Dario Gradi is the longest-serving manager in the country and next year will celebrate the 20th anniversary of his arrival at Crewe Alexandra, a club he has revolutionised and earned endless plaudits for the youth policy which continues to turn out talent by the bucket load.
As one of the most respected managers in the game, it's always worth listening to Dario's views and, having witnessed many changes in the game, we asked for his thoughts on the latest revolution set to hit football - salary capping. And wonders, if clubs had been run properly in the first place, would it have been necessary at all.
The Crewe boss says: "The first thing that strikes me is that they are putting restrictions on people running their own businesses because they are incapable of running their businesses correctly without some restrictions being placed on them.
"When people say this is long overdue it's only long overdue because they have run their businesses so badly. That's my first reaction, so I don't see any advantage for a club like us where we run our business as we want and manage to do it successfully.
"My next reaction is that it will have to be policed and that means extra people employed and that means extra money going out of the football clubs and I don't know how they are going to do that anyway, so, it is a very naïve situation brought about by the incompetence of the people running football."
Gradi speaks from a position of strength on this one because, as many people would recognise, Crewe is one of a number of clubs (although there aren't that many) who have been run successfully with limited finances and on a budget the manager knows he cannot exceed. All of which begs the question: if Crewe can do it why can't others?
"That's right," Dario continues, "and the other thing is, you look at the Premier League and say that they are out of this. Presumably they are out of this because they get so much television money although they are probably not going to get as much money next time the deal comes around. You read about clubs owing £70 million or £100 million and the mind boggles.
"They are not having a capping situation because, presumably, they think they can go bust and someone else will pick up the tab and they can keep going. But it isn't just happening in England; Lazio are cash-strapped, Fiorentina went bust, Real Madrid owe millions, so, I don't pretend to understand those sorts of figures or how people operate in that way.
"I was reading about Robert Maxwell the other day and how he was able to run his businesses and just accrue enormous debts without anybody doing anything about it. Crazy!"
So is this a positive move? "I suppose, if you like, with football, this is somebody trying to do something about it, but I think the books should be examined and clubs that are unlikely to survive a season should not be allowed to start a season and I think clubs should go to the wall.
"There are probably too many professional football clubs, full-time professional football clubs, for the industry and if they can't run them correctly there's no reason why some of them shouldn't go bankrupt and disappear."
Strong statement that from Dario, but what about the issue of squads being limited to a certain number of players. Is that going to work? Again, he pulls no punches as he concludes: "The first thing I would be doing is to see what the figures were and then I would be looking to see, if the limitations were not satisfactory for me, how I could work around it and avoid it.
"Whenever people come up with new rules and regulations the first thing people who are involved do is to see how they can get around it and they do usually, if it doesn't suit them. That wouldn't be doing anything immoral or dishonest, it would just be avoiding regulations that don't suit."
