When Aston Villa sacked manager Paul Lambert in mid-February, Premier League history was made. Not only did it provide Tim Sherwood with his first permanent post in football management, but it marked the first time since its inception that the Premier League did not play host to a Scottish boss. On Monday, the man who has finally restored positivity at Norwich City has every chance of rectifying that.
It is too soon to bunch Alex Neil in with Sir Alex Ferguson, David Moyes and his fellow esteemed compatriots right now but, at just 33, the rise of Scottish football's new hybrid manager is on a crash course for English football's top table.
His immediate fate will be decided in a yin and yang Championship play-off final on Monday. Free-flowing Norwich face the defensive machine that is Middlesbrough, while Neil, who learnt his trade as a player-manager in the Scottish Championship, will go head-to-head with Jose Mourinho's protege Aitor Karanka.
The paths of the two bosses could not be more opposite. More than 300 La Liga games in a 14-year career provided the platform for Karanka's coaching life,and he spent three years under the wing of Mourinho as his Real Madrid assistant. Appointed at Boro at the beginning of last season, it's easy to see the influence of the Chelsea boss in the Spaniard's playing style.
For Neil, it has been a long and arduous journey. A Barnsley and Mansfield alumni, he joined Hamilton in 2005 as a tough-tackling midfielder. In what would soon become symptomatic of Neil's straightforward style, he boiled his abilities down to the following frank assessment: "I wasn't the most mobile but I could read the game and pass the ball."
Having been made Mansfield captain at just 23, Neil had always carried a degree of weight on his shoulders as a player. "If somebody wasn't pulling their weight I was quite happy to say what I needed to say," he once said of his responsibilities when wearing the armband. However, it was back-to-back hip injuries while at Hamilton that instigated an unlikely beginning in the world of coaching.
Leaving him sidelined for six months in 2009 and 2010, the midfielder spent his time coaching Hamilton's Under 17s while still in his 20s. "Billy [Reid, then manager] said to me, 'Do a bit of coaching' and it just snowballed. Then I took over [as manager] so the continuity was there", said Neil of his rapid ascension to the Accies hotseat.
It was a transition that was typically seamless. He was appointed player-manager aged just 31 in May 2013. A year later, Hamilton secured promotion back to Scottish football's top tier, beating Hibernian in the play-offs.
The Scottish Premiership was just another stepping stone. A loss to Inverness on the opening day was a blow, but not once did Neil let Hamilton's confidence waiver. Victories over Celtic and Aberdeen helped build an unbeaten run comprising of the following 11 games as the promoted side topped the table by mid-October.
Despite his and Hamilton's remarkable form, it remained a significant gamble for Norwich to come calling by the turn of the year. Then in seventh, Neil Adams was struggling to keep the Canaries afloat in what many had expected to be a close promotion battle. Clubs taking a risk on inexperienced bosses a la David Moyes at Preston had become rare, but Norwich took the plunge and appointed Neil by January.
Then 11 points adrift of Championship leaders Bournemouth, 10 away from bitter rivals Ipswich and out of the play-off places, Neil has performed another magic act. Fast forward four months and they finished the season eight points clear of Ipswich and just four behind champions Bournemouth.
Those bare facts oversimplify his achievements. In the 24 games before Neil's arrival, Norwich held the eighth best defensive record, with 29 conceded. In 20 games in charge, his side had the meanest defence with just 16 goals against. Forty-four goals scored in the preceding games, 38 under Neil. Ten wins turned into 13, seven defeats into three. Back in Scotland, Hamilton went 13 games without a win after Neil's departure, including four straight defeats in the games immediately following his exit.
So was Norwich's transformation down to the hard work which has come to personify Scottish managers in the past? Captain Russell Martin said his boss "leaves no stone unturned" in the quest for perfection, while keeper John Ruddy rates him as "the best I've ever seen" in terms of attention to detail.
In Neil's own words though, it isn't quite as simple as 'hard work = results'. For a manager who has trialled six formations in half a season at Carrow Road, there is a clear tactical understanding. Neil can play just as well to his opponent's deficiencies as his own team's strengths.
"I'm adaptable in terms of shape and how we play," Neil says. "Whatever I think it will take to win the game, I am more than happy to do. Whether it's change personnel, change shape, whatever." That became clear in his first game as boss, a 2-1 win with ten men from behind against leaders Bournemouth, and the clarity remains crystal heading into the biggest game of his life.
Comparison to Moyes and Lambert are inevitable given the rise from the lower leagues and the Scottish common denominator, but it's one Neil readily refutes. "I am my own man," is the general riposte, and given his early displays of tactical fluidity and understanding of the game, it's hard to argue. He still has less than 100 games under his belt as a manager.
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