They tell a story at Manchester United, going back to the days before the conveyor belt at Old Trafford rolled off the players who now go by the collective Class of ’92 moniker, about the time the youth-team coach Eric Harrison was so disgusted by one performance an entire team were left hanging by their arms from the crossbar.

Harrison was the disciplinarian who drummed into Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt, the Neville brothers and everybody else coming through United’s system the importance of regimenting, hard graft and accepting orders. His word was law – and he could be just as terrifying as Alex Ferguson. “Aside from the boss, Eric could make the most brutal comments of any coach I’ve come across,” Gary Neville once said.

As such, it isn’t difficult to imagine the explosion of rage after one game when the players lining up in a defensive wall jumped and turned their backs as an opposition player struck a free-kick. The shot was low, went under the wall and into the back of the net, and it was in the next training session that the culprits were left dangling from the woodwork. Balls were lined up and fired in to try to knock them down. That team never turned their backs at a free-kick again.

It was a hard regime but, looking back, all the players we saw cavorting on the terraces at Salford City on Friday night hold Harrison in the same reverence as they do Ferguson and clearly value the importance of a strong hierarchy that, if necessary, can put the frighteners on. The rollickings might jar with some but it was a way of life for these men and it isn’t a surprise Salford’s co-owners turned to a couple of modern-day rottweilers when they decided that their previous manager, Phil Power, was not up to it. Power had begun Salford’s brave new world by popping off to Ibiza on holiday, missing a pre-season fixture, and if you tuned into the BBC documentary Class of ’92: Out of their League you will have seen the conference call at the start of the year when his new bosses decided to cut him free.

In his place, Salford now have a managerial duo who give the impression that John Sitton was being too soft in that infamous fly‑on‑the‑wall documentary when he was Leyton Orient manager, most memorable for its “bring your fucking dinner” line while offering to fight two of his own players. Anthony Johnson, an ex-squaddie, has the permanent look of someone whose pint has just been spilt. The other co-manager, Bernard Morley, also might have caused a puncture or two if he had seen Morrissey and his pals cycling around Salford Lads’ Club that time. They hunt in twos and it was amusing to note what the players made of them. “Jonno’s got that devil in his eyes; you can tell that, at any moment, he could flip,” the striker Gareth Seddon said. “And Bernard’s like the scary, quiet man. He looks like he could kill someone.”

Yet, together, the potion is working. Salford won promotion to the Evo‑Stik League Northern Premier last season. They are going for another promotion this season and it was some story against Notts County, from three divisions above, on Friday. Salford will discover that a classic FA Cup upset can do wonders for a club’s popularity and, though it is clearly a learning curve for their owners, they have enough common sense, drive and personal contacts it wouldn’t be a surprise if we hear a lot more about the Ammies (previously known as Salford Amateurs) in the next 10 years.

The difficult part will be finding the balance between the owners’ ambitions and the feelings of the supporters. Do those hardy souls who have wandered down to Moor Lane all those years, with the clanking turnstiles, the gaps in the fences and a team running out to Dirty Old Town by the Pogues, really want the gleaming 20,000-seat stadium that the Class of ’92 envisages at some time in the future? Or are those supporters reasonably happy on the non-league circuit, away from all the turn-offs of professional football, and not particularly enthused by the prospect that one day their little ground might be turned into the next flat-pack arena?

It is going to be a delicate process, plainly. “It brings people together,” Gary Neville said, describing what makes non-league football so charmingly addictive. “They are all standing on the grass bank having a pint and you can’t do that any more at a lot of football grounds. That’s how football was, and isn’t any more, at a higher level; it’s fantastic.” And that is the point: most of those fans presumably want it to stay that way.

The five old pals have already changed the badge and colours – tangerine and black to red and white – as well as bringing the billionaire Peter Lim into the mix, with 50% of the shares, and hopefully they can find a happy medium during the next phase of change because part of the joy for supporters of non‑league clubs is the pie-and-chips feel, the community sense of togetherness and, in Salford’s case, the fact it is not a mini Old Trafford.

