I WONDER if a study has ever been made into the connection between the standard of training facilities and a football club’s success.

It tends to follow that the sides with the most money have the best facilities and can afford to recruit the best players and staff – and titles and trophies almost always follow.

So it will be interesting to see just how far a League Two club like Bury – with its League Two budget – can go after moving into the training base of the Premier League champions.

Shakers manager David Flitcroft believes secret training sessions at Carrington, before they moved in officially this week, helped to inspire his players to back-to-back wins against Cheltenham and Hartlepool.

And it is hard to argue with the Bury boss after experiencing the giddy vibe around the place during a press conference on Thursday.

I sat there typing away in the dining area as the players cooked up their breakfast and you could sense a feeling of disbelief.

I caught former captain Jim McNulty gazing out of the window, shaking his head as if to say "just how did I get here?"

It really must be a dizzying transformation for a squad of players that are used to Lower Gigg – the club’s former training base.

There is no comparison between the two. Lower Gigg only had one boggy pitch and there were no facilities. The players used to have to walk back in their full kit to get a shower after training.

At Carrington they have everything at their fingertips.

After breakfast, the Bury players skipped out to the artificial pitch for a warm-up before getting down to full training on one of the site’s six turf pitches.

Presumably, when they finished they returned to the fitness and medical centre for a massage, before hitting the gym.

Flitcroft and chairman Stewart Day talked about the advantage Carrington could give them over their League Two rivals and I don’t think you can overstate the point.

After all, if Carrington was good enough for the Premier League champions then it should do very nicely for Bury.

Manchester City might have moved on to bigger and better things, but they managed two titles while training at the Shakers’ current base so it follows that Flitcroft’s players could feel a similar benefit.

If they manage to bridge the seven-point gap to the top three in their final 14 games of the current campaign – or at least storm the play-offs and end the season on a high at Wembley – people might point to the Carrington factor.

But the real truth of the matter is that football games are not won on the training pitch, and while Carrington may play its part in Bury’s future, it is still the players who have to earn the points.