ANOTHER year, another group of willing young recruits are being initiated into the Scottish Football Association's A introductory coaching course at Largs.

Played out on a sunkissed patch of grass with the slopes of Goatfell stretching away in the distance, it is an idyllic, tranquil scene, one which feels relatively unchanged from those halcyon days when Scottish football really was a force to be reckoned with.

Our status circa 2012/13 – aside from the occasional reminder such as Celtic's bravura efforts against Barcelona in the Champions League – is closer to that of a sleepy backwater but thankfully the SFA has been able to turn to one old friend in particular to maintain its relevance and keep pace with the latest trends at the sharp end of world football. In fact, that last part is actually the wrong way round: on this occasion it was the old friend who turned to them.

Jim Fleeting, the SFA's director of football development, takes up the story. "Evolution is a great thing and David Moyes is fantastic for me," he said. "It was the week before he got the Manchester United job and he asked if he could talk about the A licence so I said 'of course you can, don't be daft. I don't even know why you are asking, you know far more than we do up here.'

"So myself, Billy Stark, and Donald Park, who is head of the coach education course, met up with him at the Tickled Trout, just off the M6. We took Billy because he is working in the game just now as the [Scotland] Under-21 coach, while Donald and myself are not involved so much on the touchline as we used to be. It is important you get information from people who are on the touchlines, who know what the modern trends are, who will tell you the truth and say what they want to say. David is very good that way."

Over three hours of conversation, the topics ranged from the need to do everything possible to ensure that practise occurs in game scenarios, rather than the sterile, if serene, environment to be found in North Ayrshire. The new Manchester United manager also stressed the need to focus more on the importance of winning the numbers game in midfield, even in a tutorial about utilising the flanks, and gushed about the unconventional way Bayern Munich and FC Basel are currently deploying their front three.

"This is a coach education process, where you just have to meet certain competences, and we have to structure a course so we can tick those boxes," added Fleeting. "But David was just trying to help us. He tried to influence what we had and what we were doing but he didn't have to influence too much, because 75% of the things I have seen in the last two days is very inclusive of what David was talking about. I phoned him from here one night and said 'that is us started on that rubbish you were talking about!'"

So much for the new Manchester United manager. But what about the old one? Could Sir Alex Ferguson, the Godfather of the Scottish coaching fraternity, not be persuaded to help out on a more regular basis with the time he has on his hands following retirement?

"That would be heaven for us, absolute heaven," said Fleeting. "Sir Alex is already great for us but never in a million years would Jim Fleeting call Alex Ferguson. I would get Billy Stark to do it."

Fleeting's wariness regarding Ferguson is perhaps inspired in part by a tale he tells against himself of a previous visit to United's Carrington training ground, where three days in the Old Trafford manager's company were marked by the tee-totaller Fleeting gifting a bottle of expensive red wine which turned out to have gone off. "I emailed the company back and they sent another bottle direct to him," recalls Fleeting. "I don't know why but when they had the address of the recipient it just seemed to go a wee bit faster."

Scottish supremacy in developing managers for British club football is one of the few remaining footballing feathers in our cap, and is currently under threat by an Irish FA course which Neil Lennon among others came through and the FA's new set-up at the state-of-the-art St George's Park.

Still, applicants for the course at Largs come from far and wide, with this year's intake including candidates from Italy, Portugal, Australia, Norway and Japan, while it is also worth remembering that Largs graduates Jose Mourinho and Andres Villas-Boas will also be coaching in England next season.

It is not just for senior pros, either. Some boys club and youth team coaches are more confident speakers than established internationals. "The number of pros I have seen walking up that hill and just going straight home," said Fleeting, "never to be seen again."