MANUEL Pellegrini and Jose Mourinho follow in a long line of feuding managers.

The war of words which surrounded the game between their Manchester City and Chelsea teams last weekend was probably more interesting than the game.

The apparent animosity between the two men goes back to their days in Spain when the latter followed the former as Real Madrid manager.

And with the two clubs looking like dominating the English scene for some time yet we can expect plenty more clashes between the two.

Some decent little snipes came out, too, like Mourinho pronouncing his rival’s name wrongly and the City boss calling Chelsea a small club.

Some people may think it’s a little bit shocking to see grown men batting verbal nasties back and forth at each other in a manner more suited to the playground than the professional football ground.

But it’s nothing new.

There have always been feuding managers right back to the 1970s when Brian Clough and Don Revie set about each other over Leeds United.

Alex Ferguson and Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger had a long-running tussle, as did Manchester United manager Ferguson and Liverpool’s Rafa Benitez. Fact.

Mourinho and Pep Guardiola had one when they were rival bosses at Real and Barcelona, respectively, and now it’s Mourinho/Pellegrini.

A little further down the animosity scale are managerial spats. Ferguson/Kevin Keegan was a classic, Ferguson/Mancini’s ‘all mouth’ hand gesture duel was fun to see, Alan Pardew’s disgusting rant at Pellegrini wasn’t, and there was Sam Allardyce/Wenger and Allardyce/Benitez when Big Sam was manager of Bolton.

All a bit of fun on the face of it, but usually there is a lot more to it.

When football managers speak you shouldn’t take notice of what they say but why they say it.

They are rarely informative, don’t tell you what team or formation they are going to play, or give interesting analysis and opinions.

So why do we listen to them?

Mind games of course.

The top managers don’t say anything without good reason.

So when Jose Mourinho and Manuel Pellegrini indulge in verbal warfare as they did last week, they are not doing it because they have lost their composure.

Quite the opposite.

They are trying to bring down the opposition to give their own team a better chance of victory.

And what better way to weaken the other side than to undermine their leader?

Ferguson was brilliant at it, his figurative downpulling of the pants of Keegan a masterclass in the art. The latter completely lost it – as did Benitez a few years later – and his Newcastle team lost the title to United.