If the appearance of a player once valued at £5 million on the team bus was not enough to lift Alloa's players ahead of their visit to Ibrox last month his assessment of what he witnessed that night most certainly should have been.

Michael Chopra had arrived in Scotland maybe not quite that fresh from Sachin Tendulkar's Indian Supere League team Kerala Blasters via a spot of training with Port Vale and spent all bar the last 90 seconds of the Championship meeting with Ibrox - during which Alloa twice came from a goal behind to snatch a draw - on the bench.

"I was sitting on the bench and thinking 'how come they're so fit?' They only train two days a week but their fitness levels are unbelievable," admits the 31-year-old who knew when he signed that he would be playing for a first ever medal in senior football in the Petrofac Challenge Cup final as a result of Alloa's amazing comeback defeat of the same opponents a couple of months earlier.

"It's credit to all the lads because they work well in training and apply themselves in the right manner. That's why they've probably got to the final and they've had some good results in the league as well."

The collective self-esteem of the Scottish football community having suffered horribly throughout this new Millennium the Alloa squad deserve enormous credit for that first impression and the way they have sustained it, not least given the environments Chopra has been used to in the English Premier League and, more recently, in his ancestral homeland.

"There's quite a contrast between this and the Indian League," he observed.

"When I first went to India it was a case of playing with players who and no disrespect to the Indian boys, but they weren't technically good and weren't bothered when they gave the ball away. They were laughing and joking and things like that.

"There was myself, Stephen Pearson, who will be known to people in Scotland, and Jamie McAlister. We all got together and said to the Indian players: 'Look, you are going to have to work a lot harder and it's got to mean something when you lose the ball.'

"Then, after about a month you could see a big difference. It was a great experience for them because they were facing players they wouldn't usually play against, like Nicolas Anelka, Marco Materazzi, Allesandro Nesta.

"Fair enough, they are all coming to the end of their careers but you could still see they are good players and they would have passed their experience on to their team-mates.

"At Alloa, the boys are fantastic. You know if you needed someone in the trenches next to you, you could rely on any one of these boys, whereas at some other clubs, you look to your left and right and you're not sure if they're going to be up for the game.

"You can count on the Alloa boys and rely on them, because you know they're going to give 100 per cent in every game, no matter what."

What is all the more commendable is that Chopra seems aware that he is the one entitled to be under greater scrutiny than these willing part-timers given the nature of a chequered career that hasmost infamously, included some serious gambling issues.

Quite understandably, given the attention his move to Alloa has generated, he used social media to try to get a message across last week when posting a photograph of a wing mirror over which was printed the slogan: "Don't judge me by my past, I don't live there any more."

The hope, then, is that a man who sounded genuinely delighted that his seven-year-old son Sebastian - "a brilliant footballer who's at the Newcastle academy and doing really well for them" - has asked him for an Alloa top so he can wear it to training, has now got his priorities in order, but he understands that there will be considerable scepticism.

"I feel I do have a point to prove," Chopra admitted.

"Some people will doubt me because of the gambling and things like that and some managers won't want to touch me because they'll say my head's not at it and all that stuff, but that's just an excuse really and it's great that Alloa have given me a chance to show what I can do.

"It's refreshing to get away from that old reputation. Me coming to a part-time club has probably raised eyebrows.

"I'm from Newcastle and I could have played for Gateshead, who are full-time, but I wanted to challenge myself and play in a country I hadn't played in before."

After that brief run out at Ibrox there was a longer appearance off the subs' bench in a failed bid to salvage a result at Raith Rovers, before he started last weekend's meeting with tomorrow's opponents Livingston, which ended in a 2-2 draw and having lasted 75 minutes of that encounter Chopra believes he is just about up to Scottish Championship/Challenge Cup pace.

"There's definitely still something I can bring to the Alloa team... I've still got a lot of good years ahead of me," he said.

"Obviously my fitness is the main concern because I've had two months off. It's been hard coming straight back into it after that, but I'll keep working hard outside of training to put that right and hopefully I can create something and score goals when I'm given the chance to play.

"The fitness coach at Alloa has mentioned me training with Dundee and St Mirren, so it just a case of arranging that really, because I love football and I want to play football every day and every minute. So it's just a case of hooking up with one of those clubs."

Given the heights he has reached in the past and with a return trip to next season's Indian Super League already booked, he obviously knows he is operating well below his optimum level, but Chopra is appropriately respectful of his new club's ambitions as well as his own, saying: "I'm open to any offers (but) my main concern for now is to try and do well for Alloa and try and keep them in the league and hopefully win a trophy at the weekend."