A good few years ago now, when I was working with England, Chris Waddle, who was then playing in France with Marseille, used to regale us all before matches with the wonderful way the continentals played a passing game compared to what he had left behind.

I was then asked at one stage to go over to see him play against Monaco, a request hard to refuse, especially when you are in the best seats.

The football certainly was a little different for most of the game but with Chris’s team behind with just a few minutes to go guess what happened? The whole team lumped it, humped it, whatever you want to call it, up the field.

Even Chris himself in wide positions didn’t hesitate to change his style of play. Rather than dribbling and passing he had two touches – the second of which was to hit it high into the opposition penalty area.

The point I am making is that any team in the world if they are trailing with only a few minutes to go will want to get the ball into the opposition area as quickly as possible.

This happened to Manchester United, when they were behind against West Ham.

Louis van Gaal put on one of his tallest midfielders, stuck him up front and gave instructions to get it up to him as quickly as possible.

This new tactic obviously changed the game and resulted in a last minute equaliser for United.

In the press conferences afterwards Sam Allardyce, who knowing him had his tongue in cheek, called Van Gaal’s team ‘long ball United’.

Mr Van Gaal, who I have never met but who looks a serious type of person, responded a couple of days later at his own press conference with sheets of paper with diagrams and facts and figures to try and prove that his team hit less long balls in a normal game than West Ham.

This did not, thankfully, reflect every Dutch manager’s sense of humour, because in the same week our own Ronald Koeman, who is doing such a magnificent job at St Mary’s, replied to a comment made by our last manager Mr Pochettino in an interview abroad.

Pochettino had said he had a harder job at Tottenham because he was new to the club and lots of changes had to be made when he arrived, as opposed to his successor at St Mary’s who came into a ready-made team which made the job much easier.

Mr Koeman, left, replied to this by saying he had only come here for a holiday. We all know how difficult it was coming in.

The fact our last manager forgot to mention was that half of the outfield team had left and Ronald had only a matter of weeks to assemble a team, who immediately the season started gave the impression they had played together for a long time and our league position proves how successful he has been.

I would have normally made comment about Aston Villa’s Paul Lambert not looking as if he ever smiled, never mind having a sense of humour, but sadly he was dismissed this week after a long run of games with hardly scoring a goal, never mind winning.

He has actually the record for anywhere in Europe with his team having only scored 12 goals in 25 games.

Another former Saints manager has been more in the news than he I’m sure would have liked to be, Nigel Pearson.

It goes with the territory that the higher up you perform the more attention you get, the more you are in the spotlight, the more journalists are at your press conferences and there is much wider coverage.

Nigel, unfortunately, got involved earlier in the season with disgruntled supporters shouting at him at home games, with his reply not too favourable. When given the chance to apologise he didn’t.

The latest situation saw him in a funny way in some cases standing on the touchline but being upended by two players in a tackle.

He then proceeded to pretend to choke the opposition player who he was basically laying on top of and when he stood up held him back by his shirt. All he had to do afterwards in the press conference say it was a joke and how funny it had been but instead of that he went the other way and said he could look after himself.

When this of course went on for days afterwards he described himself as being different, for instance changing his mobile telephone number twice a year and more or less said when he left the training ground he was in a different world and didn’t want to be interrupted.

I think Nigel, who I had a lot of time and admiration for during his short period at St Mary’s, has got to realise there is a thin line between confidence and arrogance, and be careful with the size of the spotlight on top managers now that he doesn’t cross that line.