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In the madness of football's transfer market, philosophy is the hardest transplant of all.

A good striker will always find the net and top-class goalkeepers will take their safe hands from one club to another.

But for young coaches making their way in the game, methodology will often survive only if the players are good enough to put your ideas into practice.

Liam Manning has made a convincing start to his managerial career – and now, in a division heavily populated by big beasts, the concrete cows of Milton Keynes are proving one of the most durable species of all.

Under Manning's tutelage, MK Dons are flying high in League One, currently above Sunderland, Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich, Portsmouth, Bolton and Charlton among others.

And he's doing it following the principles he learned from Pep Guardiola as part of Manchester City's portfolio of clubs, the City Football Group, working in Belgium.

At SK Lommel, a melting pot of 14 different nationalities and four languages, he guided a team from a small town of 34,000 people near the Dutch border to third place in Belgium's second tier last season.

Fair play to MK Dons – not a sentence you have always read about a franchise – for recognising