STUART McCall has the TV remote control in his hand and a mischievous look on his face.

"Listen to this," he says, already laughing. The Cheltenham racing is on the big screen in his office and in the next room some Motherwell staff and trainees are glued to it on another television. All the stadium televisions are linked, though, which means that when McCall changes the channel every other screen in Fir Park switches too. So he deliberately flicks it to some mid-afternoon rubbish – a househunting programme, cooking, whatever it was – and cups his ear to lap up the howls of complaint he can hear through the wall. He loves it. This is what being a manager is all about.

It is obvious how much McCall enjoys his job, and it is matched by Motherwell's pleasure in having him. He has prolonged the club's managerial alchemy. Terry Butcher, Mark McGhee, Craig Brown and McCall amount to the club getting it right with four of their last half-dozen appointments. His highs are well-known – a Scottish Cup final, finishing third, Champions League football, being on course to finish second this season – but so, too, is the uncertainty over what happens next. He is nearing the end of the two-and-a-half-year contract he signed at the end of 2010 and talks about a new deal have dragged on inconclusively.

The delay is not about McCall wishing to leave, or haggling for more money, or even waiting to learn what his signing budget would be for his third full season in charge. Instead it has been down to the cold pragmatism of how much money Motherwell would receive if he stays and is then headhunted by another club. "The biggest issue has probably been the level of compensation. If we finish in the top three this season and we finish in the top three next season, I will get paid less money. So it's not a financial thing. It's about getting a level of compensation [for Motherwell if I leave] which is suitable for the club and still puts me in a market for jobs.

"I wouldn't say it's been a stumbling block but maybe the only bit of disagreement between the club and my representative. I would imagine it will be ironed out in the next few days. I'm happy here. I've been speaking to players and agents for next season so I'm doing the job exactly the same as whether I had another four-year contract."

That does not mean he is unaware of his own worth or of the market he is in. He mentions that, of the last 16 managers appointed in the npower Championship, a compensation fee was paid for only four of them, which is evidence that there are plenty of appealing managers already out of work. It is also evidence that he watches what is going on. McCall knows perfectly well that if Motherwell demanded too high a fee to let him go, it could prevent him getting a move which would one day appeal.

"When other Scottish managers were being linked with jobs and interviews the standing joke to me was 'you must have a s**** agent'," he said. "But I did get phone calls asking if I wanted an interview here or there and I said 'not at this moment'. I want to show a bit of loyalty. But if it comes to a point where you can only see decline, you have to start looking at the bigger picture."

Michael Higdon, Nicky Law and Darren Randolph head a list of players out of contract and it is probable that Motherwell will reluctantly offer only reduced terms to keep them. McCall knows some will leave.

The likelihood is that Motherwell will soon announce that their manager is staying and the club will continue to benefit from his busy, popular style of management. Not popular with everyone, of course. While his team were beating Celtic at Fir Park last month the visiting fans taunted him for being "a zombie" given his history as a prominent Rangers player. If you know Scottish football these days the reference is familiar; to outsiders it would take quite a bit of explaining. "My daughter said to me 'what are they saying' and I said 'well it's better than what they normally call me...'

"The first time I got off the bus at Parkhead and it was 'Stuart McCall, you're a w*****, you're a w*****' and the boys said 'gaffer do you hear what they're saying' and I said 'yeah, Stuart McCall you're a winner, you're a winner'. They said 'but they're not chanting winner'. I said, 'well every time I came here I won.' Now it's zombies. Terry Butcher gets it, Rangers get it. I'm sure when any Celtic men go to Ibrox they get it just as bad. Ach, you just accept it."

McCall is likeable and quick-witted, and entirely uncontroversial, yet those seven years at Rangers in the 1990s will always dictate how he is perceived around Scottish grounds. "Listen, Motherwell's record against Rangers has been poor [since he became manager] and to some supporters that's because I used to play for Rangers!

"That will be the case no matter how good a job I do. On the night before our Scottish Cup final [against Celtic in 2011] we had a function and a woman came up and said: 'I used to hate you'. I was quite taken aback. She said: 'It was because you used to play for Rangers, but I love you now'. If you've played for Rangers or Celtic, they say you're from one of the ugly sisters, don't they?"

Motherwell's most lamentable performance of the season came in the Scottish Communities League Cup at Ibrox in September. They folded against a weak Rangers team which was subsequently swept out of both major cups by other top-flight teams. Ignore the conspiracy theories; that night clearly still embarrasses McCall. "If there was any game we'd want to play again it would be that one," he said ahead of a match with Hibs at Fir Park tonight, where a win would put them five points clear in second place.

Tomorrow he will start to think about his other team. When Scotland play Wales in a World Cup qualifier next Friday it will be his first competitive match as an international coach after being appointed to Gordon Strachan's backroom team in January. McCall is a unique hybrid: he looks like a Scot, sounds like a Yorkshireman, and is proud to be both.

"Obviously I sound Yorkshire and I always will-although in seven years at Rangers it started changing a wee bit," he said. "Even in my Bradford City and Sheffield United days my kids used to know who I was on the phone to. When I came off the call they'd say 'dad, were that Ally McCoist?' I'd say 'how did you know' and they'd say 'cos you were speaking Scottish'. If you cut the country, Yorkshire would just about be in Scotland -"

At his peak McCall would have walked into the current national team. As for the Welsh, some gallows humour. "I texted someone the other day: 'There's still one more weekend for Gareth Bale to pull a hamstring -'"