Bolton Wanderers, led by Sam Allardyce, made some weird signings.
Perhaps none more so than that of Julio Cesar.
To be Wiki-accurate (truly the barometer of accuracy), we're talking about one Júlio César Santos Correa.
Born in Brazil in 1978, when I was precisely minus five years old, the young Julio Cesar (minus Wiki-copied accents) began his career at Marathon in 1995. I entered a marathon once. Had peanuts stuck under my lid for weeks.
Sorry.
He moved to Spain, joining Madrid-based Rayo Vallecano in 1996 after just 17 full appearances for Marathon.
Three seasons later he joined Spanish giants Real Madrid where he joined future Wanderers icon Ivan Campo in the centre of defence. A year later he was loaned out to AC Milan in a bid to secure regular first-team footy.
Loans followed to Real Sociedad and Benfica, whilst making a mere 21 appearances for Madrid spread over three seasons, before he cut his losses and fucked off to Vienna, signing for Austria Wien in 2002.
It was from these inauspicious surroundings that he was invited to join the Sam Allardyce-led Bolton Wanderers Galactico revolution in in 2004.
It is a shame that, however, he was found to be fucking shit at the old footy and was fucked the fuck off after just five games in the famous white shirt. He made his Wanderers debut in August 2004, in a 4-1 home victory over Charlton Athletic (when Jay Jay Okocha scored twice). However, after the next game, a 2-0 defeat to Fulham, he found himself dropped from the starting line-up in favour of the ever lovely Radhi Jaïdi.
He did score one goal for the lads, against Yeovil Town in the League Cup - before leaving and joining Tigres of Mexico (the same side that ex-Wanderers target André-Pierre Gignac plays for these days).
Cesar saw out his career by shifting his ass round more countries than I've had hot dinners. Olympiakos in Greece was followed by Dinamo Bucharest of Romania. Prince Desir Gouano's new mob Gaziantepspor of Turkey was the next step, before a spell with Maritimo of Portugal which, in turn, led to a year in MLS with Sporting Kansas City and Toronto before finishing up in the footballing hotbed of Honduras, with the exotically named Parrillas One.
Julio Cesar, ladies and germs. We hardly knew ye.