A Liverpool fan supporting Manchester United? Must be fantasy football

The Portuguese forward’s wizardry and 42 goals helped United to a Barclays Premier League and Champions League double while Rafa Benitez’s men ended up with nothing.

Ronaldo’s summer flirting with Real Madrid may have made things a little more palatable on Merseyside, but the winner of Sportsmail’s Fantasy Football last season, Anfield fan Neville Brown, was already ecstatic about Ronaldo’s incredible success after sharing in it from afar.

In the money: Cristiano Ronaldo's sparkling season helped Neville Brown win our Fantasy Football game last season

The IT manager from Paignton, Devon, spotted the rich vein of form United’s star man was running into and claimed that signing him up for Come On You Gulls was the main reason his team finished top of the heap overall with 640 points, scooping him the £25,000 main prize.

Brown, 36, who is already working on his team for the new season’s competition revealed the secret of his success, saying: ‘I tried to avoid putting Liverpool players in my team because if you do that and the club have a poor result then it is a really bad week.

‘The first couple of weeks I had a pretty rubbish side but then I got lucky and a few of my hunches paid off.

‘I put Ronaldo in my team about halfway through the season and he turned out to be by far my highest points scorer. I had to get some cheap defenders in and I spent most of my money on goalscorers but the real secret is to be lucky.

‘It helped too if you had the strikers who were playing Derby that week!’

Brown, who also counts himself a fan of Torquay United, found himself completely engrossed when he realised he had a good chance of winning the big cash prize as the season came to its nail-biting conclusion.

‘By the end I was working out how I was doing as it was happening, monitoring the internet for the goals going in,’ he said.

‘I was in a mini-league at work and they were winding me up all the time, so I could not screw it up. It all got a bit tense.’

Brown’s winning team lined up like this for the final round of games: T Howard; A Hutton, J Lescott, S Distin, P Evra; C Ronaldo, A Young, S Gerrard, J McFadden; E Adebayor, R Santa Cruz.