It isn't often that a small independent footy website gets to interview the greatest England manager since Kevin Keegan, but in true Eat Football style, last week we managed to blag our way into Svens new palatial Mancunian abode to find out what it's like living with the real Sven. Oh, and to clear up a few things about his Man City 'scouting' methods...

We began to get a few reservations about the interview almost as soon as we received a call from Svens secretary - Tord Grip, who seemed only to be interested in if the EF reporters attending the interview had contracted any sort of congenital diseases.

Most of us didn't know what that meant, but a couple of staff scratched nervously and declared themselves out.

Sometimes reporting real news can be hard. Sometimes, to get to the truth, you have to go to places the likes of which you can only imagine in your worst nightmares. And, it was with this in mind, that we bought 4 day return tickets to Manchester, piled onto a train, and pushed our congenital reservations aside.

A few hours later we arrived at Svens pad, a couple of miles south of the A56. Upon meeting Sven's staff, we were asked to strip down to our jock straps, shower, and change into what looked to be ex-army bomb disposal suits, complete with head masks and breathing apparatus. This confused our photographer who promptly had a flashback to a disused farmhouse, glow-sticks, and the late 80's rave movement in general.

The meeting itself with Sven turned out to be just as bizarre as the preamble. After being shown into a cramped cinema-like room we noticed several bottles of what, on first sight, appeared to be apple juice. On a giant, flickering screen in the background, we observed many football matches from all over the world being played out. The brightness of the screen made it difficult to discern anything in the darkened surroundings.  In fact it was so difficult to make things out, that our photographer accidentally knocked over one of the bottles of apple juice, exclaiming "Ah man, this juice is off, it smells just like piss".

At this point a croaky, barely english voice spoke out of the darkness "zat is 'cause it is pizz. But I can assure you, it is not off."

At last, we had found Sven.

As our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we can see that Sven has let himself go a bit since last summer. Dressed in nothing but his pants and a beer belly, he approached us from the shadows, sporting a thick white beard.

Our first instinct was to run in fear, but knowing that we owed it to the fans to get to the truth, and that the door behind us was locked, we somehow managed to maintain our proffesional demeanour and ask the new Man City boss some probing questions.

The first question was a simple one.

"Sven, why are you dressed in your underpants surrounded by bottles of piss?"

"Vell 'um, I left England after our glorious Vurld cup campaign, and it seems that although I waz not doing any vork at all, the FA were still paying money into my Halifax One account. 

At first I thought this vas an oversite and that it would stop after one or two months but it continued. I love money of course, so I let it continue. Of course. But over the times I became more and more paranoid that if I went out into the publics, the FA vould spot me and maybe remember me and ask for ze money back.

So the simple soultion to ze problem, was to stay in my room where nobodys could find me. And now, my fear of the outside is so big, I vill not ever leaves this room."

"So, how did you get the Manchester City position?" we enquired (not unreasonably)

"Vell, I have a 'er special masseuse who one day mentioned she had another client who owned a football team and she acted as go between. He had previously vorked vith Jurgen Klinsman so saw nothing vong in a manager that didn't actually turn up. Of course."

But even Jurgen made it back to watch Germany play in the world cup. Surely this arrangement will cause problems on match days?

Not according to Sven...

"I move so little during a match it von't be a problem. Even in ze past for England, I have been able to use my Madame Tussauds vaxvork as my stand-in. Noone ever noticed before and I'm sure noone will ever notice my emotionless vaxwork gaze from ze Man City dugout. And in ze unlikely events that people may needs my instruction, I vill simply talk to Tord through a valkie talkie."

With this, Sven clapped his hands and became excited, his bright, baby blue eyes seemed to be, not unlike David Beckhams... in a galaxy far, far away.

"Enough about me", he yelled. "Let me show you my fantastich plans for the Spruce stadium... A stadium so large you can fit four pitches inside it, allowing many teams to play the same game at the same time.  So many teams at the same time, it is fantisch. It's the future of the football. The football.. the football... the football... football... football... football..."

At this point we turned, and we ran, ran like we haven't run since the day we found ourselves watching Peter Beardsley chomp through a bag of fisheads in the backseat of the EF Action Lada.