First Luiz Felipe Scolari, the Chelsea manager, announces that he has been rushed to hospital because of kidney stones. Then, only a couple of days later, Rafael BenÍtez is admitted for a routine procedure relating to . . . kidney stones.

It’s no coincidence, surely: the managers of the teams placed first and second in the Barclays Premier League and separated by a solitary point, both struck down almost simultaneously by this most painful of urologic disorders. This is a massively worrying development, not least for everyone connected with those clubs. For did not Alan Hansen, that sage analyst of the game, once say: “You’ll win nothing with kidney stones”?

Here we attempt to settle some of your understandable worries about the urological pandemic that is sweeping top-level football management in England.

What are kidney stones?
They are a hard mass of crystals that separate from the urine and cause a build-up within the urinary tracts of leading Premier League football managers.

What causes them?
A lack of the chemical inhibitors in the urine that normally prevent such crystalline masses from occurring. That, plus repeatedly screwing up eminently winnable games at home, thereby failing to open up a gap at the top of the table when a gap is begging to be opened.

How are they treated?
In most cases, kidney stones can be simply flushed out with an increase in fluids and a late winner against West Ham United. A soft draw in the knockout stages of the Champions League has also been known to dissolve unwanted build-ups of uric acid. Sometimes, though, the symptoms persist, or a struvite infection occurs, at which point the patient may require a sum of money to spend in the January transfer window.

Are kidney stones a sign of weakness?
On the contrary, they are an indication of the extent to which a manager cares. Indeed, it is widely believed that if you had been able to collect, down the years, every one of the kidney stones passed in anger by one of the most successful managers of our time (whom the laws on the privacy of medical records prevent us from naming), you would have enough to make a perfectly acceptable half-scale model of the Cutty Sark, fully rigged.

What happened to just chewing gum like a maniac, bullying the fourth official and occasionally booting a Lucozade bottle and/or a ballboy in frustration?
Those demonstrations of the intensity of a manager’s involvement still matter. But the Premier League is “the best league in the world”, remember, and, as Richard Keys is forever telling us, “it doesn’t get any bigger than this”. Accordingly, if you don’t develop in addition a full-blown urological complaint, requiring brief hospitalisation, by December at the latest, the broad perception is that you are not really pulling your weight, commitment-wise.

Did Juande Ramos ever suffer from kidney stones?
The perfect case in point. Not to our knowledge. And look what happened to Tottenham Hotspur under his management.

Shortly after it was announced that BenÍtez would be off work for a couple of days, I heard Sammy Lee, one of his assistants on the Liverpool bench, tell news reporters: “It will be all hands to the pump.” Is that wise?
No. The pump is very rarely deployed in the treatment of kidney stones and in those rare instances where its use seems appropriate, it should be operated only by qualified medical and/or nursing personnel and not by a random group of squad members and coaching staff, however well-intentioned.

Can football managers take any dietary steps to lessen the likelihood of internal silting?
If the manager in question is prone to forming calcium oxalate stones, he would do well to limit or avoid high-oxalate foods, such as rhubarb, Swiss chard and peanuts. Fortunately, Wrigley’s Doublemint is not a high-oxalate food.

What message of condolence did Richard Keys allegedly send to BenÍtez via text this week?
Let’s hpe it dsn’t gt any bggr thn ths.

When Sir Alex Ferguson announced on Thursday that he “wouldn’t sell Real Madrid a virus, let alone Cristiano Ronaldo”, was he making a veiled reference to the present kidney stone crisis in football?
Who knows what he was on about? What is he ever on about?

Any truth in the rumour that Paul Ince engineered his dismissal from Blackburn Rovers because he couldn’t face the thought of the kidney stones that were almost certainly coming his way?
None whatsoever. Indeed, some say that he never got the chance to develop the kidney stones that were within his capability, that he was dismissed too soon and that his urinary tract should have been given more time.

Is Sam Allardyce worried about getting kidney stones?
Allardyce has previous top-level experience with Bolton Wanderers and Newcastle United and pushed himself forward for this latest job as Ince’s replacement. He knows what he’s getting himself into, urologically, and would, we feel certain, be aware of the risks. But worried? Hardly. It’s why they call him “Big Sam”. A bit of lower-back pain, occasionally spreading to the groin area, is nothing to him.

Has José Mourinho ever had kidney stones?
Again, our records are incomplete on this, but the Inter Milan coach is relatively new to the game and still in his forties, so his years of maximum vulnerability in this area are probably still to come. Rest assured, though, that in the event that Mourinho does develop kidney stones at some stage, they will be special stones, not from a bottle, and probably wearable afterwards as earrings.

Fans are not novices after 16 long years

An agitated columnist in another newspaper was recently dismissive of “nouveau fans who only discovered football when the Premiership came into existence”. Quite right. Who told these newcomers that their views were welcome?

Hang on a minute, though. The Premier League was founded in 1992. That was 16 years ago. And 16 years is quite a long time to devote to the study of something, isn’t it? You can qualify as a doctor in only six years, so 16 is probably enough to form a roughly workable opinion about Arsène Wenger and feel confident enough to express it. Indeed, it is hard to think of another endeavour to which a person could give 16 years of their life and still be called a Johnny Come Lately in the Daily Mail.

Clearly, the ancien régime for whom football supporting is a kind of Masonic lodge (only the right kind shall enter) needs a new handshake. Even the post-first division generation have their campaign medals and grey hairs these days.

And have you noticed how young the footballers are looking? No recollection whatsoever of a time before the Premier League, some of them. That Theo Walcott, for instance. What a nouveau.

Ince’s colleagues have short memories

Perspective on the dismissal of Paul Ince continues to elude his fellow managers. Harry Redknapp couldn’t believe the impatience of it. “A couple of bad results and he is out,” he said. Then there was this impassioned burst from Tony Adams: “You don’t get a chance to build, you don’t get a chance to do anything. You really don’t. You do a few press conferences, you throw a team out there for two minutes. It’s just ridiculous.”

The “two minutes” afforded to Ince was 21 matches. Seventeen of those were in the league and he won only three of them. Redknapp’s “couple of bad results” would have to include the six in a row Ince had lost when he was dismissed. That must have been the longest two minutes in the board’s life and the worst couple of bad results Blackburn Rovers have seen in a while.

Little wonder, surely, that they hated to lose him, but they thought he ought to go. Impatience had nothing to do with it. It was prudence.