A look at Jose Mourinho and Claude Puel before Southampton face Manchester United in the EFL Cup final at Wembley

To say there is a bit of difference between the way that Jose Mourinho and Claude Puel go about essentially the same job would perhaps qualify as the understatement of the century.

Whilst Mourinho is all about showmanship and theatre, Puel is a study in measured reflection.

However different their methods, the pair have guided their teams to Wembley for the EFL Cup final, and will go head-to-head to land the first major trophy of the season.

But what we will see from them as individuals on the day is going to be something very different.

While accepting that Manchester United are amongst the very biggest clubs in the world, and Saints are somewhat smaller in stature, the jobs aren’t that different.

You are still expected to achieve success – and even at United these days that is not necessarily winning the title.

Both are managing multi-millionaire players, trying to balance the internal politics of the job and manage expectations from the fans.

And so much of this is conducted through the media.

While managers have always been vital figures at a football club, one major shift over the big money years of more recent times has been the extra focus that has fallen upon them.

Whereas once upon the time the players were very much the stars, the people in the public eye, it is now the managers who more than ever take the spotlight.

The reason is that clubs have shut down media access to players, and, in its place, has come more manager interviews, which are now required to fill huge swathes of air time on TV in the 24 hour rolling news era, as well as increased column inches in newspapers and online.

It has quickly come to pass that these elite 20 men in the Premier League are really seen as being the Premier League.

Of course the players still go out and score the goals, make the tackles and the heroic saves, but those in the spotlight before and after games are the managers.

They are the subject of greater scrutiny, greater criticism, their success and failure as individuals now taken above any consideration of whether the players have done their jobs and earned their salaries or not.

The pressure on Claudio Ranieri at Leicester this season, just months after pulling off arguably the greatest managerial coup in the history of professional football, just goes to show the environment they now work in.

The money, the TV coverage, has turned football from sport into theatre.

We want heroes and villains more than ever. We engage online more than ever. We pick over every cough and splutter, every nuance of the game, the formations, the tactics and the personalities.

All of the above taken into context means that today’s Premier League manager is, in effect, a sort of superstar.

If football really is rock and roll these days, then the managers are the lead singers.

It has all moved towards a culture where managers are, therefore, huge characters.

They thrive on the attention, they drive the media, they court controversy, and handle players without much of a care in the world in the best way they can.

Mourinho fits the job description of the modern manager just about perfectly.

Of course he has got the results to make him wildly successful, but his aura, his persona, is the key to his success more than any great coaching secrets he has unlocked.

Mourinho has made himself into a larger than life public figure.

He is so often controversial. He always speaks his mind. He uses mind games to unsettle opponents, even officials. He defends his players when the time is right, and criticises too.

He can be emotional, rash, hot headed, but it all feeds into the game he is playing.

Ultimately, he, like any other manager, is driven by results, and he believes rattling cages along the way helps him achieve this.

Certainly his greatest successes in a trophy laden career have come at times when he has managed to build a siege mentality, to make a squad believe, often incorrectly, that it is them against the world.

It has brought an underdog spirit to clubs who are not underdogs at all, and forged deep bonds with players who would do anything he asked.

The flip side is that when this approach goes wrong, it is utterly spectacular – just see his fall from grace during his second spell at Chelsea for evidence.

This approach could not be further away from Puel.

While there is the same deep seated ambition and drive to succeed, you could not accuse Puel of flamboyancy or excitement or showmanship.

After pretty much every press conference he holds, there is a now infuriatingly predictable murmur in the press room with comments like ‘I couldn’t even hear what he was saying’.

After a press conference at a very high profile club, one well known reporter didn’t even wait for Puel to leave the room before announcing at the top of his voice that he was boring and would get sacked soon enough.

It didn’t cause a ruckus. Puel just quietly continued his journey out of the room.

Before the last round of Premier League games, Mourinho’s last pre-match press conference was apparently packed to the rafters, while Puel’s, before Sunderland, was attended by three journalists, one of which was the Daily Echo.

This is supposed to be the biggest league in the world, with huge global interest.

Most media outlets have decided he is not newsworthy and so don’t bother sending people to cover him or Saints, other than on matchdays.

It has resulted in far less coverage of the club, but ultimately while the TV money rolls in it doesn’t matter that much.

But the point really is the contrast to Mourinho.

Puel’s approach is not wrong. It’s just very different.

He has confessed he has taken a lot from Arsene Wenger, his manager at Monaco and long-time mentor, in terms of the ability to analyse a game.

In fact, if anything, he has taken it to an extreme, because Wenger still regularly says and does things in the heat of moment that cause him problems, such as his latest touchline ban, and is regularly willing to indulge in winding up opponents.

Puel seems as though he wants to avoid any controversy.

There is not even really a language barrier there. Puel’s English is not that bad.

His public statements are repetitive because that is what he wants to present. Those who dealt with him in France when he was speaking his native language don’t suggest he was much different.

He almost goes off the other end of the scale to Mourinho as a deliberate tactic, a deliberate attempt to stay calm to the point he almost seems too calm, especially in the white heat of an immediate post-match media round.

It perhaps is inevitable in these times, therefore, that some fans have found it hard to warm to him. It probably would be fair to say some players too.

But make no mistake, Puel is good man, he is a nice man, he is always kind and respectful and courteous.

He is not a lead singer that is going to smash up the drum kit and storm off stage halfway through a set because he’s annoyed by the sound quality.

He’s a guy who you want to succeed. You want to believe you don’t have to be demonstrative and over the top to be a trophy winning top flight manager these days.

It’s good that we are not all cut from the same cloth. There is nothing wrong with different.

Should he lift the League Cup while Mourinho picks up a runner’s-up medal it will be proof his style can succeed.