"I feared the worst when the picture was in the papers and decided that I would go and see the manager when I arrived for training and explain.
I didn't need to. He called me in first thing and went absolutely bananas. He said: “What the hell's going on?”
He hammered me and quite rightly. I got the treatment.
I'd never seen him so angry; it was far worse than when I missed the drugs test. Much worse.
I couldn't say a lot because I was in the wrong. I just said again, “Boss, I don't want to sign for nobody. I want to sign for Man United. I told you at the beginning I want to sign for United.”
For a moment I was worried he was going to say, “B******s I'm going to sell you.”
The meeting went on for 15 minutes and he was going: “You know how people will interpret it. It doesn't matter what you said.
“It doesn't matter if you were talking about the price of milk, the time of day or the colour of the table you were sitting at. It's just so stupid of you to go there and meet Kenyon.
“Once you walked into the restaurant and saw him there, you don't sit down, you go straight back out again.”
I knew the general public were not going to give me the benefit of the doubt over this one because of how I had explained my missed drugs test.
First I said I'd forgotten the test and that I didn't talk to Kenyon about joining
I can see it's hard to believe, without me explaining it, but it's the truth. I didn't want to sign for anyone other than United.
The trouble was, how could I prove that?"