Prior to 2005, Chelsea had been paying for Mikel´s education and development at Lyn Oslo whilst he was on amateur contract with them and had an agreement that the player, when 18 would sign for the London club.  Suddenly, Man Utd triumphantly announced that they had secured the players signature just days after his 18^th birthday even though the player himself said that he had been pressured into signing the transfer and that Lyn Oslo had arranged the signing without the player’s agent being present. 

Chelsea were baffled by the sudden about turn and hotly contested the transfer.  The player refused to move to Manchester United and went into hiding.  The media were unable to locate the player and the football world was awash with preposterous stories of evil Chelsea and Abramovich henchmen kidnapping the player and even threatening the boy’s family! 

Man Utd fans flooded the web with how horrible Chelsea FC were bad for football and that Abramovich was mafia!  Other clubs fans and especially Arsenal fans also ecstatically jumped on the popular anti-Chelsea bandwagon and pontificated their views from the false moral high ground they create for themselves and spewed forth about the devil’s spawn which is Chelsea - Turns out that Lyn Oslo forged the professional contracts they had with Mikel so that they could suddenly sell him to Man Utd!

Mikel had always denied signing these professional contracts with Lyn but that didn’t really matter to the anti-Chelsea footballing world.  Andersen had apparently cut, pasted and photo-copied the players signature from the amateur contracts to the professional ones! 

"The court is in no doubt the contracts were amended and Andersen knew this," said Judge Torjus Gard said in his judgement.  

With the legal entanglement, Man Utd´s refusal to accept that the transfer was illegal and the player now 1 year without playing, Chelsea arrived at the only solution of releasing the player from his hell by stumping up 4M to Lyn and a total of 12M to Man Utd payable over 2 seasons.   

Andersen’s made various false claims in the media:

"It was like meeting the Sopranos!  In the meeting they behaved in a threatening way. We [Lyn] claimed we had the rights to Mikel but Shittu said we would regret the deal and Chelsea's representatives didn't agree. Soon after, Shittu took Mikel to the airport in Oslo and on to London. Mikel was crying and we didn't see him for a long time after that."  

Course it was like that mate! That’s why you had to falsify the contracts wasn’t it! 

The Chelsea payments were eagerly seen as some kind of admission of guilt by the media and oppo fans alike – HOW SMALL THEY MUST FEEL NOW!  But will they come out and retract their earlier hysterical anti-Chelsea comments?  Of course they won’t!  And this just about sums up the kind of people they really are. 

Svein Holden, a Norwegian public prosecutor bringing the case against Andersen has argued for the settlement to be cancelled on the grounds that Mikel's contract with Lyn was invalid and that therefore the player was available as a free agent.  

Certainly Chelsea will now move to recoup all or most of the 12M paid to Manchester United but it is understood that the Norwegian government have seized or will be in the process of seizing the 4M paid by Chelsea to Lyn Oslo as these are funds obtained by criminal activity. 

Andersen says he will appeal the decision – if an appeal takes place this could take another 6 months before financial matters are resolved. 

Andersen is now on leave from his job as director of another Norwegian club, Fredrikstad, but his lawyer Cato Schioetz told the Norwegian media that he “would probably not be able to return to that position” after the court ruling.

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