On The Premiership:Tommy Docherty probably summed it up best. "There is a place for the media in football," the former Manchester United manager observed. "But I don't think they have dug it yet."
It's a fine line, but the philosophy is dated. Modern-day coaches might share Docherty's scepticism over the usefulness of the press but they cannot ignore it. In the world of rolling sports news, official club television stations and innumerable, insatiable websites, managers must have a politician's eye for presentation.
The master is, of course, Jose Mourinho. The Portuguese's war with his board at Chelsea is still being waged, but conclusive proof that he has victory in sight came after Saturday's meeting with Bolton, where supporters reacted to the death of their Premiership title dream by bellowing the name of their leader to the rooftops.
The Portuguese has played his hand brilliantly, but did we expect any different? Mourinho is the benchmark for the modern football manager, and his approach to media manipulation should be chronicled in a textbook for those who dare to follow in his footsteps.
Public proclamations have been as pointed as a Samurai sword, while silences have assumed the significance of one of Harold Pinter's pregnant pauses. With the press and Chelsea punters hanging on his every word, Mourinho knows that keeping schtum can often speak volumes.
He has certainly outfoxed Roman Abramovich. Set against his manager's snappy soundbites, the perpetually silent Russian has appeared distant and aloof, merely giving credence to Mourinho's dark hints at boardroom subterfuge.
Even when Mourinho gets it wrong, he gets it right. He dropped a real clanger in suggesting that Chelsea should have been awarded a penalty in last Wednesday's Champions League encounter with Liverpool, despite Alvaro Arbeloa's handball taking place so far outside the penalty area even Didier Drogba chose not to complain.
Mourinho used his post-match TV interview to harangue Markus Merk, the referee, grumbling: "I don't understand why we don't have penalties when they are so clear." By the time he reached the official press conference, his tone had softened: "I don't know whether it was inside the area."
Then, he duly confirmed to Chelsea's website that he had, in fact, been completely wrong.
For most managers, such a climbdown would be humiliating. But, whether through accident or design, the non-controversy actually helped Mourinho's cause: it diverted the media's attention so completely that more time was spent discussing the manager's paranoia than his team's potentially costly failure to crush an inexplicably lacklustre Liverpool.
Mourinho's Chelsea paymasters like to consider themselves equally savvy, but their stock has now fallen so low that any public pronouncement from the corridors of power at Stamford Bridge - and there have been precious few of those - only makes them look even more foolish.
A new nadir was reached a fortnight ago when Peter Kenyon confirmed Mourinho "would not be sacked", as if this represented an act of beatific munificence for which the club's most successful ever manager should be damn well grateful.
His remarks brought to mind Alex Ferguson's response to Kenyon's claim in November that Chelsea would become the world's biggest club: "I'm not quaking. I know Peter, remember."
Mourinho's triumph over his dastardly bosses not only keeps one of club football's most gifted managerial minds in the Premiership, but also represents a thumping vindication for free speech in a league where even Lawrie Sanchez, Fulham's caretaker, feels it necessary to operate with not one but two personal aides at press conferences.
One of the season's great pleasures has been watching Chelsea try, but fail, to rein in their chattering manager but it would have been dispiriting for his struggle to end in a sacking.
Instead, this has turned into a grand week for the blabbermouths.
Cristiano Ronaldo, who is as eloquent with his tongue as he is with his feet, felt no need to restrain himself when confronted with yet another cheating allegation - from Mourinho, inevitably - while Joey Barton delivered a damning, but utterly incontrovertible, analysis of Manchester City's woes, indicting the chairman, manager and players in one fell swoop.
Barton's integrity has not always been soap-powder white but his pithy put-downs remain beyond reproach, even if his latest broadside pales in comparison to his joyously indiscrete assessment of England players' post-World Cup autobiographies: "We got beat in the quarter-finals. I played like s***. Here's my book."
Sadly, if predictably, he has now been issued with a media ban in a bid to prevent any further tirades. We may have the heard the last from Barton, but Mourinho will not be so easy to silence.
