Sometimes you have got a noisy neighbour and have to live with it,” Sir Alex Ferguson said last weekend. “You can’t do anything about them if they keep on making noise. But what you can do is get on with your life, put your television on and turn it up a bit louder.”

Pragmatic words there, as ever, from the Manchester United manager. However, it’s not clear that turning up the telly is necessarily the best or the most efficient approach when a neighbour’s noise becomes a nuisance. Greeting noise with noise may do nothing to resolve the conflict and could, on the contrary, lead to an unhelpful escalation and a worsening of the overall situation.

So what can a responsible and innocent home-owner such as Sir Alex do? We’ve gone online this week in search of the best advice on practical and legal solutions to “noisy neighbour” disputes and we’re happy to issue the following, cut-out-and-keep help sheet, drawn up in accordance with outlines on the directgov website.

It’s always best, wherever possible, to solve matters in this area by talking directly to whoever is responsible for the noise. This doesn’t really include giving a press conference in which you describe them as “cheeky” and “lacking class”, nor really giving another one in which you state that they are “not likely to be a threat in my lifetime”.

Attempt a person-to-person conversation. There is always a chance, after all, that the neighbours do not realise their noise is disturbing you. Choose the time for that conversation carefully, though. The best moment may not be while your neighbours are making a noise. You could simply be seen to be trying to stop their fun.

It might be better to wait for a period of quiet in which the issue can be dispassionately discussed — perhaps the morning after it’s taken your neighbours 90 minutes plus extra time, at full strength, to get rid of Fulham’s reserves in the third round of the Carling Cup.

Don’t be confrontational. Make clear that you are not trying to inhibit your neighbours’ enjoyment of their lives. You may find it helpful to have with you a written list of your grievances. Some local authorities can offer a “noise record sheet” for this purpose, on which you can note down specific instances of your neighbours being disturbing, such as with their noise or their decision to sign Carlos Tévez.

If this conversation goes well, it may be that your neighbours will agree to curb their noise and possibly even to get rid of their massively rich owner and go back to being a little club with a slightly vaudeville feel about it. If an impasse is reached, though, it will be time to seek third-party intervention via your local council.

Your council’s assessment of noise nuisance is based on whether it is “reasonable”, bearing in mind the locality, how often noise occurs and how many people are affected. “Reasonableness” may be hard to assess, but where the numbers affected by the noise appear to run to many millions, all over the world, with a special concentration in the Far East, you could have a fairly good case.

If the local council thinks the noise is a statutory nuisance, they will serve an abatement notice on the neighbour. An abatement notice will set out what is required of your neighbour.

For instance, they may be asked to stop the noise outright, or to limit the noise to set times. The maximum penalty for non-compliance with the order is £5,000 for domestic premises and £20,000 for industrial, trade or business premises. That should give them something to think about.

In a related area, say your neighbours suddenly put up a massive leylandii or a billboard welcoming Tévez to Manchester. Under no circumstances should you try to take down the leylandii / billboard yourself, nor set fire to it or otherwise inflict damage upon it. Again, talk first and only then seek third-party assistance.

And do be sure you genuinely feel strongly about the issue. It’s only a leylandii / billboard, after all — just a bit of harmless fun. Unless it’s actually blocking sunlight from your property, or obstructing the view from your windows or making it difficult to access your own drive, in which case, you’ve got a point.

And if all this fails and the noise just carries on, or even gets worse? Then move. I know: it’s not what you want to do. You’re fond of the area and you’ve spent a lot of time putting down roots there. But, frankly, some neighbours are such a nightmare, they leave you no alternative.

Sex before cricket? At least it will be a safer warm-up than football

Years of conventional thinking were overthrown this week when the India cricket team’s fitness coach produced a four-part paper arguing that sex — including what the paper coyly refers to as “going solo” — enhances sporting performance, and that therefore players should be encouraged to indulge, rather than, as has traditionally been maintained, abstain.

There’s nothing in these findings, you might say, that Shane Warne hadn’t already posited, in his own way, albeit without getting round to putting it down on paper.

Nevertheless, we agree with Graeme Swann, the England spin bowler, that this is “just the sort of forward thinking that the game needs”, and we will be disappointed if someone doesn’t now take the obvious next step and commission a report into the possibly beneficial effects of sex, solo or otherwise, during cricket.

Cricket, after all, is unusual among team sports in being a game where almost half the leading protagonists aren’t doing anything at any given moment.

It’s perfectly possible that all that time spent sitting around in the pavilion drinking Lucozade and reading Dan Brown books could be far more efficiently exploited, performance-wise.

And why stop at the changing-room door? Who knows what cardiovascular and similar benefits might accrue from using sex to fill a quiet spell at third man on a slow turner at Headingley Carnegie?

Anything that helps a player to stay focused and alert in the field has got to be a positive thing for the game.

The good news is that, even if the figures don’t eventually stack up, and science doesn’t end up supporting the employment of sex mid-match, we do seem to have happened upon the risk-free warm-up routine that the England squad has been looking for since everyone got cross with them for playing football and injuring each other.

When that little bit extra goes a long, long way

You were confused, perhaps, by the time added on at the end of the Manchester derby last weekend, when Michael Owen appeared to score the winning goal a minute and a half after the match was supposed to have ended. The thing to remember is that the number held up by the fourth official is merely a kind of serving suggestion, which the referee can adapt or embellish as he sees fit, adding 30 extra seconds for a substitution, for instance, and various other discretionary amounts for goal celebrations and any other business.

Don’t forget, too, the moment in Jeff Winter’s autobiography where the official from Middlesbrough, on the occasion of his last match at Anfield, finds he “didn’t want the match to end” and, accordingly, “plays a little bit extra”, waiting until the ball goes up towards the Kop end before “sounding the final, shrill blast — a bit like the Last Post”. Herein time added on becomes a dramatic device, variable according to the official’s sense of his own importance.

Winter, of course, has retired, and perhaps this practice has retired with him. It’s worth bearing it in mind among the options, though, the next time four minutes becomes five and a half at Old Trafford.