Salford City v Rotherham United - Cap on ambition is unfair, says Paul Warne

It told the tale of how a minnow in the shadow of two giants in Manchester United and Manchester City stood up for the little guy and made it to the Football League.

It showed that no matter how humble your surroundings are – with Salford’s Moor Lane home which Rotherham United will visit for the first time today bearing testament to Salford’s non-league heritage – aspiration and ambition low down the pyramid still retains its place.

Having spent his formative years in the game at Norfolk minnows Diss Town and Wroxham and as someone who will never forget his footballing roots, it is a story that chimed with Warne.

Not that he wishes to see further evidence of the rise of Salford – whose board members in Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt and Paul Scholes retain that same ferocious desire for success that their mentor at Manchester United had in Sir Alex Ferguson – this afternoon.

Warne said: “It is good to see and, in fairness, they are backing up what they are saying.

“They (Salford board) think they could get their team to the Championship and obviously are investing money and have got a backer behind the scenes.

“But it does not matter how much money you have got. It is still very hard to get everything in place. I have seen the documentary and they only let you see what they want you to. It is still hard to win football games.

“Stories like that have their place. It was the same with Wimbledon and their story about coming back and building a stadium.

“That competition and opportunity for people is good, Loads of people say they are going to do stuff and loads don’t. But in fairness to Gary Neville, virtually everything he touches does turn to gold.

“The way he has tried to run the club has been great.

“There is no shame that they are investing in their local team and it is a good story.”

While the likes of Wimbledon, Wigan, Watford and Bournemouth have shown over the years that teams rising from the lower divisions – and in some cases even further down the pyramid – is achievable, Warne believes that the chance of further enchanting stories is sadly getting harder.

With limitations on what lower-division teams can now spend in operation, the goalposts are in danger of shifting.

Salford have spent considerable amounts of money in recent seasons to bring in the likes of former Millers loanee Richie Towell, among others.

This summer, another ex-Rotherham player in Ian Henderson, a talismanic presence for many years at Rochdale, has arrived with a welter of Football League experience also prevalent in the likes of former Huddersfield Town defender Tom Clarke and one-time Leeds forward and Millers loanee Tom Elliot.

Darron Gibson and James Wilson are players who also used to ply their trade in the top-flight.

Despite a squad which is the envy of all in League Two, salary cap rules mean that spending on further major recruitment will be stymied at Salford. Some see it as a cap on ambition.

Warne said: “It is going to be harder. Luckily, Salford signed most of their players before and their forward line is phenomenal.

“I remember when Wigan went through the leagues and virtually bought all the best players in the league above and if you have got money, obviously it helps.

“Apart from, in fairness, Sheffield United over recent years, most teams who go up normally are the ones where the money gets you the better players, the better players get you the better team.

“If you are not able to throw money at it, you are going to have to coach your way through, really. It will be more difficult.”

It was not too far away from Moor Lane at Rochdale where Rotherham last took the field for a competitive match, almost exactly six months to the day on March 7.

Despite the current absence of spectators in football’s Covid-19 world, the drug of match-day will still be a potent one for Warne.

Sleep ahead of games will probably be disturbed again in time. The solitary trips home in the car after a loss will be soul-searching and the exhilaration of victory will represent a brief high before attention quickly turns to the next game.

One thing that Warne admits that he will find hard is not having his customary ‘release valve’ on tap after games on Saturday, which became an important part of his down-time after the stress of match-day.

That meant watching Sheffield Steelers ice hockey side on Saturday nights and letting it go.

EIHL ice hockey is on lockdown and a meeting next week could determine if the sport returns in 2020-21 or not.

A big lover of US sports, Warne said: “It is an absolute blow. I have a dog now and that is going to have to help me, I am going to have to take the dog out to talk through my tactical errors!

“I will have to get something else. I do not want to fall down that slippery slope of cracking open a ‘tinnie’. I need to keep active and am hopeful that ice hockey will come back soon.

“But I am not so sure. I have got an awful feeling that NFL is also not going to happen, so I am going to be in a right old state.

“Joking aside, I need something that I can lose myself in with my wife and kids and ice hockey was perfect.

“I could eat a hot dog with American mustard on and have a lager shandy and have no cares in the world for a couple of hours.

“Now everyone will be saying ‘you can phone the gaffer now, he is not at ice hockey.’ I might have to sponsor an ice hockey team and get it going on a car park or something.”