A few miles south, I went to Stockport County’s match against Solihull Moors earlier this year and was struck by how open and friendly the place was compared to the football grounds I was used to visiting. There were no security guards wearing blazers and earpieces and standing on every corner, snapping into walkie-talkies. The dugouts were right next to the home seats and even while the match was going on the substitutes could be seen chatting to some of the kids who were hanging over the barrier, smiling for photographs and scrounging sweets.

Stockport, like Salford, have their own Betty Turpin figure in charge of the burgers, unlike at Manchester City, for example, where the menus are put together by Marco Pierre White and John Benson-Smith and the “kiosks by Jamie Oliver” sell baskets of apples, pears and bananas (fruit!). The place reeked of liniment and stale beer and in the course of 30 seconds Stockport’s then manager, Alan Lord, went from yelling at the linesman to passing 50p to one of the youngsters in the crowd, perhaps as an apology for his language.

And, yes, overall it was a lot more enjoyable. It felt real. It took me back to what made me like going to matches in the first place. Then back to normality: an email arrives announcing that Manchester United, the club that lopped the word “football club” off their badge, have made Sbenu their first casual footwear partner in South Korea.

Stockport’s descent through the divisions has been such that their crowd presumably crave a place in the Football League. With Salford, it is different and at least their owners appear to recognise the sensitivities. “Ownership has been an incredible experience for us all but it is a privilege we are wary of abusing,” Gary Neville says, and hear, hear to that.

Further down the line, there might be a different kind of opposition, this time from United’s supporters, if it eventually becomes obvious Salford are flourishing to an extent that they can nibble away at Old Trafford’s local fan base (let’s break the myth: United have formidable backing in this area).

Before its pages closed earlier this year, Red Issue fanzine had already asked whether there was a conflict of interest for Giggs and Butt to work for United but be part-owners of a club that can benefit financially from taking young players from Old Trafford. Football is a cynical world and it is a question that is bound to resurface when Giggs is assistant manager at Old Trafford and Butt coaches at the youth academy.

It is a complicated story but then there are the nights like Friday, when everything falls into place and those supporters might find they liked the first taste of success, and want some more. “The goal of Salford City is for the first, second and third round of the FA Cup to be the norm rather than the exception,” Neville wrote in the programme. “Winning the FA Cup is just a dream this year. In future years who knows?” First things first, though. On Tuesday it’s Trafford in the first round of the Integro Doodson League Cup.

Pulis should forget how FA spends fines and try avoiding them

Tony Pulis wants an explanation from the Football Association about where exactly the money will go from his £8,000 fine for angrily confronting the referee Anthony Taylor after West Brom had lost at home to Leicester City. The FA has already explained it will go towards its pool of money for grassroots football but Pulis, it seems, wants to see the receipts.

“There’s an enormous amount of money being taken from the FA in respect of managers being fined,” he says. “We have a right. It’s not the FA’s money, it’s my money and I think I have a right to know where that money’s going.” This follows on from Pulis describing as “extraordinary” the FA’s decision to fine José Mourinho, the Premier League’s most repetitive offender, £50,000 for his fourth case of questioning a referee’s integrity, and the third since 2013.

Pulis said the League Managers Association should hold a meeting to discuss what could be done. The following weekend, Chelsea lost 2-1 at West Ham and, as we now know, Mourinho went into the referee’s room at half-time, refused to leave and screamed at Jon Moss that he was “fucking weak” before eventually being escorted out by West Ham’s head of security.

Pulis wants to know if the FA actually puts the fines towards “the hundreds of people jumping on the back of the Euros”. But it is a cheap shot given the number of FA staff who are currently losing their jobs.

Perhaps someone should stand up at that LMA meeting and point out to Pulis that the best way to avoid these fines is not to act the oaf and show the referees a touch more respect, as they had all promised.

It’s all gone quiet at Chelsea over ban

On a similar theme, Chelsea have been awfully quiet about the fact their manager was not even allowed to set foot inside the stadium for their game at Stoke. José Mourinho’s suspension will have hurt him badly but when a manager has put himself in this position through his own misbehaviour Chelsea surely ought to be taking their own disciplinary action, in the way that Newcastle did with Alan Pardew when he was given a stadium ban.