Often when listening to football managers and coaches explain the game I find myself thinking of those moments in Dr Who when, with catastrophe approaching, Matt Smith suddenly announces, "There's a good chance that if we can reverse the polarity on this lithium crystal then the magnetic vortex will suck the Daleks into a different time-space continuum and the planet will be saved. Has anybody got a hatpin?"

"Their midfield was playing off us," the Time Lords of the dugout tell us as relegation hurtles towards our homes like a Zygon battle trireme carrying an explosive payload the size of Ronaldo's wallet, "We need to get more offensive in the off-loading zone". Frankly, we all know it is a pile of gobbledygook, but if it has the sheen of plausibility it is more fun to believe in it than not.

The problem is that football tactics are founded on paradox. The coach must attempt to resolve all sorts of plainly irresolvable issues. His team must be fluid, but must never lose its shape; the attack cannot be narrow, yet at the same time the forwards must never become isolated; the defence should be solid and flexible, his midfield needs to have width but also to be compact. To achieve such things is nigh on impossible. As a result successful sides are like a delicate ecosystem – introduce one rogue element and suddenly a thriving wet pastureland becomes a mephitic swamp. In East Anglia the South American coypu caused untold environmental damage. At Old Trafford Juan Sebastián Verón once threatened to do something similar. At St James's Park Faustino Asprilla proved himself the sporting equivalent of the cane toad.

This week we have had further evidence of the difficulty of the football manager's task brought to us via the medium of Andy Carroll. Tom Lehrer famously remarked that satire died the day Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize. The death knell of irony in the Premier League sounded long ago, but we caught a distant, sonorous echo of it on Monday when it emerged that Carroll has been getting lifestyle advice from Joey Barton.

At least Newcastle's feisty midfielder has a firm grasp on the comedy of the situation. For why else would he say, the day after newspaper allegations that featured Carroll and cocaine, that he had warned his team-mate to "keep his nose clean"? And what other view can we take of his claims that an England side operate a "Goody Two Shoes only" selection policy, than that it is the sort of trenchant sarcasm worthy of Ambrose Bierce?

In a similar vein, Manchester City's keeper Joe Hart, whose hairstyle gives him the look of one of those cyborgs who, due to some rogue microchip, is starting to experience human emotions that will eventually end with him weeping pitifully while trying to split Vin Diesel's head open with an ice-axe, declared, "I don't think a footballer should have to live like a monk". Maybe Hart is right, though personally I'd love the FA to set the England team the task of inventing and manufacturing its own herb‑flavoured liqueur.

Barton's scathing mockery was provoked by questions over whether Carroll should be selected by England. "He can't be any worse than what has gone before," the former Manchester City player opined, and when you consider that what has gone before includes Alan Shearer, Gary Lineker and Bobby Charlton, you'd be mad to question that assertion.

Chris Hughton was, as you might expect, altogether more sanguine than Barton. "I can understand the reasons why [Andy] is being spoken about because he is different," he revealed, adding "Apart from his size he is also a left-footed player" lest we might conclude that this difference involved living in a fridge, communicating only via the lyrics of The Carpenters and slithering around on his belly after dark like a blindworm.

Hughton said he had not yet spoken to anyone in the "England Camp" about Carroll. Clearly this is not a literal term – Fabio Capello and his team don't live in tents, though maybe it would improve team unity if they did. If nothing less we would have the pleasant sight of Gabby Logan standing in front of a row of brightly coloured yurts and saying, "And the word filtering out of the England camp is that the team is low on confidence and Calor Gas and if Ashley Cole doesn't open the flaps up before he trumps in future, he'll be sleeping under a tree".

A few miles around the coast difference was also on the mind of another Premier League manager. Speaking of Asamoah Gyan, Sunderland's dinner-lady-haired gaffer Steve Bruce said: "Asamoah is different, he's typically African, he's unpredictable" (Yes, I know, when I read that I thought I'd gone to sleep and woken up back in 1974 as well).

So, difference and unpredictability are something a team needs to succeed. However, back in the capital John Terry was carrying out his own analysis and concluding that if Chelsea were to win the title again, "We need to get back to being consistent".

And you see right there, that is your problem – in football you have to be consistent and unpredictable, because at the highest level just being consistently unpredictable is not enough, even if you are an African, or Joey Barton.