EVEN if you've never heard of Steve Marsella, the chances are that you've passed him on the road.
It's reckoned Marsella covers 60,000 miles a year because of his diligence in the sort of job which could drive lesser men berserk. Opponents moan about making one or two trips to the Highlands to face Caledonian Thistle in the course of a league season. Inverness themselves make the opposite journey once a fortnight. Marsella? He makes it far more often than that.
He is the unheralded third member of the management team which has brought such improvement and quality to Inverness football, along with manager Terry Butcher and assistant Maurice Malpas. Marsella is the only one of the three who could walk most Scottish streets without being identified. He doesn't mind about that, but recognition of his efforts is long overdue.
When Caledonian Thistle arrive to take on Celtic at Parkhead on Saturday they will do so as SPFL Premiership leaders after a flawless start to the league season.
Three games have yielded wins over St Mirren, Dundee United and Motherwell, with six goals scored and none conceded. After the high watermark of the club's highest league finish last season, when they came fourth and missed out on a Europa League place only by dropping points on the final day, they are currently even higher. The temptation is to wonder how on earth Butcher can have reassembled another successful team after losing Andrew Shinnie, Owain Tudur Jones and Antonio Reguero over the summer and signing a mini-bus load of unknown guys from the likes of Ebbsfleet United, Kidderminster Harriers and Hereford United.
In fact there is stability at the centre of the apparent turbulence. The team that began in the 2-0 victory over Motherwell last weekend had nine men who played regularly last season. The only new names were the goalkeeper, Dean Brill, and the attacking midfielder James Vincent. Every member of the team was signed by Butcher - who became manager in 2009 - or else came through the youth system.
Butcher, Malpas and Marsella have given Caley Thistle a sort of scouting and signing alchemy, between them identifying, researching and recruiting one useful and consistent player after another. Butcher is proud and protective of his contacts in the English lower leagues and trusts their judgment so implicitly that he is prepared to sign a player on their recommendation even if he has not personally seen him himself. He has not often been disappointed.
Sometimes Butcher's informants flag up a player to him, on other occasions it will be Marsella who sees someone worth signing, occasionally while turning up at a game to watch someone else. Marsella is tirelessly enthusiastic about hitting the roads and totting up the miles, not just all over Scotland but deep into England too. He has been known to attend four or five games in a week and is so attuned to Butcher's preferred type of player that the manager will instantly trust his recommendation. Billy McKay - who has scored in all three league games so far - Gary Warren, Aaron Doran and Ross Draper are among those first watched and approved by Marsella. Last season Inverness had a winning team assembled with players brought from places like Tranmere Rovers, Northampton Town and Newport County. Marsella has trawled round League One, League Two, Conference and even Northern Premier League grounds to unearth players.
He has an unusual double role for the club: chief scout and goalkeeping coach. Butcher first worked with him when he was manager of Brentford and he was so impressed he took the Yorkshireman to the Highlands in the summer of 2010 (and would have taken him to Burnley, too, if he had accepted the Oakwell job in January). Marsella already knew the north of Scotland having had a spell as Elgin City's goalkeeper in the late 1990s.
Brill and Vincent are among the latest batch of recruits. Brill, a big, solid-looking 27-year-old, has kept goal for Luton, Barnet, Oldham and Gillingham and has looked unperturbed by anything SPFL strikers have hit him with so far. Vincent has shown the potential to be another gem. At 23, and with experience at Stockport and Kidderminster, he has looked aggressive, busy and skilful as a capable supporting act to McKay.
The new boys are joining a confident, winning side. Celtic beat them in three out of four league games last season but Inverness won at Parkhead in November and will turn up in Glasgow hoping the champions' thoughts are taken up with their high-stakes second leg against Shakhter Karagandy at Parkhead next Wednesday.
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