The increasing influx of experienced foreign coaches in the Premier League has only further diminished the job prospects of any aspirational managers, while anybody who isn't a cockney or hasn't played for West Ham ('footballing academy', my arse) is up against the odds if they fancy trying to squeeze into the crowded Sky Sports studios. Whether they might be better trying next door at BT Sport - whose cavernous new facility houses a four-man punditry-panel colossus - is by the by.
Because Danny Higginbotham is illuminating a slightly different route. Since incurring a serious knee injury while at Stoke in 2011, the 34-year-old former Man United trainee has found fitness - and first-team football - hard to come by. Not deterred, Higginbotham began dabbling in punditry with several broadcasters, distinguishing himself increasingly well to the point where he was a big feature in the BBC's coverage of this month's transfer deadline day. He's even started writing a column for Stoke-on-Trent's Sentinel newspaper (oo-er).
All fairly standard so far, you might think. But Higginbotham isn't embracing the comfortable life just yet, and unlike many of his peers has demonstrated that he is not too proud to drop down the divisions to wherever he can find first-team football and continue his playing career. Through a battle for fitness he has meandered his way down to the Blue Square Premier (the Conference, if you're one of us old gits), where he now plays with Chester FC.
He is one of several players cutting this admirable path. Rory Delap, 37, moved to Burton Albion this summer; James Beattie, 35, first played for and - as of the end of last season - now manages Accrington Stantley; Dele Adebola, 38, now plies his trade for Rushall Olympic in the Northern Premier League Premier Division; Barry Hayles, 41, is turning out for Southern Premier Division side Arlesey Town this season. City the season before last; Frank Sinclair, 41, is the player-manager at Conference North outfit Colwyn Bay.
But Higginbotham isn't just content with "getting my love of football back" at Chester - in the past few days he has declared himself available for selection for the national team of Gibraltar, who are the newest full-members of UEFA following a successful application in May of this year.
As Higginbotham explained to BBC Radio 5 Live: "The opportunity might be there to play against some very big European countries - what an experience that would be. It was something I couldn't turn down."
However, there are serious issues beneath this feel-good factor that persist unresolved. The restricted educational opportunities of people who had to prioritise their sport from such an early age represent an obstacle which the game has only begun to get a handle on in the past decade. Not every player will enter their 30s able to reel off a newspaper column or articulate on live television the finer points of Chelsea's new formation.
This leads into the broader and undeniable problem of racial stratification - both within the game and in the society that feeds the game each new generation of players. The number of black managers currently among England's 92 league clubs (three - can you name them?) is greatly disproportionate to the number of black players at the same level. Thus the positive is tarnished somewhat - that such luminaries as Frank Sinclair are giving back to the grassroots game not because they want to but because it is the best they can achieve in the current environment.
Higginbotham's is a satisfying story, but its exceptional nature serves only to highlight the fundamental problems that football continues to ignore.
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Photo credit: Ronnie Macdonald; Ingy the Wingy
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