LIKE any self-respecting Scouser and Liverpool fan, Jon Routledge spent the early part of the week reeling from the news that Steven Gerrard was departing Anfield for the USA.

By the end of it, the Hamilton Accies midfielder had something else to get his head round: the fact his manager Alex Neil was saying his goodbyes and heading for pastures new.

The 26-year-old, now in his third spell at the club, paid tribute to the job his friend and former team-mate did for the Accies over a 10-year period and warned those forecasting that he will fall flat on his face at Norwich City about the perils of underestimating his abilities. Martin Canning and Neil's long-term assistant Frankie McAvoy will take Hamilton into tomorrow night's SPFL Premiership encounter with Dundee United, although McAvoy is likely to decamp to East Anglia in due course.

"I have had a hard week, haven't I?" Routledge said. "It wasn't really a surprise after all the attention Alex has been getting, but it was still a shock that it all happened so suddenly. But in football people move on quite sharply, especially when managers go.

"It was quite emotional when Alex talked to the boys on Thursday afternoon. There weren't any tears in the dressing room - although I don't know about any of the lads once they got back into their cars. He gets on unbelievably well with all of us and we have had a great couple of years together. He thanked all the boys for what we have given him over the years and we thanked him, just all the usual things. We appreciate what he has done for us and the same goes the other way round.

"While it would have been great to have him until the end of the season we don't want to hold him back from bigger and better things. I am sure he can go there and carry on his own success as a manager and maybe even get them up to the Premier League. I checked because I thought they were further down the league, but they are seventh or something like that. If he goes down there and gets them flying there is no reason why he can't reach the play-offs and get them up."

There is a contrary argument, of course. It suggests that, aged just 33, Neil will find it significantly more difficult to make an impression with a squad of seasoned, senior professionals than his previous task of moulding the eager conscripts of Hamilton's excellent youth academy into a coherent unit. But Routledge takes issue with that line of thinking.

"Alex is very single-minded and doesn't take too much notice of people," he said. "No matter what age you are people always have opinions on managers taking new jobs. But he loves a challenge and I am sure that if he knows people have put question marks over him, that will just make him work even harder just to prove them wrong.

"He doesn't care who you are or what you are earning. He is a great man-manager and he was always great with us. I don't know if there will be too much difference - maybe there will be a few more egos, a bit more money in their back pockets, but they will already know that if they are not pulling their weight in training or doing well in games they won't be playing."

If Hamilton have already lost their greatest asset during this transfer window - their manager - it remains to be seen if that is the end of the exodus. No-one knows better than Neil the abilities of a squad which boasts impressive young players such as Ziggy Gordon, Ali Crawford and Stephen Hendrie, as well as SPFL Premiership top scorer Tony Andreu.

"I think he will probably go down, assess the players he has got and go from there," said the former Liverpool and Wigan Athletic player. "If he thinks a couple of our lads could do a good job then I don't see any reason why he wouldn't come back up for them."

While the progress of Neil for the remainder of the season will be intriguing, finding the next Hamilton manager won't exactly be easy. Canning, the club's veteran defender, is a plausible continuity candidate, but the next few weeks will determine whether he is capable of carrying on the club's successful model of youth development.

"Obviously the manager is a big part of it, but a lot of the players have played together for a lot of seasons now," Routledge said. "We always try to work together as a team and I think we will just try to carry that on in a similar way to what we have been doing."

Enticing opportunity or not, life in the English Championship sometimes offers a form of roulette for an aspiring young manager.

Derek McInnes, to use just one example, saved Bristol City from relegation in his first season only to be sacked halfway through the following campaign with the club having slumped back to the bottom of England's second tier. While he feels Neil should have the support he needs to bridge the gap between the SPFL and the English Championship, in retrospect he feels he was somewhat mis-sold his move to the West Country.

"We quickly realised, all wasn't rosy at the club," McInnes said. "There were a lot of fires to put out and eventually it got the better of us. But that's not to say you don't draw from the experience. And if Alex has good support, good infrastructure and a good squad, he'll go and make the most of it. I wish him well. There's a big pressure on Norwich to go back up, same as on any team who comes down. But the stats will show that not a great percentage of teams do that the following year, for whatever reason."

What is clear is that Neil's promotion to the Canaries is another feather in the cap for the Scottish game, amid the widely forecast Armageddon.

"For Scottish football to be at its best it needs the big clubs in the top division," McInnes said. "But Hamilton has been a brilliant story. St Johnstone over the last few years has been a brilliant story. Inverness have improved again this year, Dundee United have improved again. There's a lot of good going on and Alex has been part of that."