So many different fitness trainers, motivators, sports psychologists and their professional brothers have passed through Hillsborough in recent weeks that local residents would not be surprised to discover that the old stadium has been turned over to an alternative medicine group.

A club near the bottom of the Premiership will try anything which might act as a levitational force. Thus manager David Pleat supplements all this outside help with his own brand of amateur psychology, which after 20-odd years listening to professional footballers' professional whinges about problems real and imagined, is a skill almost worthy of letters after his name.

Pleat has been asking his struggling players whether they are happy with their homes, whether their wives are happy with the wallpaper, whether the cat/dog/budgie/hamster has been sick.

There is only so much of this minutia an intelligent man can take, which is why Pleat admits: "To be honest, you feel like saying, fuck it, go away and play golf, take your wives shopping or whatever you want to do and come back on Saturday and play.

"You know you can't, of course. So you talk to the players, ask about their missus. Patrick Blondeau, for instance, has been stuck in a hotel for 12 weeks and his wife is not happy about it. Those who have seen him play would doubt him but that situation can only get better and his play with it.

"You become a coach, a manager, a doctor, a psychologist, a bit of everything. And you have to know who you can scream at and who you have to nurse through situations like these. The trouble with footballers is that it is not easy for them to talk intelligently about their problems. To analyse themselves not on a blame basis but a shame basis. Why don't you do this or do that?"

The danger of dabbling in amateur psychology is that before long, you feel a compulsion to jump on to the couch yourself. In Pleat's case, you feel that he permanently lives there, with only his own thoughts and the voices of dead colleagues rattling around his head to help him.

"I remember all the good advice from colleagues, all dead now. Jimmy Sirrel told me to always be myself. Jimmy Bloomfield said that the most important thing is to know what's important."

As sage-like, almost Oscar Wildelike as this sounds, one cannot quite understand its use when your team is in dire trouble and both supporters and directors are on your back. Far more practical, one suspects, is the advice from the more relaxed Harry Haslam to count to 10 slowly. Except that one cannot imagine Pleat getting past two before being interrupted by another thought racing through his brain.

His latest hope is that the sight of Old Trafford's Theatre Of Dreams today will stir something in his under performers, like the patients in Awakenings. "The only thing to fear is fear", he repeats another mantra, "the players should enjoy a stage like Old Trafford. They should enjoy the Premiership - some players would give their right arms to play in it."

The sad truth is that some professionals today are more in the Tony Hancock mould: unwilling to risk as much as an armful of blood. In Wednesday's position, the players might also remember that United scored seven there last week against the hapless Premiership imposters, Barnsley.

Pleat is such an honest and likeable man that he questions his own abilities as much as the players, but says: "I can coach as well as anyone in the country. Last year, we maximised the ability of every player in the team. This season, we have had massive injuries - not one player is ever present. And the players who have come in have not quite coped with the standard."

Any general could tell Pleat that losing armies always have an overcrowded casualty unit and he admits that his team needs to find a collective will and inner motivation. He defends, too, his decision to sell former England striker David Hirst, saying: "You have to keep trading."

In a sport which axes its managers with the casualness of Jacobites, Pleat has felt the kiss of Madame Guillotine only once, when Leicester removed him in January, 1991. He knows Wednesday's directors will not be afraid to sharpen the blade and, perhaps a little unhealthily, second guesses their reactions to results.

"Can you imagine the boardroom when we lost 5-2 at Derby after being 2-1 up? The end of the world is nigh. But directors are hoping and praying a manager will pull through because change will cost them and they have to start all over again, not knowing whether it will turn out any better.

"That Derby defeat was Black Wednesday but we got over that. We drew at Villa, beat Everton, lost narrowly to Spurs. Then we ballsed it up against Crystal Palace last Saturday."

He bemused reporters after that match by saying: "I feel very calm because something has happened this week which reminded me that football is not everything." Questioned further, he walked out.

He says: "It's just that sometimes, things happen to reroute your mind and keep things in perspective. It could be someone having their leg off or having a stroke. Even the death of Princess Diana, a beautiful life taken away, which reminds you of football's place. You need reminding and you musn't panic. What will be will be."

You find yourself seriously worrying about a manager who says that there is not even pleasure in winning anymore because you have to come in on Monday and sort out another lot of trivial issues.

"There are so many outside influences that piss you off and annoy you. This job consumes you completely and I mean completely." When you ask if football management is an impossible job, he pleads the fifth. "There is no rest", is all he will say, though you hesitate to tell him to lie down in case the advice is misunderstood.

Guardian Service.