Are you seriously telling me that Rio Ferdinand needs someone to inform him he plays in the back four, that he is there to snuff out opposing strikers, win the ball, tackle hard, go up for the occasional corner and free kick and generally marshal the defence?

Perhaps you want to persuade me that Theo Walcott does not know he is supposed to run at a defence and pull the ball back for Thierry (who also needs to be told that putting the ball into the onion bag is his job).

Put bluntly, will someone please tell me what is the job of a football manager or coach? If it is to make a lot of money from transfer deals, then fine – what a great idea for budding entrepreneurs. Maybe it’s a PR exercise, a ruse for clubs to have a ‘man in authority’ dealing with the inept questions posed by moronic football journalists. I mean, anyone in their right mind can work out that it is next to impossible to prepare for eventualities in a game that is actually 60 per cent luck and played at around 100 mph.

I used to think differently. I was brought up on tales of Don Revie being the first deep-lying centre forward, a position modelled on the great Hungarian teams of the fifties which murdered England twice. Revie was the first great tactician, I was told, and as a Leeds fan in the 1960s, I revelled in the club’s rise from obscurity to prominence.

Forty years on, I can now claim amnesty and tell you the truth – I saw a lot of Leeds games in that era and they were a bunch of cloggers who fought their way out of the football slums to the promised land of aristocratic wealth and privilege.

Sure, there was some great football, but there was also plenty of rough stuff which made up for Revie’s match tactics. And Leeds were not alone, football tactics in those days (and to some extent in these days) was based on the concept of getting the ball from one end of the field to the other in the shortest time possible.

Ah, yes, you reply, but what about those Hungarians and Alf Ramsey’s wingless wonders, the amazing feats of Brian Clough, who took Nottingham Forest on a shoestring budget to two European Cups, Bill Shankly and Sir Matt Busby, Jose Mourinho and Sir Alex Ferguson? You are no doubt shouting at me about their influence on the players, their tactical awareness, their nurturing of youngsters. I’m sorry, your evidence would not stand up in my court of law.

The amazing thing about Clough was that he did very little with his players aside from scream and shout at them – he was hardly ever at the training ground and he sent his team onto the pitch with the kind of instructions you jot down to remind you of what to buy in the supermarket.

Ramsey, despite the accolade of World Cup winner (remember Geoff Hurst’s dodgy goal deciding the outcome?), was found wanting four years later. To be fair, that inglorious defeat by West Germany was not, as has been written into footballing folklore, because he brought off Bobby Charlton, rather it was because West Germany scored three goals in the searing heat of Leon, Mexico as England wilted.

And Ferguson, the Don Corleone of all managers – well, he has that youngster Robbins to thank for saving his career with possibly the most famous goal that never got the media coverage to match its importance. The knives were out for Alex - and had Mark Robbins not got that Cup winner at Nottingham Forest, dear old Fergie could well have been running a pub in Fife. And even when he scaled the dizzy heights of the treble in 1999, are you honestly telling me that those two late, late goals against Bayern Munich were the result of tactical acumen? You are surely ‘having a laugh’.

Oh, but come on, you tell me, what about the formation of the team, the style of play? Surely that’s down to the manager. Really? You listen to any fans’ radio phone-in or visit any blogging forum and what do you get? Not ten, not 100, but thousands of different views as to which way the lads should line up, who should be in the team, how they should play ad nauseum.

So why do we need these coaches? What do they bring to the game? They don’t cross the white line with the players, they aren’t inside a player’s head as he attempts an intricate dribble.

I wonder what would actually happen to a team of talented players if they played a season without a coach. They would train to keep fit, and on Saturday they would go onto the pitch and play football. They would know how to pass the ball, how to dribble, to tackle, to shoot, to cover, to get in position. They would generate team spirit, they would laugh and cry together. They would win and lose. The captain would pick the side, possibly with a bit of help from a former player at the club who could take time off from selling Levi jeans to supermarket chains.

No coach in the world can prepare for the eventuality of the ball skidding off a defender’s boot for an own goal, or a shot striking the post, or going behind for a corner. The game is just too fast, with too many possible outcomes in too many situations to be affected by tactics. And it is these possible outcomes that make the game such a wonderful spectacle. The theatre of football is not scripted, it is a spectacle that draws us to the edge of our seats.

When see a George Best or a Stanley Matthews, we marvel at their skill and bravery, we don’t think of how they have been sent out to play. When we see a Liverpool of the 1970s, we enjoy their telepathic communication skills on and off the ball - we don’t decipher a non-existent code of what Bob Paisley said to them in the dressing room or on the training ground.

And today, with a camera focused on every movement of every muscle in a coach’s body, they feel they have to justify their existence by gyrations resembling a police-traffic controller on skunk.

It’s about time this myth is exploded. All right, let there be a mentoring role by the coach to help stop youngsters letting the glory and money go to their heads, and perhaps to invite them round for some shepherd’s pie and home-made apple crumble. Other than that, let the 11 lads go onto the pitch with clear heads and do what they are good at doing.

Whatever you want to call them – coach, manager, or this absurd term ‘director of football’, they are a blot on the landscape of the great game.