Real Madrid star is selling his home at the wrong time

In 2008, Cristiano Ronaldo paid £3.8m for the seven-bedroom mansion in Alderly Edge that his new neighbours deemed “offensive, brutal and insensitive“.

Soon after moving in, the tricky winger invested £300,000 on a pool, gym and ‘gadgets’ (read: ‘a sex dungeon’) for his opulent pre-fab home.

The financial nuclear winter doesn’t seem to have affected his freespending employers, but it has depreciated the value of the Cheshire crib, as it is now valued at just £3.5m. The Spoiler’s maths correspondent informs us that this represents a loss of £600,000.

It could take anything up to three weeks for Ronaldo to make back that kind of deficit.

‘Grotesque’ new homes anger toffee-nosed villagers

Residents of a posh Cheshire village have taken time away from their backgammon games, wine racks and learning the Daily Mail by heart to complain about ‘The Rooney effect’, whereby Premiership footballers, almost always from a different part of the social spectrum, knock down perfectly good houses to make way for their vast pleasure domes. The Torygraph reports:

Norman Moffitt, the vice-chairman of Prestbury parish council, said: “We’ve seen some very nice houses being knocked down and replaced by new ones, some of which are pretty grim and others which are simply horrific.”

Wayne and Coleen, who need just one bedroom, bulldozed a five-bedroom family home to make way for their humongous new gaff (pictured above, under construction) - a trend started by Mark Hughes and continued by the likes of Michael Carrick, Roy Keane and cricketer Andrew Flintoff.

Petitions have been organised to stop more of the monstrosities springing up, while Alderly Edge resident