IN THE last week or so there’s been more talk about managers, as I call them, not coaches.

Without too much of a surprise in Scotland, in one newspaper I read Neil Lennon had resigned from Celtic. But in another one, it said he was getting the sack.

Either way, he has gone and I suppose it had to come.

He was a member of my squad when I managed Northern Ireland and I have to say, for me as manager, he was the best on and off the field of all of them.

I had a few what I would call wrong’uns in the squad and of course coming from various clubs, it takes a while to get to really know who’s who when international games only come every now and again.

But I really appreciated the effort that Lennon put in and I followed his club career with more than a little interest as I had always had in the old days, as I’ve said before, a strong connection with the legend Mr Jock Stein.

Neil took over at Celtic and they completed nine title wins in a row and needed to do it again this year to beat Jock’s record. But as the table will tell you, he had no chance because Rangers, their biggest rivals of course, are so far ahead, with only a few games left.

The other manager who has caught my eye, ironically, used to manage the other part of Ireland, the Republic, as well as three or four other clubs in England before that – Mick McCarthy.

When he left the Republic for the second time last year, he went off to Cyprus, but has now been given the job at Cardiff City and this was certainly a good move for both club and Mick.

He probably feels he has a lot to prove and if you look at his results since he arrived, in eight games, two draws and six wins. Sadly, the last one was at Bournemouth on Wednesday. But I know, from my experience with him, he will be commanding total respect in the dressing room and I would certainly keep an eye on Cardiff for promotion.

Mick has gone to the club which used to be managed by Neil Warnock, who I remember praising in my column when he joined Middlesbrough last year.

I thought he will want to show why Cardiff shouldn’t have let him go. He did start well at Middlesbrough, but lo and behold, he is struggling up in the north. And his latest defeat was at home to Bristol City, who have just appointed Nigel Pearson.

Saints supporters hardly got to know him, as he was in and out within three months. But it was the Rupert Lowe era and no way Nigel could work with that sort of chairman. But like some of the other lads I mentioned, he has now got something to prove.

Looking at everything, we have Lennon, McCarthy, Warnock and Pearson, four managers, all British, with a lot to prove. I would be interested in how those respective clubs do from now until the end of the season.

Two of those managers are set to go head-to-head this weekend. Warnock and McCarthy will have had plenty of battles down the years and they will go at it again when Middlesbrough host Cardiff on Saturday. They will know everything about each other.

Warnock will want to win twice as much to prove that he shouldn’t have left Cardiff. It gives him a double incentive and I’m sure the players in the dressing room before the game will be reminded how much more important it will be to beat his last club.

Managers don’t get as much mention these days as the players, but they also don’t seem to last as long at clubs as they did in our day. As I’ve said before, I think a lot of coaches coming from abroad are quite happy to do two or three years and move on. Whereas in the old days, the British managers were happy to stay, certainly at the top level, for as long as possible.

Whilst every manager wants to beat the other team obviously, some of the best times are the 10 or 15 minutes after the game before the visitors leave and the managers and trainers get together for a coffee, or something a bit stronger, in the home team manager’s office.

It’s a pity the TV cameras weren’t in there sometimes! Some of the conversation, if you cancel out the language, would be more interesting than the game which had just finished.