How £3.6m buys a merry Christmas

Afterwards I drove down to my home in Poole for Christmas dinner with the family and then it was straight back to London for the match.

I'm not complaining, though. That's where we choose to live and the result made all those miles even more worth it.

On the day, Charlton couldn't live with us but, to be fair, not many teams could have coped with our attacking play. I'm not sure I could field that team all the time but it was certainly great to watch on Boxing Day.

Everyone played their part but I thought Freddie Kanoute was absolutely outstanding. What no one realised was that he played with a broken finger, but we strapped it up, shoved a pair of gloves on him, and sent him out there to terrorise the Charlton defence.

Nothing seems to faze Freddie. He is a giant of a boy with awesome strength and pace.

I remember going over to France last season to watch another player and ending up talking to a coach over there. He said that, in his opinion, the boy I was looking at wouldn't make it in English football. "Fair enough," I said. "Who would you go for if you were me?" The coach recommended Freddie but said that his club, Olympique Lyonnais, wouldn't sell him and we later discovered that they had turned down a bid from Celtic.

Then we had a stroke of luck. We found out that Freddie had a clause in his contract stipulating that he could leave if any club came in with an offer of £3.5m or more. We talked to his agent, settled on a deal - and Bob's your uncle.

Since then I've had calls from all over the place asking if I'd be interested in selling him but he's not going anywhere, believe me. He's happy at the club and he's playing some terrific stuff at the moment.

I see someone is suggesting we go back to the old days and resurrect a Christmas Day programme. Is that a joke, or what?

Boxing Day is perfect for football, but Christmas Day is a non-starter. Can you imagine all the fellas waving goodbye to their families before going out to watch football? There would be ructions! There are normally a few wonky results over the Christmas period, though, and the strangest in which I have ever been involved was back in 1963, when I was a youngster at West Ham.

We played Blackburn at Upton Park on Boxing Day and lost 8-2. Afterwards some of us youngsters were told to wait outside the first-team dressing-room because Ron Greenwood, not surprisingly, was thinking about making a few changes.

In the end, it didn't happen and I went off to play against Woodford Town in the afternoon.

We were due to play Blackburn two days later at Ewood Park and, in the event, Ron made only one change, bringing in Eddie Bovington to mark Bryan Douglas and leaving out Martin Peters.

Johnny Byrne scored two goals and Geoff Hurst the other in a 3-1 win - one of the biggest turnarounds in football over the years - and we went on to win the FA Cup that season with Eddie staying in the team at the expense of Martin.

Tomorrow we face Chelsea in another London derby and I'm looking forward to a good game again. Chelsea's away record has been poor up to now but, with the players they have, you just know they're going to come good - later rather than sooner, I hope.

I must admit I thought Chelsea would have done better then they have so far this season. Ken Bates and his board have had a right go and a lot of people I know were putting money on them to win the Championship at the start of the season, especially after they beat Manchester United quite convincingly in the Charity Shield. Since then, though, things haven't gone as well as they would have liked and the Champions League looks out of their reach for next season.

I see Marcel Desailly is suspended for our match tomorrow which is a bonus but Chelsea have plenty of other good players in what is a massive squad.

As far as we're concerned, we have to push on as a club now. We've spent around £4m of the Rio Ferdinand money and we need now to build a bigger and better squad.

I've talked to Rio since he went up to Leeds incidentally and he's okay. It was a big change for him but he's bought a house up there and settled in.

I'm pleased with our two acquisitions up to now. Titi Camara did pretty well against Charlton and will be much better when he gets match fit while I can't speak highly enough of Rigobert Song.

My son Jamie told me what a great lad he was in the Liverpool dressing room and I haven't been disappointed. He's so enthusiastic, so bubbly and he's done great for me in the games he's played.

Talking about players and their attitudes, I do think the so-called drink culture in English football is almost dead now.

About 95 per cent of players now eat, drink and generally live the right way. They know it's not too much of a sacrifice to make for the sort of rewards and success that can come their way.

In my day it was different and there were a few at West Ham who enjoyed a drink, believe me. That's not the case now, though, and we have to thank the influx of foreign influence for that.