Prospective Sevco manager Mark Warburton has never won the Norwegian league!
The 52-year-old, who is the same age as £16,000-a-week gardener Ally McCoist, is expected to be unveiled as the club’s fourth manager in six months following McCoist, Kenneth McDowall and Stuarty McCall.
Warburton has only been in football management for 18 months. After a playing career that peaked with non-league Enfield he went to work in the City of London while playing soccer management computer games in his spare time.
Uwe Rosler’s move from Brentford to Wigan in December 2013 gave Warburton his big chance leading the Bee’s into the Championship with the squad put together by the German.
In February this year- six weeks after paying £800,000 for Lewis MacLead- Brentford decided to axe Warburton with the season ending in a 5-1 aggregate defeat to Middlesbrough in the play-off semi final.
Switching from computer analyst to real life football manager is an impressive achievement with the Next Gen Series for u-19 sides opening doors for the Londoner.
Needing a Scottish element for the competition Warburton ignored the Murray Park Academy of Excellence to work with Celtic with the hoops facing Barcelona, Marseilles and Manchester City in the first season followed by Aston Villa, PSV Eindhoven and Sporting Lisbon.
Speaking about that experience Warburton told the Daily Record: “It’s possibly the wrong thing to say but I’ve worked more closely with Celtic in recent seasons.
“I set up the NextGen Series, it was my baby, and I got to know people at Parkhead such as Peter Lawwell, Chris McCart and John Kennedy.
“As a result, most of my experience of Scottish football recently has been around youth football but I’ve watched the Rangers story from afar.
“The financial troubles at the club in recent seasons are not peculiar to Rangers but they are very newsworthy because of the club’s history and traditions.”
Warburton attended Celtic’s 3-1 defeat from Barcelona, with Tony Watt scoring for the hoops, and was glowing in praise after the 4-2 win away to Manchester City.
After the match he told the Daily Mail: ‘It was a sensational game of football. Both sides dealt with the difficult conditions extremely well, and it was great to see such exciting, attacking football.
“The result is a bitter blow for City, who will find it difficult to qualify from the group now. Celtic however will be very encouraged by their first win of the tournament and I’m sure they will be desperate to pick up more points to qualify for the quarter-finals.”
Warburton is expected to be unveiled at Ibrox tomorrow on less than a third of McCoist’s salary. His appointment is likely to coincide with Sports Direct taking court action to ring fence their £5m loan which will reduce the new manager’s war-chest.