The preconceptions come thick and fast with Nottingham Forest and Dave Bassett circa 1998. For Forest there is the new and increasingly popular chestnut of leagues within leagues, the theory that five teams can realistically win the Premiership, seven or eight can count on safety, while 10 or 12 will do battle for promotion from the First Division and then again to avoid a quick return. Forest, this theory holds, are in the third of these divisions.
For Bassett there is, and always has been, the assumption that in such a predicament a man called Dave or Harry or Bertie is essential. As long as it is Bassett doing the barking and scratching the fight will go the distance.
Bassett does not disagree with these notions. But, although he has probably not been compared to George Michael before, Bassett would love football for once to listen without prejudice - even through his trademark spitfire delivery it is easy to feel the frustration when he says: "Life and football pigeon-hole you." Getting out of the hole and breaking through the mould is Bassett's aim - for himself and Forest.
Watch Forest this season, albeit in a poor division, and a first step has been taken already. Playing on grass as Brian Clough demanded, Forest, unlike the other two members of the Nationwide "Big Three", Middlesbrough and Sunderland, have not faltered on the run-in. They did lose to their rivals Charlton a month ago but, true to Bassett's quietly-made point after the game that Forest had not lost two consecutive games all season, the subsequent four have all been won. Today, if Forest win at Stockport and other results go their way, Bassett will have overseen his seventh promotion.
It is some record, yet as Bassett argues, getting people to acknowledge the style of the achievement is much more difficult than making them recognise the achievement itself. The memories of Wimbledon and Watford linger.
"It hasn't been like that for years," he said of Route One football, "but Dave Bassett has to carry that albatross. I can't worry about that but it amazes me how inane people can be. They don't want to believe what is in front of their eyes, but at Sheffield United we played with a sweeper, at Crystal Palace we knocked the ball around and at Forest we are playing nice stuff.
"But I have lived with the stereotype since Wimbledon. Because I took Wimbledon from the fourth division to the first on a shoestring budget, then Sheffield United from the third to the first the same way, I'm seen as a wheeler-dealer. It's pigeon-holes." Bassett's reads: "Football's Red Adair - firefighter."
Now though, at 53, Bassett is operating with a budget "infinitely higher than I've been used to" and wants to be Forest's fire-starter. With the bigger wallet he purchased Pierre van Hooijdonk from Celtic for £4.5 million last March - Bassett was general manager at the time, Stuart Pearce was still team manager - Andy Johnson from Norwich for £2.2 million, and the impressive left-back Alan Rogers from Tranmere Rovers for £2 million. Rogers was this week selected for England's B international against Russia on Tuesday.
In Premiership terms, however, Forest look weak. Barnsley, Bolton and Crystal Palace all appear tougher and should those three, promoted last May, be relegated this, the advocates of leagues within a league would have fresh evidence.
"To some extent that theory is right," says Bassett, "but there are always a few hiccups - Tottenham, Everton and Newcastle this season, and in our division Manchester City were meant to be challengers. A couple of years ago Leicester were seen as relegation fodder and they got into Europe. Money does control the game so to move into the higher echelons without it you have to try and build a team, develop the youth system. Otherwise you're hoping for a windfall and that becomes less likely with plcs."
Nevertheless Bassett remains optimistic - "always" - nor is that the mere fulfilment of another stereotype, of the chirpy Londoner. It is just Dave Bassett.
