‘WELL, of course top Premier League clubs are throwing money to get the very best managers around… after all, the very best players still pick Bayern, Barca or Real ahead of them. But whereas they can stockpile the top players, only one guy at a time can manage those clubs. So there’s plenty of blue-chip managers needing a place to land. And the Premier League is full of cash.”

The above – paraphrased – was a theory thrown around by a Spanish journalist during the latter stages of the European Championships. It’s a bit of a wind-up, of course, and the arrival of Paul Pogba might change perceptions, at least in part. Yet look beyond the “mine’s bigger than yours” and there is a grain of truth, at least when it comes to brand-name managers migrating to England.

Simply put, it’s entirely possible that never before in the history of the game has a single season warehoused this much managerial talent. Five of the men managing the “big six” have won multiple league titles. (Mauricio Pochettino has not, but he came pretty darn close to his first last year.)

Four of them – Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola and Juergen Klopp – have reached the Champions League final. Mourinho and Guardiola, have, of course, won four Champions League crowns between them.

These days, more than ever, running a successful football club is a group effort, from recruitment to sports science to analytics to logistics. The omniscient, omnipotent micro-manager has been phased out at the top end of the game, with the exception of Wenger. Klopp himself said just a few weeks ago that “it would be stupid” if he made decisions on his own, without input from people who know more about individual aspects of the game.

And yet, here we are with our procession of managerial deities, lured to England not just by the promise of the world’s most popular league, but also enormous transfer budgets and gigantic contracts. Mourinho, Guardiola, Wenger and Antonio Conte earn more than the bulk of their players. And it’s not just the money, it’s the length: Klopp signed a three-year deal when he arrived in October. Eight months later he got a six-year extension through 2022. Pochettino got a five-year deal.

There is, evidently, a belief that certain coaches have rare intangible qualities which are so scarce they have to be abundantly rewarded. There may be some truth to this, but it also feels a little reminiscent of the 1990s, when CEO pay at listed ompanies skyrocketed, often regardless of performance.

And there are a bunch of counter-examples, too. After all, the Champions League was won by a guy who took over mid-season and had never managed in the top-flight before [Zidane]. The year before, the Treble was won by a man who had worked two years in the top flight and never finished higher than seventh [Luis Enrique]. And, of course, the reigning Premier League champion is a guy whose appointment at Leicester was derided and had only a couple of cups to show for a near 30-year career [Ranieri].

The neat thing about this season is that some will necessarily see their balloons burst. Most weeks we will see two coaching behemoths go head-to-head and that will yield some bruised egos. And, make no mistake about it, the bench now is just as much part of the spectacle as the pitch, at least in terms of hype and attention.

Mourinho, of course, outshines anyone not named Lionel or Cristiano, and it won’t be a surprise if he is in the spotlight more than Zlatan Ibrahimovic or, if he comes, Pogba. But you can play the “star power” game with most top clubs. Sergio Aguero is an outstanding footballer, but attention will be on Guardiola. Klopp is more of a star than the likes of Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mane or Philippe Coutinho. You can make a similar argument about Conte over Eden Hazard or Cesc Fabregas. Wenger, of course, is the Alpha and Omega of Arsenal. And while we wait for Dele Alli’s day to come, most would argue Pochettino is more of a story than, say, Harry Kane.

Make no mistake, this will be a different Premier League to what we’ve known. As long as the talk focuses on the managers because of what they have created on the pitch, we will be fine. If it descends into hero worship or the vengeful tearing down of icons we have built up far too much, that won’t be quite so much fun.

But at least we’ll learn something. And we may even come one step closer to solving the eternal conundrum: to what degree is it the players and to what degree the manager that make a team great?

It was Mourinho playing the human lightning rod by giving the media plenty to chew on ahead of the Community Shield between United and Leicester. While in Italy, Ranieri was one of his favourite targets (“he’s 70 years old and can’t speak English”), this time he set his sights on the new media darling, Klopp, and the resident arch-nemesis, Wenger. The latter had described the £100 million Pogba fee as “completely crazy” while the former had said that if such big-money transfers became the norm, he wouldn’t be in football.

Mourinho acted incensed over their statements, describing them as “unethical” because they were commenting on the transfer activity of other clubs.

Maybe it’s best to treat this as Mourinho just giving the media things to write about. But, if he really believes it’s “unethical” to talk about the size of a transfer fee, he’s wrong. There are ethical issues when you talk about other clubs’ players in a way that would unsettle them. But it doesn’t mean you can’t give an opinion on the biggest transfer in history.

If he wants to brush up on ethics, he can look up things like “conflicts of interest” and how it’s frowned upon when an agent represents both a manager and players under that manager’s control and also brokers unrelated deals for that very same club. But I’m guessing nobody wants to go there, do they?