Not every coach wants to admit this in public but there are times when your team, no matter how well prepared, trots out at the Camp Nou already knowing they’re beaten.

Worse, there are also moments when, during the game, the sense of helplessness and frustration can reach the stage of blind rage and desperation.

Those words are mine, chosen to interpret what Gary Neville admitted this week when he talked about his Valencia side losing 7-0 at the Camp Nou and how the experience wasn’t far off being in the middle of a hurricane.

Gordon Strachan, too, explained to me that there was a point in a firm defeat at Barcelona’s coliseum when his Celtic players were looking towards him in bewilderment and distress and he just thought: “There’s nothing any of us can do in the face of THIS!”

So, debutant coaches coming to face an on-form Barcelona can be excused getting the jitters – worrying what it’s actually going to be like out there on that vast expanse of verdant green with what feels like the world looming over you as the massed ranks of 80 or 90,000 Barça fans urge their team to give the visitors a damn good thrashing.

But I’d wager that Gustavo Poyet, who’ll make his competitive debut as a coach in La Liga with Real Betis at the Camp Nou tomorrow tea-time, won’t drown out his own team-talk with the knocking of his knees or nervous chattering of his teeth.

The combative, charismatic, ultra-characterful Uruguayan is actually facing the club against whom he played more times than any other during his exceptional career as a rampaging, free-scoring midfielder.

Most in the UK know him for his exploits with Chelsea and Tottenham where he amassed over 250 games winning the FA Cup, European SuperCup and Cup Winners Cup – playing in the famous 5-0 Chelsea win over Manchester United AND Spurs’ heartbreaking 3-0 up, 5-3 down home game against the same Fergie team.

But he played nearly 300 times for Real Zaragoza over here and inspired that club to one of the greatest eras in its history – the Copa del Rey and Cup Winners Cup (against Arsenal in 1994) are good examples.

During that spell he played Barça 16 times and while, okay, he didn’t always win he was involved in some utterly spectacular contests.

No draws, three wins, 13 defeats, a red card, three goals and barnstorming matches like Zaragoza’s 5-4 win at the Camp Nou, their 6-3 league victory at La Romareda, Barça’s 5-3 win at Zaragoza.

Defences on top, you know the kind of thing.

Gus also came within about 15 minutes of knocking Louis van Gaal’s Barça out of the 2000 Champions League quarter-final before a late equaliser and two more goals in extra-time eliminated Luca Vialli’s 10-man Chelsea.

So the minimum we can say about what looks like a superb addition to the colour, character, talent and noise level of La Liga is that he ain’t going to be intimidated by beginning his reign at Betis with a visit to the champions.

I say noise level because when he was nicknamed Radio Montevideo at Chelsea it was with good reason.

Gus can talk. Which is saying something coming from me.

Football characters are best when they can play (or manage) superbly … but talk equally well.

Poyet’s in that hallowed category. He loves to natter, and what’s more it’s always worth listening to.

But not all the talented ones behave that way.

I remember the first (and only) time I phoned Jim McLean at home which was around about the time that Poyet and his Zaragoza shock troops were winning that mad Cup Winners’ Cup Final in Paris when Nayim lobbed David Seaman from about two and a half miles away.

Wee Jim wasn’t impressed and it’s the longest volley of words that sound like duck or ducking which has been directed at me in the shortest space of time over the last 30 or so years.

Gus is different, however. The first time I called him at home he reacted as if he’d been waiting by the phone for my call, talked utterly brilliantly, and at length, about Franco Zola, then made it clear that whenever I wanted a good interview – or indeed just a decent chat – I could get back in touch.

Pukka. Or is that how to describe Wee Jim?

One gets confused.

Gus became a colleague on Revista de la Liga and I can testify he’s an intense, interesting guy who you’d need to be mulishly stubborn not to follow when he yelled “charge!”

His coaching manner fits, precisely, with the current vogue in which Pep Guardiola, Diego Simeone, Luis Enrique, Jurgen Klopp, Antonio Conte, Thomas Tuchel, Jorge Sampaoli and their ilk are super-intense coaches who demand total concentration, discipline, and intensity back from their players.

“The Atletico of Simeone has values that I want reflected here at Betis,” Poyet confirms. “But I’ve a different style in that I want the ball to be important to us.

“I want to develop a team which looks after possession well, which plays intensely but attractively and which builds a connection with out fans because we demonstrate great character.” Seems fair.

“I’m demanding. I was as a player, as a coach in my previous jobs and I haven’t changed,” is his mantra. “I like pressure. “In fact, I love it.

“Football without pressure isn’t my cup of tea – I’m not interested.

“Now this is an attitude I’ve got to instil in my players (which he’s tried to do with a pre-season full of 12 matches!).

“I want height, power and speed in my team. I want Betis to be aggressive.

“I like my team to be the protagonist, to win possession and use the ball intelligently. But not passing for passing’s sake. “We’ll use a basic 4-3-3 with variations and I’ll expect to see my players suffering to try to win points if things are against us.”

Which they might be at the Camp Nou.

They follow their city neighbours here after Wednesday’s Supercopa win for Luis Enrique’s side.

It’s 11 years since Betis took even a draw from a trip to Barça – but they didn’t have the radio on then. They do now.

This is the time to rock champs

Having said all that about welcoming the competitiveness and sporting aggression of Gus Poyet to La Liga, it possibly gives a bit of balance to share a couple of stats with you.

Ones which might make lesser men feel apprehensive about tomorrow tea-time in Catalunya.

Despite the fact they absolutely haemorrhaged goals in pre-season – against Celtic and Leicester, while also being spanked by Liverpool – Barcelona last conceded in a competitive match back in April.

Since then they’ve played eight games in three competitions and they’ve won 31-0.

That run has won them La Liga, on the last day of the season, La Copa, in a truly epic battle with Sevilla when Barça were down to 10 men, and now the Spanish Supercup.

All of which will mean nothing if Betis score and rattle Barcelona’s cage at the Camp Nou because even the most awesome records are there to be broken.

Gus will have scouted the champions’ warm-up games with the hope Betis play against the sleepy, error-prone Barça of weeks prior to the aggregate 5-0 thrashing of Sevilla.

What makes the picture a bit interesting is that Luis Enrique is going to have to face the Andalucian visitors without Neymar, Rafinha, Ter Stegen, Iniesta, Mathieu and Mascherano – all either injured or at the Olympics in Rio.

That’s one hell of a good five-a-side team plus a sub and if you stripped that kind of ability and know-how out of just about any other team it’d be a fair shout they’d drop points at home.

The flip-side of which is that while Poyet reckons his team are fast, competitive and need to finish ninth or higher, if they are beaten, particularly if they’re beaten badly, then it sends out a very distressing signal to the rest of Spain’s wannabe King-slayers.

If ever there was a time to try to sucker punch the champions, this is it.