Why Bayern Munich have already stolen a march on the English heading into new season You wonder what Sir Dave Brailsford would make of our clubs" summer schedule. Brailsford has delivered British cycling to a position of Tour de France-winning prominence by embracing a scrupulous attention to detail. He calls his obsessive approach the accretion of marginal gains. A philosophy first popularised by Clive Woodward, it insists that competitive advantage can be sustained by making a hundred things better by one per cent rather than attempting to make one thing 100 per cent better. He will allow nothing into his cyclists" schedule that might reduce their effectiveness. He certainly would never oblige them to spend crucial weeks ahead of the season on a world tour. There is no doubt that international schedules of the kind undertaken by the English shirt salesmen come with a toll. The moment Manchester United, for instance, returned home from Australia this week, their manager David Moyes gave his players two days off. They were exhausted after the long trip and needed time to reset their body clock. Which makes you wonder: is it entirely the best use of pre-season to be giving players days off? Surely this is the time of the year when fitness is deposited to be withdrawn over the next nine months. Now is the time to work, when miles needs to be put into players" legs, not taken out. We know why the squads were out there building up their carbon footprint. The commercial value of opening up new markets is substantial. Friendlies in far flung places are hugely lucrative. Giving hordes of excited Indonesians the chance to serenade their heroes in the flesh with chants of "west London is wonderful" in heavily accented English has substantial knock-on effect on the bottom line. The opportunity for the directors of a club's Malaysian potato snack manufacturing partner to shake hands with the manager and club captain may well help to cement long-term contracts. It is a competitive market out there. If Chelsea do not head out to Asia, the fickle locals will turn their attentions to Barcelona, Real Madrid or the Los Angeles Lakers. In the drive to increase revenues, such moments as the close season are crucial to buffing up a club's current account. Which, the commercial departments will insist, they need to do to maintain their edge in the transfer market. Odd, then, that Bayern, did not feel the necessity to spend their break competing for the Asian, African and American dollar. This, after all, is football's most muscular commercial entity. Odd that Pep Guardiola was presiding over a pre-season schedule at Munich's own training complex rather than trying to squeeze a few moments in a hotel gym in between assignments pressing the flesh of potential sponsors. Or maybe he and the rest of the Munich hierarchy believe that staying at home, working on the fitness of their players will ultimately have more money-spinning effect. After all, winning trophies is what really sets the tills ringing. As the Germans have recognised, there really is nothing more pointless than Chelsea flying to Indonesia in order to hammer some hapless bunch of locals. In terms of meaningful preparation, it would have been just as efficient organising a friendly against the local pub team on Parsons Green. Actually more so, as the draining effects of jet lag are rarely encountered during a five-minute stroll from Stamford Bridge. When it comes to the final stages of the season, when the Champions League reaches its conclusion, these tours may only have marginal effect. It may only make a fraction of a difference that John Terry, Theo Walcott and Michael Carrick spent much of their vacation at 30,000 feet while Bastian Schweinsteiger, Arjen Robben and Toni Kroos had their feet up at home, allowing the lactic acid accumulated during another punishing gym session to dissipate. But margins are what make the difference at the top level of sport. As Brailsford has proven, it is in margins that gold can be mined. Which makes you wonder why it is that managers as rigorous and thorough as Arsène Wenger and Jose Mourinho have allowed their pre-season preparations to be hijacked by their colleagues in the commercial department. How come the moneymaking tail is now wagging the dog? More to the point, the next time the clubs complain about some pointless international friendly draining the competitiveness of their employees, maybe someone at the Football Association should ask exactly what it was they were doing in Asia in July.