Steve McClaren and Sam Allardyce are English foreigners, men who have distanced themselves from the native football culture they knew as players. This factor is often overlooked, because they can easily be mistaken for traditionalists and there are moments of old-fashioned saltiness, Kevin McCarra

McClaren sounded stuffy in his repudiation of the pink ties that the Middlesbrough squad chose to accompany the suits they will wear tomorrow as they arrive for the League Cup final. It was as if he had assumed responsibility for preserving the crustiness of bygone decades.

The masculinity at Bolton Wanderers encompasses bursts of laddishness - there were races in toilet seats mounted on wheels during a bonding exercise in the Lake District. Nonetheless, the occasional overtone of macho heartiness does not reflect the truth about the teams in this final and the men who have made them.

It would be more accurate to think of Allardyce as a beefy Arsene Wenger, so intrigued has he become by the science that can be entwined with sport. As a 28-year-old centre-half who wondered how he could bolster his career, he was fascinated to come across a book by Martina Navratilova's dietician. Allardyce has since turned into a patron of experts.

There are almost 40 members of that support staff at Bolton, although they do not all work full time. Mark Taylor, who has known Allardyce since their days together at Blackpool in the mid-1990s, is the head of science and medicine.

Apart from the doctors, nutritionists, sports psychologists and chiropractors, there is a practitioner of oriental medicine and Allardyce is thinking of adding a teacher of meditation next.

At the training ground the clump of studs on concrete merges with the clatter of laptop keys as people maintain the statistical analysis of matches and training sessions.

There is a comparable commitment at the Riverside to scrutinising each component of the team. Middlesbrough have separate coaches for each element of the side, with McClaren supervising the midfield. As with Bolton, the club leans towards apparently off-beat notions about the conditioning of athletes. The players are expected to wear compression tights for some hours after a match to aid recovery from knocks.

Another technique has them hopping from cold to piping hot baths. It is almost impossible to decide whether that is a futuristic practice or a dying echo of the muscular Christianity of the Victorian public school. With their existence shaped by software and alternative therapies, the footballers must occasionally wonder if they have fallen into the clutches of wonks and cranks.

The whole modern enterprise is open to attack. On being told that Allardyce commissioned psychological profiles of each member of the Bolton squad, a sceptic might ask if it is not his own job to form a deep understanding of his men. That critique, however, overlooks the key point in these experiments.

Allardyce and McClaren pursue a multitude of initiatives and will feel vindicated if there is overall progress. There is a saying that half the money in advertising is wasted but no one knows which half. It is a bit like that for these managers who will adopt any scheme that could conceivably benefit the team.

The similarities between the two men extend to an enthusiasm for enriching their line-ups with players of diverse nationalities who can be signed on loan deals. The pair work with urgency, because each of them appreciates the high barrier to their ambition.

The top three clubs are in the hands of foreign managers, as is the national team. At Chelsea, Claudio Ranieri was preceded by Gianluca Vialli and Ruud Gullit. If the urge to appoint overseas candidates is a fad it has started to look like a lasting one. Tomorrow McClaren or Allardyce will become the first English manager to scoop one of the three main domestic honours since Brian Little took Aston Villa to the League Cup in 1996.

The stock of this weekend's rivals is rising. It is now fractionally easier to perceive McClaren as a future England manager and people muse that Manchester City or even Liverpool could one day be under Allardyce's control. He reckons his present reputation would be higher still if his surname was Allardici.

There is no need, however, to change a vowel. He and McClaren have already remade their identities. The secret of becoming a respected English manager is to be not very English at all.