THERE it is again. The cult of the manager. That belief that a man has some rare combination of charisma, personality and know-how that can truly make him far superior to his colleagues.

Some of us thought that, maybe, we were past it after the departure of Roy Hodgson. Maybe, just as they had done in replacing Sven Goran Eriksson with Steve McClaren and Fabio Capello with Hodgson, the Football Association had come around to the idea that paying a national team manager more does not actually make him any better.

You may need to spend big if you want an in-demand brand name manager. That’s what Eriksson and Capello were at the time. But you wonder where Sam Allardyce fits into this logic.

Allardyce will cost the FA £9 million over two years. That’s £3.5m in wages per season plus another £2m in compensation for Sunderland.

There’s nothing wrong in spending big, if you have the money. The FA do, sort of. Less than a year ago they made deep cuts to staff at St George’s; cuts in the guise of a reorganisation.

Maybe it really was about inefficiencies rather than cash flow and now there’s plenty to go around for Big Sam. Or maybe the bean-counters concluded that 40 badged up coaches at £50,000 a year contribute less to the national game than one Big Sam does in just over six months.Who knows?

But there is something wrong in spending more than you need to. We are talking about Allardyce here, not Pep Guardiola.

He’s 62 in October. And while he has insisted in the past that he could have achieved the same as Guardiola if he had been put in charge of Barcelona, the fact is we will likely never find out.

Why? Because he was coaching Sunderland. A team who finished one spot above relegation last season.

He did well to avoid the drop, but it’s not as if there was a queue of European giants beating a path to his door. Nor is he an up-and-comer who might one day work his way to the Camp Nou, Old Trafford or AllianzArena. He is what he is.

The choice for Allardyce was another season at the Stadium of Light – and anothe relegation battle – with an owner in Ellis Short who may be tempted to up sticks from one day to the next, or the England job.

And the England post means an opportunity to work with some of the best players in the Premier League and a relatively stress-free World Cup qualification campaign, at least until mid-2017.

This is by far the biggest job of Allardyce’s career. Miss this boat and, for Big Sam, at best he’d be looking at another couple of relegation escape acts.

In other words, the FA had all the leverage. There was no need to make him one of the highest paid national team coaches in the world. None whatsoever.

But heck, it’s the England job. And it’s the FA. And throwing money at people who they believe have supernatural gifts is what they do.

All that said, as we indicated last week, Allardyce isn’t necessarily a bad appointment. Certainly relative to the other men they interviewed: Eddie Howe, Steve Bruce and Jurgen Klinsmann.

Howe is 38 and has one season of top-flight football under his belt. To think that the work he does at Bournemouth – a tiny club where he has total, daily control – might translate to the big chair would have been silly. Bruce may have been promoted with Hull City, but – as his sudden departure on Friday indicated – they could not wait to see the back of him. As for Klinsmann, most US fans would have happily gift-wrapped him and personally paddled their way across the pond.

There are some who still see Allardyce as some kind of antiquated long-ball merchant, but that view is unfair. He’s certainly not antiquated – indeed, when it comes to sports science and analytics, he is decidedly forward thinking – and the “direct football” tag may not be such a bad thing. In a short tournament like the World Cup, being awkward and tough to play against yields dividends as the Euros showed.

If he can handle the media pressure – which means being neither a puppet nor their nemesis – and motivate the players without confusing them, then he’s halfway there. Especially since the guys who came before set the bar so low.

The Premier League’s decision to crack down on dissent – including red card awards for “offensive, insulting or abusive language” – was described by chief executive Richard Scudamore as a sign that certain types of behaviour will “no longer be tolerated”.

The curious thing is why it has been tolerated until now. The Laws of the Game – Law 12 specifically – are clear. And, beyond that, Fifa issued their own directives outlining in considerable detail when a red or yellow ought to be shown. Fifa’s directives - available to all on the web via PDF - say on page 57 a player who is guilty of dissent by protesting (verbally or non-verbally) against a referee’s decision “must” be cautioned.

Not “ought to be”. Not “should”. “Must”.

So that being the case, do we need a statement outlining the fact that a yellow card “could” be earned for “confronting an official” or “an aggressive response to decisions” or “running towards an official to contest a decision”?

Equally, on page 81, we read that “a player who is guilty of using offensive, insulting or abusive language or gestures must be sent off”. There’s that word again: must.

The Premier League like to do their own thing and see themselves as different (and better of course) than the rest of football. This statement simply reads like somebody actually flipping through Fifa’s Laws of the Game and saying “Chaps? Maybe we ought to pay attention to this…”

There will always be the odd ex-pro moaning about “common-sense refereeing”. But the rules are there, in black and white. The more pertinent question is why they’ve been ignored until now. Particularly since England are one of four nations with a permanent seat on the International Board, the body that decides and codifies the Laws.