PREMIER LEAGUE:IF YOU FIND yourself at the loosest of ends this week, go on to You Tube and type "Neil Warnock bollocking" into the search box, writes Andrew Fifield.
Wade through the results - unsurprisingly, this might take a while - and open the file containing the film of English football's Mr Angry attempting to lift his Huddersfield team at Shrewsbury in 1994.
You won't regret it.
In fact, the hardest part might just be choosing your favourite moment from the eight minutes and 43 seconds of footage - the bit where a disembodied hand has to wipe the lens of the camera, all fogged up from the steam spurting out of Warnock's ears, or maybe the Yorkshireman grabbing a startled centre-half for use as a human prop as he demonstrates the art of "getting in front of your f****** man".
Given the way football has progressed, Warnock's jabberings are probably being used as a case study in applied management courses. Yet the most striking thing about the film - apart from the language - is just how little sense it makes.
Before he opens his mouth, Warnock makes great show of composing himself in a secluded corner - supping tea and rehearsing his lines. Yet when the tirade begins, the coherence ends. There are some mutterings about switching to 4-3-3 - though any semblance of tactical nous is rather muffled when Warnock forgets the word for "left" - but the gist can be summed up in the final, bellowed command: "Let's go out and give them a f****** go!"
Throughout, you suspect this rant is solely for Warnock's benefit. Shouting loudly provides catharsis but no results. At one point, he even admits to no longer caring about the scoreline, which is a good job as Huddersfield went on to lose 2-1.
It all seems rather futile, though nonetheless instructive. Professional football is such a closeted, self-important world we are hardly ever granted a sneaky peek into its inner sanctums. That's a pity: if we were, maybe some of the game's more nonsensical myths would be debunked at a stroke.
Take managers. England is probably the only country in world football still genuinely in thrall to the Cult of the Gaffer - the doctrine whereby men of little intellect or experience are allowed assume control of every aspect of a football club, from how much players should be paid to what piece of PR puff appears on the official website.
The media also play their part in massaging the ego. Any manager capable of using plural pronouns or using words like "dynamic" is labelled a professor, while those who sling slanderous insults at their peers are deemed masters of the mind game. The result of all this fawning is that managers start to believe they really are supermen.
The reality is very different. As anyone who has sat behind a dug-out can testify, a manager could be turned into a human fireball and his players would still not bat an eyelid, while the video of Warnock's Shrewsbury diatribe suggests that if all a team-talk needs are some pithy put-downs, we might as well slap Simon Cowell on a satellite link in every dressing-room and have done with it.
The time has come for a reassessment. Perhaps England should follow the European model, where the player - not the managerial personality - is celebrated. Milan are the club of Baresi, Maldini and Kaka; Real Madrid's foundations were laid by Di Stefano, Puskas and Hierro; Ajax were forged by Cruyff, Neeskens and van Basten.
There are philosophers, of course: Herrera with his catenaccio and Michels with his total football. But they are the exceptions to the rule whereby coaches are largely expendable accessories. The idea of a club being identified with its trainer - as Liverpool are with Bill Shankly, Manchester United with Alex Ferguson or Arsenal with Arsène Wenger - would be unthinkable. The all-powerful presidents wouldn't have it, for starters.
Europe is not in any position to preach when English football's grip on the Champions League is at its tightest in over 25 years.
But you can't help thinking that if we - by which I mean all the home nations - diluted the authority afforded our managers, we might produce players capable of thinking for themselves on the international stage, of assuming responsibility for their own results and performances, of actually using that great lump of greyish wobbly stuff in their heads called brain.
It might just happen, too. Once the current crop of personality managers - the Fergies and Arsènes, even the Warnocks of this world - fade away, a new generation should be ready to replace them - talented men with enough self-confidence and belief to be happy with a mere coach's lot.
And then perhaps players can start managing themselves.
