It's no surprise to see Lambert among league's second-tier big guns

Chief football writer

Monday 4 June 2012

THERE are always two Barclays Premier League tables and, in moving from Norwich City to Aston Villa, Paul Lambert has given precedence to the one which remains unwritten.

Lambert's move may spark others on the managerial merry-go-round. Picture: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images

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Michael Grant

The statistics show that Norwich finished 12th last season and Villa 16th, but no-one should be daft enough to believe that Lambert is downwardly mobile. Uprooting himself from the security and acclaim he has earned in the comfort zone of Norfolk is a brave move which speaks to a wider truth: his voracious ambition demanded that he switch.

Few job vacancies are more attractive than those where a big club is on its knees. We don't need to wait until he is shown off at a press conference on Wednesday to know what he sees in Aston Villa. Not a drab also-ran perennially hovering around the relegation zone, but one of the big "second tier" teams carrying enormous potential and – and this is the crucial point – room for improvement.Norwich are a wonderful club which plays to full houses and is working on ways to expand the capacity of Carrow Road but it isn't likely to get much better for them than finishing 12th. The "other" Premier League table, the unwritten one, will always show Villa as a natural contender for the Europa League places, below the Manchester clubs, Arsenal and Chelsea, but comparable to Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Everton and Newcastle United. Taking them from a couple of places above the relegation zone to, say, sixth or seventh, would add further glitter to the deeply impressive and consistent curriculum vitae Lambert has assembled at Wycombe, Colchester and Norwich. It needn't bother him that a month ago they wanted Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. He has taken Villa when they are in exactly the position they were when Martin O'Neill took over in 2006. Although owner Randy Lerner won't give him the money O'Neill enjoyed, it will be enough to turn things around.Lambert's stock has risen dramatically. Only 17 months ago Burnley wanted him. Now, still only 42 and often described as being a man in a hurry, he's at a club which could give him a stepping stone to one of the true heavyweights. He and David Moyes have been the two sub-Ferguson Scottish managers to have emerged unscathed from the Barclays Premier League this season. Owen Coyle and Steve Kean's careers must now carry the scar of a relegation, while Kenny Dalglish surely won't make a return to the dug-out.Alex McLeish was once where Lambert is now – ie, seen as the young and emerging manager to watch – but he may struggle to land more than an npower Championship job after consecutive seasons in which he relegated Birmingham City and was then dismissed by Villa. The availability of McLeish and Gordon Strachan puts a little more pressure on another manager, Craig Levein, going into the World Cup qualifying campaign this autumn. If Scotland start poorly there will be many supporters agitating for a change and momentum can quickly gather when fans perceive there are more attractive, available candidates. Neither McLeish – successful in his brief previous spell in charge of the country – nor Strachan were available when the job went from George Burley to Levein.Maybe Lambert will fancy becoming Scotland manager some day, but for the moment he gives off a sense of energy and drive which is better suited to the relentless daily demands of being in charge of a club. The matter is redundant for the time being. Scotland have a manager and, in any case, while Aston Villa can afford Lambert he has made himself such a hot property than the Scottish Football Association no longer could.AND ANOTHER THING . . . AN appellant tribunal is either independent or it's not. Since Rangers won their judicial review at the Court of Session last week, much has been said about how this will incur the wrath of Fifa and provoke the SFA into imposing a more severe penalty – probably suspension of membership – than the 12-month signing ban which the club successfully contested. Over the weekend it was said that before Lord Carloway's appellant tribunal reconvenes to again consider the case, the SFA will "communicate" to it that Fifa want the eventual sanction to be of equal or greater weight than the original.But the independence of its judicial panels and tribunals has been one of the great boasts made on behalf of the SFA's new protocol. Lord Carloway can't be independent if he's being told what to do.The SFA have painted themselves into a corner because there's far too big a gap between the "soft" and "tough" stated sanctions for bringing the game into disrepute. Even if they have to appease Fifa by hitting Rangers with another charge of bringing the game into disrepute by going to the courts, how could that end up as anything more than a slap on the wrist? If a year of calculated tax avoidance merited less than the severest of sanctions, Rangers can't be hammered simply for exposing a flaw via a civil court when the SFA didn't allow any other route of appeal.If Lord Carloway felt the severity of their original offences were second only to match fixing, that would suggest that his second stab at a punishment will err towards harshness rather than leniency. But any decision will have to be reached independently, without being leaned on, or else the SFA's whole protocol will be exposed as wa house of cards.

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It's no surprise to see Lambert among league's second-tier big guns

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