Neil Warnock.

Try and argue about academies and coaches with this man and please don't say he knows nothing about football! Jimmy Greaves said the same thing and I am just postulating their views and I would suggest that any older fan would appreciate these comments and maybe few of you have actually played this game?

the roll of honour: Neil Warnock.

The man who has taken charge of more matches than any manager in English football history Across that record 1,626 matches, he managed 18 different clubs, several of them more than once. During that time, he secured eight promotions, including two in successive seasons when he was in charge of Notts County in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was a time when Brian Clough was still ruling the roost at neighbouring Nottingham Forest.Indeed, Warnock’s astonishing 44-year managerial career encompassed seismic changes in the game. Not least in the resources available to managers.

“I remember when I was at [Crystal] Palace, and [Manchester] City brought down two buses full of staff to Selhurst,” he recalls. “I’d never seen anything like it. Who were all these people? As a welcome, I told our coach to chuck a bucket of water over their dressing-room floor to make it look scruffy.”The shift, he says, has been fundamental. Management has been overtaken by sports science.

“It’s all data-led now. Personality is less important, it’s all stats and figures,” he says. “The trouble is that doesn’t tell you the character of a player. The number of times I’ve been at clubs and the analysts are telling me: this is a player for you. And I’m saying, ‘I’ve watched him and he can’t defend’. And they say, ‘Ah, but he wins more headers’, or ‘his duel-recovery ratio is above the norm’. And I say: ‘Yeah, but listen to me, when the chips are down he can’t defend’.”Even on the training ground, he reckons, everything has changed.

“I see these passing drills that coaches set up and I’m thinking: ‘You need a b----- O-level just to understand what to do’. What’s wrong with passing a football? I laugh with the players about all the sports science: ‘Don’t worry lads, I don’t understand it either’.”