Soccer English FA Cup Final: Michael Walker on the turnaround in the managerial career of Southampton's Gordon Strachan

Ever since Southampton overcame Watford in the FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park 34 days ago, the club shop at St Mary's stadium has been doing a steady trade in T-shirts bearing the logo: "Saint Strachan's Pilgrimage to Cardiff". Many will be in evidence today when 25,000 Saints descend on the Millennium Stadium. And when those Saints go marching in, it will be to bear witness to a resurrection - the manager's.

It may sound strange to be talking about Strachan's struggle on the day of Southampton's first Cup final for 27 years, but it is easily forgotten that his appointment at Southampton 19 months ago was greeted quizzically.

Strachan was out of work at the time, emotionally raw after a departure from Coventry City that amounted to a cessation of hostilities by mutual consent.

He was not exactly hounded out after guiding Coventry from the top flight of English football for the first time since 1967. But his wife had stopped attending home games due to the abuse Strachan was receiving and the manager's increasingly quirky behaviour after games led Brian Clough to refer to his "baffling gibberish". This was a man who looked on the verge of implosion, not reinvention.

It was only six weeks between Strachan's departure from Coventry and his appointment at Southampton. After Glenn Hoddle's acrimonious move to Tottenham, Stuart Gray had taken the club to the foot of the Premiership in his few months in charge.

Strachan was hardly perceived as the manager who would arrest that decline, never mind take the same players to 11th place in his first season and a Cup final 12 months after that.

"I didn't really die," Strachan said when the notion of resurrection was put to him this week. "I had one bad season at Coventry, and I was there five years. I took over when they were second bottom in the league and kept them in the league for the next three years. Before that I was player-coach, player-assistant-manager and player-manager. So I kept them in the league for six years."

It was not said aggressively but a point was made. It is not how Coventry remember him, however. Two years ago, he was the subject of vitriolic protests by Coventry supporters. The City fanzine - entitled Gary Mabbutt's Knee as an homage to their Cup-winning goal in 1987 - was scornful of Strachan as Coventry slid to relegation.

Coventry's last Premiership day came in May 2001, when a two-goal first-half lead against Aston Villa became a 3-2 defeat. "The unkind might say he is all talk. And he is," said GMK. The fanzine had christened Strachan Gordon the Goldfish - "A goldfish swims around a bowl, eyes its world on its second lap, remembers nothing from its first. I was reminded of this by Gordon Strachan's after-match comments."

Of particular annoyance to Coventry supporters was the divergence between the local and national opinion of Strachan. To those who got their Strachan information from his touchline appearances or Match of the Day, he was a loveable eccentric. But to Coventry diehards, whose gaze was forensic, it was a lot different. GMK again: "I never thought we would get a manager who was worse than Terry Butcher, but we have."

Yet even the most disaffected Coventry supporter recognised that Strachan was battling a curious regime that was plunging into debt while planning a £40 million new stadium. It is unlikely Strachan will ever be able to shake off the frank damning in Alex Ferguson's autobiography, but the man who appointed Strachan at Southampton, Rupert Lowe, was equally frank and a lot less critical this week.

"People gain from their experience and it's preposterous to say they don't deserve another go after a failure," said Lowe. "Success can make people cocky and arrogant. Gordon has great enthusiasm, the crowd respond to his enthusiasm and you only have to see the players train to see what a coach he is. He knows what he wants and he can communicate that." Communication is undoubtedly a Strachan strength. Having sent a seismic shock through football by once admitting to self-doubt, Strachan later quelled the fuss with a joke: "People started to think I was walking around like Woody Allen."

That winning characteristic shone through Chris Marsden's anecdote about Strachan having the slowest players in pre-season training in the North Sea at 6.45 a.m., while Matt Oakley said of the blossoming of Southampton under the Scot: "There was an inferiority complex here. But the ability was always here and the manager has brought that out. His enthusiasm rubs off on you."

It showed on Tuesday when Strachan was not, in Ferguson's words, "in one of his nippy sweetie moods." It was, as it frequently is with Strachan, a laugh-in. But occasionally he was serious. "I didn't have to prove anything to anybody (after Coventry)," he said, "you prove it to yourself. I'm no' a revenge-type person. My job isn't to prove how good I am, it's to make the people I work with better.

"I've said all along I am not an ambitious man. That doesn't make me unambitious, believe it or not. I was like that as a player - I just set out to be a decent footballer. I didn't plan to end up at Man United. I didn't plan to end up at Leeds United. I ended up there by just trying to do my job properly. That's what I've been doing since I've been a manager. Some seasons it's all right. Some seasons it's not so good."

Eighth in the Premiership, an FA Cup final and qualification for the UEFA Cup this season has been remarkably all right.

Those close to Strachan mention fitness - mental and physical - as an important development. Southampton have scored a rash of late goals, almost 40 per cent of their total coming in the last 20 minutes. It would suggest Southampton and Strachan get better the longer they go.

Those further afield would agree. The author Irvine Welsh, based in Chicago, grew up on the same Edinburgh housing estate as Strachan in the '60s and '70s.

"We occasionally played in the same 30-a-side games as small boys," Welsh said. "He was known as a Hibs fanatic and it was always expected that he would play for them. The rumour was that Eddie Turnbull, then Hibs manager, rejected him for being too small and said that he would never make the grade. I don't know if that's true, but it sounds typical Hibs.

"Gordon signed for Dundee instead and I was quite surprised when I saw him play for the first time against Hibs. He was still small, ginger and a good footballer, but he was chunky and muscular - he really must have worked hard to build himself up.

"What his career shows is that natural brilliance has to be married with dedication and hard graft. Just as he did as a footballer, Gordon seems to be improving as a manager, adding a maturity and savvy to his natural passion for the game. I hope he does well because he deserves it, and I'd love to see him shock Arsenal and lift the Cup for the Saints. I'll be watching from a Chicago bar at 9 a.m., cheering the wee man on."