"The vocation of football clubs is football," he said.

An exceptionally good joke circulated on Twitter a few days ago, at Chelsea Football Club’s expense, underlining just how radically things have changed in the intervening 25 years.

The West London side, as most readers will know, had a very active recent transfer window, signing notably Mykhailo Mudryk from Shakhtar Donetsk and World Cup-winner Enzo Fernández from Benfica.

Both of these young players agreed eye-catchingly long contracts, the Argentine Fernández until the summer of 2031 and the Ukrainian Mudryk, similarly for eight and a half years.

Normal practice in football is for the cost of transferred players - "intangible assets" in accountant-speak - to be spread - "amortised" - over the length of their contract.

In this intensely competitive, hugely demanding and injury-prone world, contracts have tended to be relatively short - four to five years at most, perhaps five and a half for a juicy January signing.

In 2021, a club licensing benchmarking report published by the European football body UEFA revealed that players in the Big Five leagues in England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France had an average of just under three years left on their contracts.

The downside of agreeing to long deals for clubs is that, if things do not work out and the value of their once prized intangible asset tumbles, they may be left with costly unwanted players on their books, since these surplus players might not be motivated to move on if it entailed accepting a cut in wages.

The upside of a Mudryk/Fernández-length deal is that it should give clubs, in this case Chelsea, around three years more than has been usual over which to spread the cost of their acquisitions in their books.

Given fees put by Transfermarkt, the specialist website, at €121 million (£108 million/$130 million) for Fernández and €70 million (£62.5 million/$75 million) for Mudryk, this is more than an arcane technical detail.

Hence the joke which has helped to make the dry accountants’ concept of amortisation part of the argot of what we used to call the terraces.

On February 3, this new look Chelsea, with both Fernández and Mudryk in the starting line-up, had to settle for a goalless draw against little Fulham, a local rival.

Later that evening, this tweet from an account called @kaushikadvait1 made me, though possibly not Michel Platini, laugh out loud: "Chelsea amortising goals over 8.5 games."

When I last looked, it had nearly 20,000 "likes."

Yes, football fans in 2023 still want more than anything for their club to win its matches; to that extent, the song remains the same.

But they understand with ever more sophistication that, in all but the very short term, winning depends on increasing and making the most of financial firepower.

I am expecting phrases like "below the line" and "extraordinary item" to start creeping into supporters’ chants any day now.

As for "You’ll Never Hawk A Loan", don’t get me started.

The other story I wanted to tell you this week involves Everdon Hall, erstwhile site of that idyllic English country cricket ground I wrote about here once before.

As I also mentioned, the Everdon Hall grounds played host to another sport - equestrianism, including, in 1978, something rejoicing in the name of the Star Wars Cross Country Team Event.

What I was always at a loss to explain was why one of the most successful movies in the history of cinema would wish to attach its name to a form of horse racing in the English shires.

And then, just before Christmas, an unexpected email pinged into my in-tray from the island of Mallorca.

It was sent by a certain Annie Smith and included the line: "I got Star Wars to sponsor the team event."

Of course, I could not leave it at that - so here, after a few more emails and a telephone conversation, is a summary of Smith’s account of how she did it.

She had got to know Dick and Anne Hawkins, who lived in the hall and had painstakingly built up its sporting reputation, through hunting circles.

At a certain moment, Dick Hawkins asked her to try to find some sponsorship - this in an era long before sports sponsorship became the multi-billion dollar branch of the advertising industry it is today.

She happened to know a public relations executive at Playboy - and they agreed to sponsor the 1977 team event.

Not only that, the occasion was featured on a programme called "Horses Galore" put out by the BBC in the early evening.

I have looked up the TV listings of the era and can confirm the event was slated to be featured on the programme of 1 November 1977, beginning at five past five, right after John Craven’s Newsround.

According to Smith, Playboy decided not to renew the deal, unless there was further TV exposure, the following year.

In the meantime, Smith, who had a property management company in London, had got to know the Star Wars people.

This was through finding them temporary accommodation while they were filming at England’s Elstree Studios.

Not only that, but following release in May 1977, the film had become a massive hit.

As Smith remembers, she rang [producer] Gary Kurtz in Los Angeles and asked him to sponsor that 1978 team event, with some of the proceeds going to Riding for the Disabled.

And that was how movie star Carrie Fisher and others came to spend a memorable afternoon in the countryside in deepest Northamptonshire.

Who says truth is not stranger than fiction?

David Owen’s book – A Short History of Cricket at Everdon Hall – can be obtained from the author, price £5, plus postage.