At 34, James Fowler has opened quite a few eyes this season at Queen of the South.

It has not been a bad shift, in his first stab at management, taking the Dumfries club into the play-offs for the Premiership, where Hibs and Rangers await. The calm, forensic Fowler style has won him a lot of admirers.

His team has become intimidating over these past seven months, not least to Rangers, who have twice been whipped at Palmerston Park. Yet just 10 months ago, after 17 years with Kilmarnock, the appointment of Fowler as Jim McIntyre's assistant went unheralded.

"It's been tough, it's been a steep learning curve for me," he says. "I obviously came to the club to work under Jim, and when he left I was given two or three games in charge before Queens offered me the job permanently. I've tried really hard to be a success at it.

"Footballers can be very judgemental. I know that, having been a player myself. There can be 20 of them sitting there listening to your every word in the dressing-room. So you've got to be totally focused and tuned-in. Luckily, I'd worked for two years with Alan Robertson at Kilmarnock, helping to develop their youth team, and given quite a few team-talks there. So I wasn't totally new to it, but it was still demanding."

Two figures loom large in the shaping of Fowler the young manager: Mixu Paatelainen, his manager at Kilmarnock from 2010, and Jim Fowler, his father, who had a bitter experience as a young pro himself before it all went wrong.

Fowler Snr was a highly gifted young Scottish player in the 1970s, who was signed by West Bromwich Albion having played for Scotland at youth level. But a move back to Scotland, and a subsequent disagreement, made him give up the game before he was 25.

"He was a really good footballer, my dad, who went down to play for West Bromwich Albion, before coming back up to play for Falkirk," says Fowler. "But then he had a fall-out there [with the Falkirk manager George Miller] over a projected move to Dundee United, which didn't happen, and it led to my dad drifting away from the game while still in his early 20s.

"He's great with me, is always there for me, he's a sounding board, and gives me advice when it is needed. He watches our games from a neutral point of view and can then make his comments. He's been a big influence on me. I value what he says."

When Paatelainen walked into Rugby Park as manager five years ago, Fowler believed that he knew the game of football. He was quickly disabused of the notion.

"Mixu opened my eyes to a lot of things about being a manager. First of all, even when I was 29, he made me a better player, just by giving me a better understanding of the game. He did things on the training ground, and said things about football, which improved me. Even little things, like building from the back, was something Mixu was very keen on. He said to us at Killie, 'if it doesn't work, I'll take the flak, it is me that is asking you to do this'. So he took the heat off the players as a manager. I learned a lot from him."

Before Paatelainen, Jim Jefferies had been Fowler's manager at Kilmarnock, a period when the two men two built up a mutual respect. Yesterday Jefferies said it was little surprise to him that Fowler had made such good progress so early as a boss.

"James was one of those guys you could always rely on - except on one occasion I remember a few years back at Tannadice," said Jefferies. "We were leading 2-1 with Kilmarnock, and going for Europe, and in the last minute James decided to pass the ball out of defence instead of hitting it into Row Z. Five seconds later the score was 2-2.

"We laugh about that now, but at the time I was irate with him. That being said, he was a tremendous pro, a really good type, someone any manager would count on.

"I can't imagine James shouting much, but he'll know what he wants, and he'll get the respect of the players. When you look at what he has done at Queen of the South - going there with no experience as a No.1 and stepping straight into Jim McIntyre's shoes - you have to say he has done really well."

Every year in Scotland we cast our eyes about for - just maybe - the next fine manager to emerge from our game. Might Fowler be the one? It is a risky game to play, with so many pitfalls awaiting on this career path. Grant Murray, 39 and three years into his managerial career, was axed last night by Raith Rovers. But Fowler admits he has considered the tantalising possibilities.

"Yes, I'm ambitious, like anyone else," he says. "Just as you want to play at as high a level as you can as a player, it's just the same as a manager. Obviously, I want to progress. But in the short term, the way to do that would be for me to do the best I can for Queen of the South and, hopefully, take them into the Premiership. I think that would be a great achievement. Beyond that, I don't look too far ahead. When you do that things tend to come back to bite you."

For all his natural caution, Fowler says neither Rangers nor Hibs will cause any great fear in Dumfries come the play-offs.

"It will be a big ask of us to get the Premiership, but we've done the first part. Our first goal was to get to the top four in the Championship, and we've made it. Now we will face either Hibs or Rangers, maybe both, as we try to go up. What I will say is, we've shown we can live with the bigger teams. We've beaten both Rangers and Hibs this season, so we know we can do it.

"We're presuming nothing, but it would be a terrific achievement if Queens could go up."