Battle of Britain, Bosworth, Boyne, Bannockburn.

Battle of Brandywine and a decisive victory for the British over the Yanks.

Ah, here it is... Battle of Bramall Lane. Never to be forgotten.

Yes folks, plug in your ear plugs, and stop your kids from lip-reading, Neil Warnock is back in town.

Even Joey Barton doesn’t polarise opinion quite like Warnock.

Barton, reviled by most.

Rumour has it even his mother puts on a false beard and pretends to be his parole officer when seen out together in public.

But Warnock? Loved and loathed in equal hordes. Football’s Mr Marmite.

Both Barton, the costliest ‘freebie’ in sporting history, and Warnock are at Molineux with Tony Fernandes’ £ormula £un plaything Queens Park Rangers.

I find myself saying this through gritted computer keys but it’s hard not to feel some warmth towards a character cutting his cloth in the lower leagues with Chesterfield, Rotherham and Hartlepool when young upstarts like Ian Holloway – remember him? – were twinkles in the milkman’s eye.

This is the manager that, a few years ago, was asked in a magazine interview what he would do if he were appointed manager of Sheffield Wednesday.

A lifelong United fan, Warnock replied: “As long as the whole of my salary was paid within 28 days, I would buy so many tosspots – although, come to think of it, their current squad would do – and **** ‘em up so badly. Then I’d retire to Cornwall and spend the rest of my life laughing my ****ing head off.”

Solid gold. He wasn’t hurting anyone – unlike Barton with his fists or a lit cigarette.

And despite having the personality to fall out with himself if left in a locked broom cupboard for too long, perhaps the footballing world would be a lesser place without Warnock and his fire. Oh, the feuds...

Referee Graham Poll refers to him by a (rude) anagram of his name in his book Seeing Red.

Talking of Red, Simply Red, Warnock even gets in an entry on the website: “1,000 People More Annoying than Mick Hucknall”.

Anthea Turner and Grant Bovine, the Cheeky Girls, Katie Price, Piers Morgan and Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog join him, exalted company indeed.

Gerard Houllier, Gary Megson, Joe Kinnear, Wally Downes, Gareth Southgate and Kevin Blackwell have had their tiffs with him.

“I hate Neil Warnock,” Peter Swan once said, talking about the time he played under Warnock at Bury and Plymouth. “He’s a *****.”

Ask former Burnley manager Stan Ternent his view of Warnock and he will talk about “a prat I can’t abide”.

After a game against Norwich City the then Norwich manager, mild mannered Nigel Worthington refused to shake Warnock’s hand. Warnock responded by sticking two fingers up at him.

Former Nottingham Forest manager Joe Kinnear once called Warnock a: ‘complete prat.’

And yet some folk just love him. Albion goalkeeper coach Dean Kiely played for him at Bury and says: “You see him on the sideline effing and blinding but there’s much more to him than that.

“He’s a good manager and a good bloke, too. He’s a family man and he was forever arranging parties and get-togethers – not just for the players but their wives and children, too.”

“He’s not the most liked manager,” says Derek Pavis, his former chairman at Notts County who alluded to Warnock’s “nasty habit of falling out with his chairman”.

But of Pavis’ six managers in 15 years he rated Warnock ‘the best I ever worked with’: He could turn an average player into a good player, a good player into a better player and a better player into a bloody brilliant player.”

Which is where Mick McCarthy, who used to clean his boots at Barnsley, comes in.

“I just like him. He was a character at Barnsley, and he still is one,” the Wolves boss says almost too affectionately.

“I have always got on well with him. I am pally with him. He hasn’t ever riled me.

“He is somebody who gets the best out of his team whenever you play against him.

“We all have different ways of doing it – and you know what, you stand on the touchline and I don’t agree with everything that everybody says and the way they do it but it is their way of doing it.

“It is thirty-odd years since I played with him. He’d have been like everybody else, I would have liked to have kicked the **** out of him in training because he was a ******* winger!

“I have a right lot of time for him, and respect for him because of the job he has done – and it is how he does it.

“And you know what – he never rubs me up the wrong way. I just have a lot of time for him.”

Expect a rose-carrying fiddler between the two benches come Saturday.