A PROPER PLAN CONQUERS ALL

ASK a football manager to assess the competition and – as sure as night follows day – talk will turn to budgets.

- Chris DUNLAVY|

Those blessed with deep pockets insist the figures are being exaggerated. Those without reel off names and numbers and use words like ‘competitive’ to insinuate that anything beyond a mid-table finish would eclipse Leicester winning the Premier League.

And that’s fair enough. There’s a reason Chesterfield won the National League. It’s the same reason Wrexham are now in League One.

Arrange a division’s wage bill from highest to lowest in any given season and, chances are, you’ll have something that very closely resembles the final table.

Many years ago, my former colleague Stuart Hammonds did exactly this. Over the course of several painstaking days, he called the owner or chief executive of every National League club and asked them, off the record, to reveal their actual budget.

Lo and behold, the ‘budget’ table he compiled was an almost identical replica of the actual standings, bar a few anomalies.

Which begs an obvious question: do we even need managers? Clearly, someone competent and qualified is required to select a team and set it up. It’s not like you could just replace Paul Cook with Barry from EastEnders and charge to promotion all the same.

But if the most expensive players always win anyway, is there any reason to believe that Cook would fare any worse at Manchester City than Pep Guardiola?