instead of firing towards Björgvin Hermannsson in the Iceland goal, Coppens nonchalantly passed to team-mate André Piters, who returned the favour, enabling the former to score past a stunned Hermannsson. The match ended 8-3 and Coppens went on to be voted 73rd on a list of all-time great Belgians.

Our font of all knowledge is packed with thousands more questions and answers, all of which can be accessed by simply clicking here.

CAN YOU HELP?

"I was recently reading on Wikipedia/RSSSF about the American Samoan soccer league system," says Tom Clough. "They appear to have a shield system in each league, as well as a league table. A random team is made champions at the season's start, then teams can win it off them by beating them (a la the unofficial world cup, or boxing belts). I think this is lovely. I was wondering if any other more credible leagues have such a system?"

"Carl Fletcher, former manager at Plymouth, has resumed his playing career at Barnet under Edgar Davids," notes Michael Annis. "I know Nicolas Anelka has gone from player-coach back to player but has any other footballer permanently donned the managerial suit before switching back to shorts and shinpads?"

"I recently noticed that SV Sandhausen, currently in the German second division, were founded in 1916," notices Julian Menz. "It seems strange that people had the time to start football clubs at the time, and I wondered where the players came from. Are there any other examples (apart from army clubs, etc) of clubs formed in actively-participating (in the war) European countries during the two world wars that survive to this day?"

"With the announcement that Coventry City are planning to build a new stadium, has there ever been a shorter amount of time between a club putting up a new ground, moving in and then playing there, and then planning to build/building another?" wonders Sam Hind. "In Coventry's case it is only eight years since they first played at the Ricoh Arena; surely that's some kind of record?"

Send your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com