Among many doomsday scenarios facing Manchester City is plunging down the football pyramid. Would that be so bad? Instead of yawning at the prospect of yet another meeting with Real Madrid or repeated Aviva train-hampered journeys to Wembley, how about the exoticism of away travel to Wealdstone? In the National League, City’s ownership may wish to know, there are no formal financial fair play or strict salary cap regulations.

Wrexham, Notts County and Chesterfield have taken advantage of such lax constraints to regenerate. For City fans, Ruislip’s buzzy high street, full of nail bars, estate agents and a couple of homely pubs, would represent a welcome world away from Milan’s Via Monte Napoleone, as would the suburbia of Grosvenor Vale, Wealdstone’s home in the middle of a housing estate, which may jog memories of late-90s visits to Macclesfield and Lincoln. Simpler, happier times, perhaps.

On the fringes of west London, with rich, non-league history, last season’s FA Trophy finalists, managed by the 1980s QPR hero Gary Waddock, Wealdstone is the club from where Stuart Pearce, Vinny Jones and Jermaine Beckford began their journey.

In the digital age, the club became famous for the meme pioneer Gordon Parmar Hill, AKA the Wealdstone Raider, whose “you’ve got no fans” war cry went viral on a pandemic scale in 2014, the same year his assault on the UK Christmas No 1 with, naturally, “Got No Fans”, reached No 5. The Raider even made himself available for hire on stag weekends, though despite a recent social media comeback that revenue stream has been shuttered, a quieter life now observed.

Kicking off fifth from bottom in the National League, if this season’s outlook could be brighter for the Stones, then Saturday confirmed there is always someone worse off. Gateshead hosted a Football League club on the southern bank of the Tyne from 1930 to 1960, the last team the legendary Hughie Gallacher turned out for, though extinction came in 1973. The re-founded Gateshead that has been knocking around the non-league pyramid since 1977 has little hope of reaching the Football League anytime soon.

Before kick-off, the Vale club bar outside the stadium was doing brisk business. At a fifth-tier club, drinking in view of the pitch is verboten. A revocation of the 1985 alcohol statute the prime minister this week floated would prove a significant revenue driver for clubs of Wealdstone’s size; clubs in the divisions below make considerable cash from in-game hospitality.

In the Gateshead dugout, the familiar face of Lee Cattermole. For the time being, at least – his first senior management role is not going at all well. The former hard-tackling Middlesbrough, Wigan and Sunderland midfielder, collector of 88 yellow cards and seven reds in 271 Premier League games, has approached management in a characteristically uncompromising fashion. His team bottom of the National League, one win from 10 matches, Cattermole has employed the “bomb squad” approach favoured by Enzo Maresca at Chelsea and Ruben Amorim at Manchester United.

Eight players are reported to be training at alternative times to the first team, having also been removed from WhatsApp group chats. Neither Maresca nor Amorim’s shunning of players was particularly successful at an elite level, and being six goals down by half-time at home to Southend the previous week hardly heralded the success of Cattermole’s tough-love strategy either.

Alfie McCalmont, a Northern Ireland international lately of Central Coast Mariners in Australia, joined the Heed in midweek. Anchoring midfield, after what were bright beginnings for the team that had travelled 278 miles, about 100 away fans willing them on, the new arrival soon found himself dragged into the torpor of his new teammates.

Gateshead’s manager visibly sagged once Olufela Olomola scored the first of two unanswered goals before half-time. Not half as bad as Southend, but bad enough. “Make them work,” bellowed Cattermole while his team were still level, among other, more colourful, language.

Once Wealdstone’s second goal came, Luke Norris converting a softly conceded penalty, Cattermole sat himself down, distractedly fiddling with notebook and pen before a half-time team talk delayed by his slow return to the away dressing room.

Whatever was said, a third Wealdstone goal came within two minutes of the resumption, and a fourth just before the end. Waddock, who as a player was not dissimilar to Cattermole – combative, lover of a tackle – could keep quiet counsel, relaxedly leaning on a handy gatepost. Such serenity in a difficult season for Wealdstone came by contrast to the portentous chants of “sacked in the morning” from the away end, followed by “time to go”.

It was Ben Clark, Cattermole’s assistant, sent out to deliver a post-match verdict. “We conceded a soft goal, and struggled from there on in,” he said. “The lads are struggling a bit with their confidence.”

The possibility of Cattermole being bombed out had heightened, such news likely to be accompanied by a corner-flag image on the club website. Should City drop down the divisions to alight on suburban outposts such as Wealdstone, it is already unlikely Cattermole would get the chance to face them, let alone manage them.