On The Premiership: It is surely not a coincidence that the BBC schedules its hospital drama Casualty on the same evening as Match of the Day: the two have more in common than you might imagine.
Football is an unhealthy business. Gordon Strachan tells a story about a manager who once ranted and raved at his players so incessantly during a match that he briefly lost his sight and had to be guided back to the bench by his assistants while the game hurtled on regardless.
Temporary blindness is a common affliction among coaches - just ask Arsene Wenger - but this is no laughing matter. As the season speeds towards its climax, it is the managers, as well as the players, who will be stretched to their physical limits.
Some will be more at risk than others. Life may be tough at the top, but it can be downright horrible at the bottom, and the travails of Steve Bruce should make all those players considering whether to leave the sanctuary of their mock Tudor mansions for the managerial bear-pit think twice.
Bruce's expression has become increasingly drawn as a result of Birmingham's relegation struggles, and his resilience was tested again in yesterday's conclusive, 3-0 defeat at Manchester United. Bruce is a proud man, and he will have found the experience of walking off at the final whistle, defeated and surely doomed to the Championship, a chastening one.
But that trudge must have been a springtime stroll compared to the walk down the St Andrew's tunnel at the end of the 7-0 FA Cup defeat to Liverpool last week. It was torturous to watch from an armchair, let alone the dug-out, and the overriding feeling for Bruce at the end of his most calamitous 90 minutes in football was one of sympathy.
That match served as definitive proof that, occasionally, a manager's fortunes rest entirely at the whim of his players. Bruce knew the gravity of his plight before that quarter-final tie, and presumably launched into a pre-match Churchillian tirade in a desperate attempt to administer a shot of adrenaline to his weary troops before they strode out to face a palpably superior foe. The phrase "in their faces" was doubtless used, maybe more than once.
Instead, Birmingham fell flat on their own fizogs by conceding within 50 seconds, leaving Bruce to produce his contender for the campaign's most iconic image. First he drew both arms up and over the back of his head in the manner of a defender who has just sliced into his net from an improbable angle, before allowing them to slide back down his face, probably to muffle a Munch-esque howl.
From then on, nothing seemed to matter. The camera cut back to Bruce after every one of Liverpool's subsequent six goals, and on each occasion he appeared incapable of mustering even a grimace. All that was left was a numbing disbelief and a desire to crawl down the nearest deep, dark hole.
Bruce now knows the truth of the adage that there is no lonelier place than the touchline, but at least he is in good company. It is 10 years since Kevin Keegan delivered possibly the definitive display of managerial despair when Stan Collymore drove in a low shot deep into injury time to seal an extraordinary, 4-3 victory for Liverpool and inflict another dent on Newcastle's Premiership ambitions.
Keegan - an emotional character at the best of times - lurched forward in the Anfield away dug-out and collapsed on to a set of advertising hoardings, as if he had been popped with a pin. As it turned out, Newcastle's title hopes had been similarly deflated.
It is easy to scoff at managers complaining of stress. The job is exceptionally well remunerated and offers exhilarating highs, but the lows can be dangerously debilitating. Three years ago, Bolton manager Sam Allardyce agreed to be attached to a heart monitor during a Premiership fixture. His rate went from 46 to 87 beats per minute at kick-off and peaked at 160 during the match, more than twice the average resting rate.
He is not alone. In recent seasons, Graeme Souness, Joe Kinnear and Gerard Houllier have all suffered major heart problems as a direct result of stress. Others have not been so lucky. Scotland still mourns the untimely passing of one of their greatest managers, Jock Stein, who perished after a massive coronary during an international with Wales at Hampden Park in 1985.
Perhaps the only shock is that more coaches have not perished in similar circumstances since. But over the coming weeks, Bruce and his managerial peers would do well to remember Stein and reflect that, for all its hype and hysteria, football is a game - nothing more and nothing less.
