While Wilko’s star may have faded in the firmament of the footie manager, his place remains assured in the honour roll of football guff practitioners. As a purveyor of football nonsense, Wilko’s specialises in a David Brent like homespun philosphy, mathematical mastery, self delusion, and the bizarre.

Elucidating on his playing staff at the Stadium of Light, Wilko threw us this pearl of wisdom:

“Our squad looks good on paper. But paper teams win paper cups”

Witty, Wildean even – but sadly, Wilko had missed the point – for his Mackems never actually looked good on paper.

The Sunderland months will also be remembered for an insight into the complex world of recruitment – one that surely has found its way into business text books everywhere:

"If you hire people who are smarter than you, maybe you are showing that you are a little bit smarter than them."

Ricky Gervais was no doubt tied up for weeks in negotiations with Wilko’s people trying to buy the rights to using the line in the US version of The Office.

With the Mackems languishing at the foot of the table, Wilko was famously asked by Garth Crooks on Football Focus whether he felt there are three worse teams in the Premiership than Sunderland. Wilko’s reply was that of a master:

“I'm not concerned if we are one of the three worst, I want us to be the fourth best down there."

Leaving Sunderland, Wilko was rightly proud of easily achieving his goal.

And then there’s the eternal classic:

“I'm a firm believer that if the other side scores first you have to score twice to win.”

After a depressing 4-1 drubbing by Spurs and a memorably bad-tempered press conference and under the weather Wilko admitted it’s

“... not easy to sit here with a temperature and a thumping head and be belle of the ball and play the tambourine.”

Yorkshire balls are obviously unusual affairs.

”We are not putting our cape over the tunnel; we are putting our cape in the tunnel.”

After extensive research, we simply have been left stumped by this one.

"Zinedine Zidane could be a champion sumo wrestler. He can run like a crab or a gazelle."

Wilko underlines the merit of a coaching badge with this coulourful analysis of the great Frenchman.

One of Wilko's finest hours was his assessment of the dire situation at Sunderland:

“It’s like trying to push custard up a hill”!

And perhaps his most perceptive was...

“If I’m reincarnated, I would like to come back as a personality.”