The Man in the Dugout: Paul Lambert

Every weekend from his dugout at Carrow Road, Norwich City manager Paul Lambert projects the same calm, steely, in control demeanour which more often than not has seen the Canaries on the right side of the score-sheet in his three seasons in charge.

However there is more than meets the eye with Lambert than the concise tactician seen on the Norwich sidelines.

A tough, abrasive central midfielder, Lambert’s first professional club were St Mirren, where he remained for eight years, winning a Scottish Cup Medal. Interestingly St Mirren was the club where Sir Alex Ferguson first, truly, cut his teeth in top class management between 1974 – 1978.

In 1993, Lambert moved to then high-flying Motherwell, who in his second season with the side appointed current Aston Villa manager Alex McLeish as manager. It was under McLeish at Motherwell that Lambert first played on the European stage, after finishing second in the 1994 Scottish Premier League; Motherwell qualified for the 1995 UEFA Cup.

The Scottish minnows were drawn against the German Giants, Borussia Dortmund, managed at the time by one of the great continental coaches, Ottmar Hitzfeld. Whilst Motherwell lost 3-0 on aggregate, the tie against the Germans arguably changed Lamberts career forever.

Obviously liking what they saw, Hitzfeld and Dormund snapped the Scot up on a free-transfer at the start of the 1996-97 season, bringing the unknown Lambert to Germany to play in front of 80,000 fans each week in Borussia’s massive Westfalen Stadium.

In a recent national newspaper interview Lambert admitted how far his technical abilities were behind those of his new European teammates stating: “As a player I was crap. I was probably the worst player in the Dortmund side, a team with genuinely world-class players. ”

But what he lacked in talent, he made up for with work-ethic, becoming the backbone of Dortmund’s highly successful team, playing defensive-midfield. The now Norwich manager concurs: “Actually I was more crap than I thought, but I worked hard & became a winner .”

This is exactly what Lambert did, winning the greatest honour in club football as Dortmund went all the way in the 1996-97 UEFA Champions League. In the final itself Lambert put in a man of the match performance, providing an assist as well as marking the then best player in the world, Zinedine Zidane, out of the match as Dortmund defeated Juventus 3 – 1. Lambert himself became the first British player to win the Champions League with a continental side.

After his success in Germany, Scottish giants Celtic paid £2million for Lambert’s services in 1998, where he stayed for virtually the remained of his career. At Celtic, Lambert won four Scottish Premier League medals and also won the Scottish Cup and the Scottish League Cup both on two occasions.

It was at Celtic that the Canaries manager continued to hone his coaching prowess, learning under Martin O’Neill, a man he still calls ‘the gaffer’ to this day.

After retiring as a player in 2005, Lambert took up the reins as manager of Livingston, where he had his only unsuccessful spell as a coach to date, being sacked after a few months in the job.

He was soon appointed manager of English League Two side Wycombe, in two years at the club he led the team to a playoff final, and more spectacularly the Carling Cup Semi-Finals in 2006. Having held the mighty Chelsea to a 1-1 draw at home,

Wycombe were unluckily defeated 4-0 in the second leg. Still this was the first time a team from the fourth tier of English football had made the League-Cup semis in thirty years.

After Wycombe, Lambert made perhaps the only mistake of his career, joining University of Essex heartland club, Colchester United. Lambert was manager of the Colchester side who dispatched Norwich 7-1 on the opening day of 2009 season.

Soon after the Canaries came calling and Lambert seeing the error of his ways, left Essex under acrimonious circumstances and hasn’t looked back since guiding Norwich on a miraculous rise from the basement of League One to the security of mid-table in the Premiership in just over two and a half years at the club.

Norwich’s rise has truly been ‘miraculous’, a word I do not use lightly, and much of that must be attributed to Paul Lambert. His willingness to stick with players he trusts and knows have the certain character he desires has been shown in each league he has managed in.

This is profoundly demonstrated at Norwich, with much of the current side of today, the likes of Wes Hoolahan and Grant Holt, having been a part of Norwich’s rise up the ranks. The Canaries ability to remain in games (a quality rare amongst newly promoted sides) can be attributed to Lambert’s tactical openness.

Regularly, under Lambert, Norwich have changed formation or employed different and arguably unusual personnel in an attempt to come from behind in matches, most of the time in his nearly three seasons at the helm it has worked.

Quite simply, Norwich has a fantastic manager who has taken a unique career path. His tough Scottish background, his tutelage under Hitzfeld & O’Neill and his time with Borussia Dortmund all make him a man deeply knowledgeable of the ins and outs of football. If Paul Lambert remains in the Carrow Road dugout who knows what lofty-heights may await the Canaries?