In the madness of football's transfer market, philosophy is the hardest transplant of all.
A good striker will always find the net and top-class goalkeepers will take their safe hands from one club to another.
But for young coaches making their way in the game, methodology will often survive only if the players are good enough to put your ideas into practice.
Liam Manning has made a convincing start to his managerial career – and now, in a division heavily populated by big beasts, the concrete cows of Milton Keynes are proving one of the most durable species of all.
Under Manning's tutelage, MK Dons are flying high in League One, currently above Sunderland, Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich, Portsmouth, Bolton and Charlton among others.
And he's doing it following the principles he learned from Pep Guardiola as part of Manchester City's portfolio of clubs, the City Football Group, working in Belgium.
At SK Lommel, a melting pot of 14 different nationalities and four languages, he guided a team from a small town of 34,000 people near the Dutch border to third place in Belgium's second tier last season.
Fair play to MK Dons – not a sentence you have always read about a franchise – for recognising Manning's potential.
When he worked at West Ham's academy, he was instrumental in Declan Rice's rise to first team prominence, and now the Hammers have a £100 million-plus asset on their hands.
And his experience at Lommel merely confirmed 36-year-old Manning was destined for bigger jobs closer to home.
“When I walked in, the club was close to going bankrupt, there were only five players left from the previous year and I had to build a completely new team,” he said of his year under lockdown in Belgium.
“You can have all the money in the world, but money is only worth anything if it's underpinned by a strong culture
“I learned a lot about establishing a culture of communication and what you have to put in place before you even get around to what a team looks like on matchday.
“When you are starting from scratch, you need everybody pulling in the same direction and a mindset where the team comes first.
“Looking at the group of players and the staff we have here, who have done a great job so far, it highlights the importance of leaving egos aside and working towards the same goals.
“All the credit goes to the players who have been brave enough to play the way we want, and by doing so they have created a culture where they feel they have our support.
“It's entertaining for people to watch, it's enjoyable for them to play, but we also do it to win matches and that's really important to stress.”
Manning has a sprinkling of experience at the Moo Camp, from 37-year-old Dean Lewington to former Sunderland and Crystal Palace striker Connor Wickham, ex-Chelsea boy wonder Josh McEachran and on-loan Tottenham midfielder Troy Parrott.
They have all adopted the Pep principles readily – and this weekend's trip to leaders Rotherham will be their sternest test yet.
Manning said: “This group already had certain principles ingrained in them and I wasn't walking into a dressing room who played completely the opposite style-wise to what I wanted.
“I knew they would be brave enough to do it – but dominating the ball, building out from the back if it's right and being aggressive out of possession only works if you have the players to do it.
“In League One, when you look at the size of the clubs, the size of their budgets and fan bases, we can't compete with some of them off the pitch – but we have talented young players who have shown they can operate at this level.”
