Sky Sports News will employ Haitian voodoo priests as football correspondents after the practice was alleged to have been a key player in Romelu Lukaku leaving Everton.

The Toffees’ majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri told the club’s AGM that the striker was all set to sign a new contract until he received voodoo messages telling him to join Chelsea, upon which he joined Man Utd.

Lukaku intends to sue over the remark, citing his Roman Catholic faith, but Sky Sports News are taking no chances in their quest to bring us right up to date with all the latest transfer gossip.

Jim White told Football Burp: “We’ve been interviewing a number of houngans, as they’re known, and we even got Derek Acorah to contact the late Max Beauvoir to see if he’d be up for some beyond-the-grave punditry.

“The idea’s still in its early stages but we plan to send the priests out and about, willing various transfers into existence with their dark magic and enabling us to maximise profits from our Sky Bet subsidiary.

“Think you’re quids-in from that tenner you stuck on Naby Keïta to join Liverpool? Not for much longer you aren’t, pal, ’cause our crack team of Haitian voodoo priests are quite literally sending him to Coventry.

“He might well end up at Blackpool, because clearly voodoo isn’t an exact science, but that doesn’t really matter as long as we’re taking your money.

“Do you see?”