The big flaw in this that I see is that Baker has been on, conservatively, £200k a year for a long time. I doubt he lives in Coventry or shops in Costco. I've no issue with either of those things btw (I like Aldi personally) but it's just that it seems a little unlikely.
Regardless of that, I think you can probably get away with being a bit of an ars*hole to your players if you're winning things. If you're not though, I suspect it doesn't take too long for players to begin to take exception to it, and eventually, to ignore it.
I suspect, in truth, that as an intelligent man Pressley has a bit more to him than a hair-dryer approach to man-management - if he hasn't he's not going to make it beyond this level of football because those days have gone, imho.