'I was given five-minute ultimatum to leave Man Utd – £30M deal hinged on me'

Football transfers can often spring up out of nowhere, but few players are given as little as five minutes to decide their future.

This is the story of Fraizer Campbell, whose snap decision to join Tottenham on deadline day in 2008 allowed Manchester United to complete the £30million signing of Dimitar Berbatov. Campbell was on the verge of agreeing a loan move to Wigan Athletic, but received a phone call out of the blue from Sir Alex Ferguson, who laid the situation out in characteristically ruthless fashion.

"It was the international break, so I was with the England Under-20s or Under-21s, I know I'm going on loan, and I'm sat with Steve Bruce, he was at Wigan at the time," Campbell, 37, told MUTV's UTD podcast. "So I'm waiting for the faxes to come through so I could sign... and I get a call from a withheld number, so I was like, 'hello?'

"And [Sir Alex says:] 'oh, Fraizer, it's Sir Alex here. I'm going to ring you back in five minutes and you're going to need to give me your answer. I've got a deal for Berbatov going through, it's £30m – it's only going to go through if you agree to go there on loan. So, I'm going to ring you back in three or four minutes with your decision. Speak to you in a minute.' And that was it."

Desperate not to run afoul of Ferguson's infamous temper, Campbell agreed to the move. "I was hardly going to say no," he joked. "So, I told Steve and he was like, 'ah no, you're killing me. I've come to bring you to Wigan.'

"But I couldn't ring [Ferguson] back and say, 'no I don’t fancy it, to be honest'. I don't think that would have gone down well, so I was just like, 'well, looks like I'm going Spurs' – and that was it."

So Campbell and Berbatov traded places, in a switch that was far more fruitful for the Bulgarian. Speaking exclusively to Mirror Football, Berbatov, 44, admitted he was going crazy while waiting for the transfer to be finalised.

"Believe me when I tell you my mind was going crazy at that moment because me coming from a small country, this was my mountain top," he said. "United was my mountain top. I was seeing myself with one foot there. The last day of the transfer window, all the stuff was happening. Spurs wanted me to stay and not go to United then United said, 'we spoke with Spurs, you're ready to go.'

"And then you try and please everybody and you don't know what to do and my head and my mind was going crazy. My family was calling, my friends were driving me crazy."

Even after the two clubs agreed a deal, fate nearly stood in the way. With just minutes left before the transfer window slammed shut, an errant fax machine threatened to scupper the move.

"Coming close to the last hour or minutes of the transfer window, also there is moments where nothing was happening and that made me angry. My agent was getting angry and desperate," Berbatov remembered. "The fax at one point was not working.

"Everybody was going crazy but finally it happened and to be honest, I didn't have any power left in my body to be happy. You were exhausted so much, you were happy but you cannot show it."

The transfer immediately paid dividends for both Berbatov and United, with the striker's goals helping fire United to Premier League glory in his debut season. Campbell, however, struggled to make much of an impact at White Hart Lane.

He scored just three times in 22 appearances, and only managed one start in the league before being sent packing back to Old Trafford. That summer he left for Sunderland on a permanent basis, ending his 12-year association with the Red Devils.

Berbatov, meanwhile, went on to score 56 goals in just shy of 150 games for United. Shortly after clinching a second Premier League title with the club, he left for Fulham in 2012.

Recalling the chaotic last few hours of the 2008 summer transfer window, Berbatov admitted: "[Playing for Manchester United was] my personal ambition. I kept telling myself 'this is the chance, don't let it slip', because you're going to regret it if you do."