ALTHOUGH his surname begins with K and his hair is also going grey, Joe Kinnear was never blessed with Kevin Keegan's £60 million to spend on players. Neither is the H who owns Wimbledon blessed with packed houses in his own stadium as is the H who owns Newcastle.

Nevertheless, Sam Hammam has managed to create on a shoestring almost as much success as Sir John Hall's millions, and without tying the manager in knots. Should Wimbledon win their three games in hand (beginning at home to Derby today), they will top the league table, having already booked a place in the League Cup semi-final.

Just the sort of success Keegan feared he could no longer deliver, and, to rub salt in his psychological wounds, achieved by a team that cost just £13 million at the expense of selling some of the better players.

Statistically it is easy to compare the success rates of the two managers: Kinnear took over Wimbledon five years ago next Sunday, just a month before Keegan took over Newcastle. Their success rate is also about equal, the Magpies slightly stealing ahead in the league, with the Dons up there in the cups.

But is such a comparison productive? Surprisingly, a word of caution comes from one man you might think would be gloating at the irony of alley-cat matching plutocrat. Sam Hammam describes himself as "the mother and father of Wimbledon", but he is wise enough to accept that in the Premiership family there is one set of rules for the princes and another for the paupers, leaving no room for envy or bitterness.

While the top clubs want to win trophies, the priorities at Wimbledon are all together different.

"For us it is a question of life or death," say Hammam. "If ever Wimbledon dropped to the First Division the chances are in the high 90 per cent that we would cease to exist. We already lose between pounds £1 1/2-£2 million a year and relegation would increase that to £5-£6 million a year. No one can sustain or justify such a loss, so what we are doing is we are playing for our lives."

Which of the pressures - Newcastle's or Wimbledon's - is the greater is a moot point. But certainly their aims are different. "If you are running a major club like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle and their ilk, they are in the entertainment business," says Hammam. "They are selling something to get the crowd in, to get the sponsors and the boxes sold because they are of that size.

"For them, buying players for record prices and paying high wages is essential to keep people coming through the gate. Wimbledon are not in that business at all. We are in the manufacturing business, either completely building the players we have or getting them as raw material and converting them into quality players. Therefore it is a complete fallacy to look at what we have done and compare that with Newcastle."

One of Hammam's favourite phrases is "horses for courses", meaning he fully appreciates and endorses the path which Newcastle or Middlesbrough have chosen in splashing out very un-Wimbledon-like millions on players.

"Middlesbrough have the right policy in that they have just come up and want to stay up. So to consolidate they had to spend tens of millions to be able in one year to achieve what we slowly did in 11."

Similarly, he defends Keegan's spending in the absence of Wimbledon's "clear and distinct advantage" in that time in the top flight to slowly develop a strong squad. Newcastle expectations cannot wait 10 years; success is demanded now, so can only be bought.

So would Hammam himself like £60 million to spend? He is reluctant to deal in hypotheticals. "We are like a person with a handicap," he says. "It's difficult not having a permanent home and one would always prefer to have money if that was available. So, like someone with a handicap, we'd prefer to be as fit as everyone else. But the truth is we are not.

"So you cannot look with envy and say, what if I was not handicapped? Until such time we are not handicapped we just deal with the situation as it is and live with our handicap. There might come a time when we are in a different position and be as big and rich as the big clubs, and I know exactly how I will handle that. Though I don't want to talk about that now."

But does the pressure and frustration ever make him, like Keegan, want to quit? "Well, sometimes the press have been downright insulting to what this little club has done, and that makes me feel a bit unhappy. But, like a father and mother you have, no time to think about these, things you just get on with what you have to do.

"We have a plan and we carry it out. And when we have major problems I don't get nervous or scared, and when we have success, I don't get carried away."

Perhaps there is a lesson for the former manager of Newcastle.