The only story in town is the managers, he says. He's correct

I went to see my good friend Gazza the other day, in Notting Hill, in a little hotel where he's been staying quietly for a few months. Quietly by his standards means staying in his room most of the time, but now and again going out and getting hounded by paparazzi looking for him to do something stupid.

Next to his little room is the hotel bar and, even worse for someone supposedly off the sauce, it's a self-service little bar, where you pour your own drinks and sign a chitty. But he was in great fettle, put on a big of weight, looked healthy and cheerful - except he was moaning about the back pages.

"Where are all the players?" he asked.

You what?

"The back pages, they're all about managers - or referees, or the FA. Why have the players disappeared?"

Thinking about it since, counting up all the column inches, using both fingers and a piece of string, I estimate that Fergie, José and Arsène in the past month have had more coverage than all the Premiership players put together.

Wenger is clearly cracking up. By far the cleverest, most intellectual of the three and, up to this season, the calmest. And yet I always worried about that tight lip, that drawn expression, that carefully studied emotionlessness. I suspected he was grinding his teeth at night. He's probably got awful jaw ache and stomach ulcers, poor lad, from bottling it up. Now it's all bursting out, in mad accusations and displacement persecutions.

There's also been a reversal in Fergie's personality this season, giving us another narrative to follow. He's never hidden his emotions, giving us simple clues, like going red in the face, steam coming out of his ears. And that's just talking to some craven reporter at Radio 5 - or used to be before they all fell out. And inside the dressing room, we know he's let fly physically.

But now he's gone all avuncular, beaming and smiling, kissing babies, patting heads. At home, he must be a little ray of sunshine, humming tunelessly over his porridge, "Oh what a wonderful morning, everything's going my way, och aye".

José, the Portuguese peasant philosopher, is proving dignified in adversity, not bleating too much about Chelsea's injuries, acknowledging Man United's successes. So far. But we know he's working himself up for a last crazy rocket launch on our logic before the season is out.

So we watch them, as we would a soap. And we can do this, unlike in the olden days, since for commercial reasons they have to do proper interviews after every game, for TV and press, plus press conferences at the training ground during the week. We had weirdly warped personalities before, such as Shankly and Brian Clough, whose pearls reporters hung around for all week, but there wasn't the access, or the enormous coverage of football on TV and the press which now has to be catered for each day.

At the same time, players have taken a media back seat. They can't be arsed to sell interviews to the tabloids, as they are so rich, and anyway their agents have done deals with Nike or HarperCollins. Look carefully, and you'll see that any proper star interview these days is hinged to some product. Managers don't like them talking anyway, or just put up the dummies to make banal post-match comments. And you can't doorstep them in the car park after a game any more. Straight into their Ferraris.

So Gazza is right. We're in the age of the managers.

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