Anyone who follows my stories about Championship Manager - whether these be with Manchester City within the fair(ly grim) pages of CM Stuff or previously on CM Star - will know what my main managerial vice is. I'm a spender. I love to go through the club's coffers like Sarah Ferguson with a key to the Royal Mint. To me, transfer funds are open to prey, and it will be me breaking into them before the club can whittle down the readies through such sundry expenses as paying the players' wages and covering away trip costs. It's apt that I'm also much like this outside the game. Shops like Music Zone can't welcome me quickly enough as I rattle through their CD and DVD aisles as though I'm their millionth customer and ready to pay! It's a good job that QVC only sell crap or else my credit card would be smarting too.

I got a taste of the contrast between my attitude and those of other managers in my main CM game recently. Having resigned from my job as Middlesbrough manager, the Board decided to take on Bolton saviour, Sam Allardyce, and immediately a turnaround in the club's fiscal policy took place. Whereas I regularly used to offset my prize winnings with ravenous forays into the transfer market, thinking nothing of blowing £23m in the way of Bayern Munich for Patrick Vieira's services, and subsequently receiving various comments from Steve Gibson about how he'd like to see an improvement in the bank balance, Allardyce sold. Within two months, Vieira, Alan Smith, John Terry and Gianluca Zambrotta had all gone for a combined price of £60m. The Riverside had been transformed from a star-studded pauper into wealthy wonders with a less emphatically successful record. All the same, his bosses were delighted. Nothing in football talks like money, and Uncle Sam was loudest of all. In the meantime, I wept quietly from a distance as the soul of my Champions League-winning side had the very heart ripped out of it…

But what's the right thing to do? Is it best to build up a base of financial security before making those eye-popping signings, setting yourself clearly defined limits in the amount you are prepared to pay for a player, and the terms you can offer him? Or should you be the next Viv Nicholson, spend spend spending your way to glory, or at least to debt advisers' clinics and, if you don't match your largesse with results, the sack? I'm interested in following the real-life progress of Steve McClaren at Boro as he sets about converting his cobbled together side into something better. Whereas Bryan Robson used to lavish enormous sums around Europe with careless impunity, Mac has shown a greater degree of caution. Take his efforts at snapping up Juninho. You know that when Robbo was in charge, the player's demands would generally be met without question, more a "You can get the first round in then" jokiness. With the former United Number Two, it's a different story.

Having imposed a ceiling on personal terms, he didn't accede to the demands made by the eponymous little fella, and only appears to be doing so now thanks to supporter demand that goes beyond the pale, and by making a reduced offer to his club, Atletico Madrid, that releases funds to line the player's pockets. The fact that Jesus Gil's - I can't use the manager's name, because he probably won't be the manager by the time you read this - charges don't want him have made this an obvious action to take, and illustrate a boss who is not one for spending 'over the odds' amounts.

In the meantime, what about David O'Dreary? Here you have a man who was given licence to furnish Elland Road with some of the finest talents in the game, but when they didn't produce, he was soon ousted. Okay, so all those negative comments he made - oh and that book too - won't have helped, but faced with growing debts and a reluctance to let his bigger stars go, the Irish whinger was never going to last very long.

The correct course for you to take is clearly some sort of middle ground between the two extremes. Your first priority is to assess the sort of money you have against the size of the club under your control. Let's say you have been installed to bring Premiership success to Southport. The Board are unlikely to impose a demand that you win the Conference in your first season, though you could if you splurge cash up to your limit and take the seasiders deep into the red. Better perhaps to build the team slowly, keeping a firm eye on the balance sheet and ensuring that your wage bill and ticket receipts are roughly commensurate. You should be looking to establish yourself in that first year, then push for promotion after the revolving players' door has seen some reasonable action. Then again, imagine by some 'Quantum Leap' style freak of nature you've been asked to step into the shoes of Charley Rexach. Over £100m to spend at Barca, and a lust for Primera Liga honours go hand in hand. Having the biggest club side in the world to tinker around with, you can of course be more liberal with the treasury, and will hopefully be rewarded for wresting the championship from those non-Catalan Sassenachs.

What's next? To check where the gaps are in your line-up, naturally! In the past, I've been grossly culpable of stockpiling players, in grand O'Dreary fashion, so that I have a cavernous squad capable of coping with any injury crisis, but the potential for a queue to form at my door of professionals demanding to be used, or else. Hey, that's how I like it, mind, but it's not necessarily the way to do it. Always go through your squad with all the rigour of a customs officer searching Jeffrey Archer for drugs, and find out where you can afford to keep your hand free from the market.

You could be in charge of Internazionale, and have Javier Zannetti, Luigi Di Biagio and Cristiano Zanetti on your books, all jostling for a solitary defensive midfielder's position. But look! There's Mark Van Bommel twiddling his thumbs at PSV Eindhoven. Will you really be able to accommodate the Dutchman, or are you spending your lire because it's there and so is he? In the immortal words of David Prowse, stop - look - listen.

So there's a starter for ten in the tricky world of measuring your budget against the veritable Willy Wonka's that is the transfer market. Actually, it wasn't all that good, was it? I'll be honest. I meant to write an update of Moss Side Barrow Boy but forgot my notes, so I had to come up with some other rubbish instead. But you only know that now, having trawled through these thousand words thinking "Hmmm, that T_Side really knows his stuff, doesn't he?" so maybe I've got away with it. I guess my only true message - you might choose to think of it as T_Side's Final Thought (but please don't) - is that how you negotiate the reinforcing of your team is up to you, an extension of your personality transferred onto a crucial aspect of the game. There's no wrong way as long as success is the end result, and if it isn't, why are you still playing, you masochist? Bankers who play CM no doubt hammer out deals that keep the books healthy yet ruin the opposition, making them ideal lower league bosses. In the meantime, Elton John would clearly have to manage Real Madrid just to keep his sweaty need to spunk up money satisfied. The question is - which type are you?