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Fergie, it is claimed, first made contact with Blair before the 1997 general election, suggesting that the then-leader of the opposition employed a low-risk 'Catenaccio' approach to the final weeks of campaign. Blair obeyed and Labour cruised to a landslide victory.

Later, the Scotsman told Blair to focus only on important issues, and to forget about peripheral matters. He even said the PM should 'click' in and out of conversations, only paying attention when something relevant was uttered. No doubt much to the chagrin of Blair's wife Cherie.

But what if he had lent an ear to some of the Premiership era's other leading tacticians?

JOSE MOURINHO

Mourinho schools Blair in the art of psychological warfare. This basically consists of taunting his political rivals and whingeing when things go against him. "The Tories are not a big party. David Cameron has never won anything," declares Blair ahead of a crucial education vote.

He loses, before blaming the defeat on speaker Michael Martin, accusing him of having an inappropriate relationship with the Conservative leader.

Blair turns his attentions abroad and invades Iraq, declaring, as Mourinho did of his time at Porto: "There is God, and after God, me." But the army opt for a conservative strategy, preferring to grind out a resulting spite of the massive array of expensive weaponry at their disposal.

ARSENE WENGER

Under the advice of the Arsenal manager, Blair focuses on foreign recruitment, combing Europe's top governments for talent. He courts controversy when he poaches 14-year-old Dutch prodigy Dirk van Timmen from the European Youth Parliament and appoints him Education Secretary.

The changes do not stop there, and by the time of the 2005 general election Blair is one of only two Britons left in the cabinet, the average age of which has plummeted to the low 20s (only the continued presence of John Prescott - Labour's answer to Ray Parlour - keeps the average up).

But scandal envelops the government when Van Timmen attempts to vote despite being below the legal minimum age and is thrown out of office.

GRAEME SOUNESS

Souness advises Blair to cut out the touchy-feely management style. Out go informal chats over coffee and biscotti at Downing Street - in come fractious team meetings amid spartan surroundings deep in the bowels of Whitehall.

The combative Scotsman tells the PM he must pick a fight with one of his star players to assert his authority. Blair obliges, clashing with Chancellor and notorious political heavyweight Gordon Brown, accusing him of deliberately sabotaging the pensions system in order to engineer a transfer to the Foreign Office.

The pair scuffle until forcibly separated by Harriett Harman and David Blunkett. Brown is cast into the political wilderness, but Blair is blamed for the subsequent economic slump.

Alex Chick