The decision of managers such as Paul Jewell to take a break from the job proves that the pressure is too much

Just after the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, one of the London papers ran a satirical spread - they thought it was funny - on the changing fortunes of Jose Mourinho. The result was probably more revealing than the London trendsetters intended.

In one set of pictures we had Jose in his pomp, all mohair coats and designer stubble. In the second group there was Mad Mourinho, sagging tracksuit bottoms and bulging anoraks, forgetting to shave. The style icon had become a street person, minus only the shopping trolley, albeit an eccentric millionaire street person.

The casual reader was supposed to understand the Chelsea manager has gone a bit funny lately. Anyone who has kept half an eye on football this season found a more complicated story.

Mourinho has been under pressure. Grant him a wage of £6 million a year or thereabouts. Give him resources that would keep a city council going. Then note second spot in the Premiership and a Champions League semi-final do not count as achievements in the rarefied atmosphere in which the Portuguese operates, and in which his boss, Roman Abramovich, lives.

Speculation over Mourinho's tenure at Chelsea has been a staple all season: let's not add guesswork to rumour. It's clear, though, that the cracks have been showing, in speech and body language. The shaggy dog tale merely added to a list of incidents which have become increasingly bizarre. Jose, they say, is losing it.

He wouldn't be the first, or the last. Most managers are sacked: that's less a fact of football life than a truism. But of those who stay in the game two species can be discerned. There is the tiny, elite group, with Sir Alex Ferguson the most bloody-minded and durable, who persevere no matter what the odds. Then there are those for whom all the cliches about pressure become a living reality, and a living hell.

Paul Jewell, having saved Wigan from relegation with the last throw of the dice, promptly decided he "needed a break". The club seemed mystified. Those who remembered Jewell taking the eternal no-hopers into the Premiership for the first time were perplexed. The coach is a mere 42 years old. There was no threat to his job. Why walk away from an industry in which employment is, at best, precarious?

Jewell has done it before, at Bradford. He has also sounded, in recent interviews, like a man exhausted, nerves shredded and body wilting.

He seems to mean what he says. Respite is required urgently.

The problem is, of course, that we have heard this sort of thing before, and heard it too often in a sport that lives by half-truths and evasions. The manager who tells the truth about the dismal effects of too much stress is liable to be treated with scepticism.

After all, how many other coaches have pleaded a need for recuperation as an excuse, usually transparent, just to put themselves on the market?

Neil Warnock's recent "break" from relegated Sheffield United may have been due to fatigue. Then again, it may have been due to an unacceptable pay offer, or to the belief that somewhere a Premiership club is desperate for a mouthy 58-year-old with a modest track record.

Fans are entitled to be sceptical. True, the life of a football manager tends to be nasty, brutish and short. True, Warnock was probably the least rewarded of Premiership managers while with Sheffield United. But how insulting was that miserable salary? Merely £400,000 a year, apparently. You suspect - though Warnock denies it - a cash injection would revive his spirits and speed his return to the game.

Besides, don't these men claim to live, breathe, sleep, eat and otherwise ingest football? Isn't it their reason for existence? How does Jewell, at 42, become jaded, knackered before his time, and desperate, if you believe him, to escape?

Gordon Strachan could probably tell you. Prior to his arrival at Parkhead he was explicit about the pressing need to resume contact with real life. The favoured cliché is "recharging the batteries". But we heard Alex McLeish talk in the same terms as his friend Strachan after leaving Ibrox. Time was needed, and needed urgently, if an appetite for football was to be restored.

If you take such men as Strachan, Jewell and McLeish at their word, the pressures implied are all too real, and truly enormous. The possibility of being sacked and humiliated at any time would play on anyone's mind. Yet where does that leave the princes of the European game, people such as Mourinho?

Your every whim is catered for. Bills are paid, drivers are on hand, squads of club advisors stand ready to deal with any detail of your private life, however trivial. In assembling a team you boast more assistants than there are players at the average club.

Not so long ago, Mourinho was boasting casually he didn't much care if he was sacked. He would still be rich, he said, and he would find another job within a matter of months. Yet these days he looks the way Jewell claims to feel. As managers always insist: there are some things about football that the fans will never understand.

Yet why does Ferguson march on, at 65? These days he mocks even the idea of retirement. Why, for that matter, does Arsene Wenger endure after a decade at Arsenal? At least before the David Dein affair he, too, expressed no need for a break. Instead, like Ferguson, he talked of being renewed by the thrill of moulding another group of exciting young players.

Perhaps the veterans belong to another generation. Perhaps football is now so intense its demands consume even a hyper-confident Mourinho. But therein lurks the paradox: the English game cannot currently afford to lose a home-grown coaching talent such as Paul Jewell for any length of time.

The sport that chews up and spits out talent does itself no favours.