Let’s be clear from the start: this column unreservedly supports the concept of a statutory professional qualification for football managers. By extension, it understands why, whenever a club try to install a manager who lacks that statutory qualification, representatives of the League Managers Association (LMA) start jumping up at the window and barking.

After all, if the idea ever took hold that any old pal of the chairman could manage a professional football club, anarchy would surely ensue. In this sense, the Uefa Pro Licence is the slip of paper standing between all of us and chaos.

Also, consider what would happen to the public standing of football management as a vocation if you did not need to pass an exam to get through the door. The job would lose its claim to be taken seriously as a formally regulated, thoroughly disciplined, professional calling involving a lot of shouting and pointing and a fair bit of work in the week with cones. In the absence of the Uefa Pro, people would be able to say that any old nutter could do it, and that wouldn’t be fair.

Nevertheless, despite all this, we can’t help feeling that a little flexibility may be in order, at least on a case-by-case basis. After ultimately futile, badge-related non-scandals involving Glenn Roeder and Gareth Southgate, the latest manager to have his fitness to govern called into question on a technicality is Avram Grant, who (it may have come to your attention) has replaced José Mourinho and become the first-team coach at Chelsea. Grant has no Uefa Pro Licence - and, indeed, for all we know, may, until very recently, have thought Uefa Pro was available only on Xbox.

Now, there may be significant reasons why Grant should not have been handed the reins of a top Barclays Premier League club with ambitions to dominate in Europe. Some of those reasons may become painfully apparent in forthcoming weeks. Alternatively, they may not (and, you would have to admit, Chelsea looked pretty hot in the Carling Cup tie away to Hull City this week). But, as our researches over the past few days reveal, a lack of relevant qualifications on paper is not one of those reasons.

For instance, Grant is, we have come to understand, the holder of an internationally valid driving licence. Moreover, it is our belief that he passed the associated driving test first time. Or, if not first time, second time. Early doors, anyway. And people may carp and say it was easier in those days, without the written exam aspect. But you still had to reverse around a corner and not run anybody over, so credit where it’s due.

Furthermore, in swimming, we believe Grant to be in possession of the following three certificates: Prelim 1, Prelim 2 and 200 metres freestyle. We also believe that he is the holder of a Life Saving Skills badge, grade one, which is the one where you have to jump in wearing your pyjamas and then get out again without drowning. They don’t just give those away with cereal, you know.

As a Scout, Grant’s credentials are not open to question. He has, we are led to believe, badges for knots, cookery, camp-fire safety and singing and received a gold woggle for his efforts in bottle-top collection. We also understand that he was accepted as a member of the Tufty Club in 1961 and maintained that membership, unopposed, until 1964.

In addition, we are persuaded that, at an unspecified village dog show in 1989, Grant was the handler of a pale brown Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier that took the first-place rosette in the Obedience (Sit, Stay & Recall) category. The dog was also placed second in Best Turned Out Dog and third in Dog Most Like Its Owner – a tidy afternoon’s work by anybody’s standards.

Plus, of course, Grant brings to the table 16 years of club management in Israel (for which he acquired the relevant badges) and four years in international management. And let’s not forget his year as technical director at Portsmouth, which must count for something, even if nobody seems to be quite sure what.

All in all, then, if you’re going to tell me that Grant isn’t amply equipped to shout, point, use cones and take off Andriy Shevchenko after 60 minutes, I’m going to tell you that you’re an unusually fussy person. In fact, with all due respect to the LMA and looking at some of the people operating with Uefa Pro Licences, Chelsea’s new first-team coach may be significantly overqualified and to make him sit an exam that he doesn’t strictly need, during a time when he must be pretty busy, would be an insult to him and to the people who are placing their faith in him at this difficult time.

Arsenal save the planet – remember, you read it here first

Those glowing Arsenal-related headlines continue to flow. Whether beating Newcastle United with their third team, knocking back acquisitive Russian billionaires, declaring record-breaking profits or simply mocking the humble business plans of less fortunate rivals, it’s the North London club who lead the good-news agenda. So get ahead of the game with our guide to next week’s daily drip-feed of feel-good Arsenal stories before they appear.

Monday Arsenal Unveil Plan To Expand Capacity Of Emirates Stadium To Four Million. “The demand is clearly out there,” Peter Hill-Wood, the chairman, states. “We are merely rising to meet it in our own humble and entirely self-sufficient way.”

Tuesday Gunners To Pay Off Season Ticket-holders’ Mortgages. “It’s just our way of saying thank you,” Hill-Wood explains.

Wednesday Arsène Wenger Finds Five More Charismatic, International-standard Attacking Midfield Players Sitting In A Bus Shelter In France. The club announce that they will divert their transfer budget for 2008-09 into an ambitious “laptop computer for every UK schoolchild” scheme. “I feel we’re only doing our duty as a football club,” Hill-Wood maintains.

Thursday Nelson Mandela: ‘I Was Always A Gooner’. In an updated edition of Long Walk To Freedom, the former President of South Africa reveals that, on that iconic, nation-healing day when he presented the 1995 rugby union World Cup in a replica Springboks top, he was wearing his lucky Tony Adams shirt underneath. “Obviously we’re quietly flattered,” Hill-Wood admits. “Though it stands to reason that someone who so passionately dedicated his life to human rights would support Arsenal.”

Friday Football At Emirates Shown To Reduce Global CO2 Burden. A scientific study conclusively demonstrates that the playing style under Wenger is causing the ice-caps to reform while simultaneously increasing biodiversity by encouraging rare species to mate. “This is a significant day for polar bears,” Hill-Wood says. “And a significant day for the world.”

- The photograph of Sussex, the newly crowned county cricket champions, being driven in an open-top bus along an almost deserted Brighton seafront has been roundly mocked. And true, the scene has its comically forlorn aspect. At the same time, we need to understand that sometimes an open-top bus parade isn’t straightforwardly a triumphal display. Sometimes, it’s an electoral mission. In this sense, broad public indifference doesn’t undermine the parade, it justifies it.

Indeed, it would justify Sussex continuing to drive round the county in that bus throughout the winter, stopping at strategic points, addressing communities over the Tannoy and handing out leaflets explaining what county cricket is and why people should be interested in it. Demeaning work? Possibly. But if people won’t go to a sport, then sometimes a sport must go to the people.