Crawley Town’s appointment of John Gregory has wrenched open a wormhole linking our realm to a dimension inhabited by lost ’90s managers – and now they’re taking over.

Gregory, slick, led Aston Villa to a few decent months’ worth of results about 15 years ago and was most recently employed by Kazakh side FC Kairat, who sacked him for refusing to accept live chickens as a win bonus.

Since then he has been hiding out in an undisclosed location on the spacetime grid, playing bridge with Dave Bassett and Gerry Francis while Frank Clark serenades them with gently strummed Crosby, Stills & Nash covers.

It is believed that Gregory inadvertently blasted open the portal into our realm while firing gunshots at a life-size cardboard cutout of Dwight Yorke.

Speaking exclusively to Football Burp, former Norwich City and Everton boss Mike Walker explained that he and many more lost ’90s managers decided to follow Gregory over in search of employment.

He said: “It needn’t be a managerial role – any old job will do for most of us.

“Thinking on, it could even be a non-footballing managerial role, like manager of a small printing firm, or manager of the England cricket team.

“Something like that.”

Brian Little was unavailable for comment as he was busy explaining to a prospective employer that he isn’t Roy Evans.