AS the domestic football season bows out tonight fittingly at Wembley, my overwhelming choice as football manager of the year has Scotland in his heart.

Tonight’s showdown is not the FA Cup final – remember that was infuriatingly played and won by Manchester City a full two weeks ago before the league campaign finished.

Knockout exclusivity is instead reserved under the gleaming arch for the Champions League final between Spanish champions and newly-crowned English kings for a record 19th time, Manchester United.

As a Liverpool fan those last ten words are some of the hardest to type. But there you have it, the Old Trafford corporate machine has mastered a monopoly of silverware spanning more than a decade of unparalleled success.

But among all that new domination there have been other worthy candidates this year for managerial gongs, and not all in the top-flight.

Down the tiers it’s been cheers all the way on the south coast where Gus Poyet has reinforced what many people believed during his time at Leeds United as assistant to Dennis Wise – remember him? – that he was a force to be reckoned with. His Brighton team took the League One crown at a canter playing a pleasing brand of football.

There must have been something in the coastal air for Southampton too joined the Seagulls in soaring high, their off-their-field leader Nigel Adkins proving his move from Scunthorpe was not the too big a leap some had assumed.

Just a scale up, he may not be everybody’s half-time cup of tea, but Neil Warnock’s penchant for promotion is virtually unassailable.

After starting out by leading Scarborough into the promised land as the first club to gain automatic ascent to the Football League, he has done the same trick at numerous other clubs culminating in QPR’s elevation to the elite, the third separate club he has guided to the Premier League following similar surges with Notts County and Sheffield United.

Then there is Scotsman Paul Lambert, far more unassuming than Warnock, but who has steered Norwich City to canny consecutive promotion campaigns to get the Canaries shuffling to the prime perch alongside the game’s titans.

But when the gongs are handed out they are inevitably headed towards someone from the upper tier, where there were other solid achievers.

Roy Hodgson restored his reputation, Kenny Dalglish rekindled hope, and Mark Hughes resurrected his own status at West Brom, Liverpool and Fulham respectively.

Nearer the bottom Wigan’s Roberto Martinez stuck firmly by playing principles despite being shackled to the relegation trapdoor for all but the final half-hour of the season, and Stoke City’s Tony Pulis dragged his improving Stoke to the FA Cup final before petering out on the day to Man City.

And what of City leader Roberto Mancini?

Some would say his is the easiest task, bankrolled by resources of the world’s richest football club. But all that cash brings vice-like expectation and after frequently resembling someone in a light-blue and white noose, he breathes more easily as an FA Cup winner and Champions League qualifier and stepping out of the shadows of you know who across Mancunian way.

So then to the master himself, Sir Alex. Winner of more silverware than any other manager in the history of the English game, this serial collector of trophies continues to astound with a voracious appetite for success.

Such is his status that even this week’s threat to ban a journalist for simply doing his job was translated by other hacks as evidence of his single-minded commitment to protect his players and his club rather than the plain old schoolyard “my dad’s bigger than your dad” bullying.

So the honour of manager of the year from this column goes to...Neil Lennon. See I told you my selection had Scotland in his heart.

Yes I know the Celtic manager is Irish and does not serve in the English game, but can anyone honestly recall any manager in these shores attempting to work under the sort of debilitating circumstances Lennon has had to endure?

There have been countless incidents of knowing English nods of the head whenever reading about managers in South America, Africa and now in the former Eastern European bloc, who have been threatened with violence.

But such menace has now invaded Blighty. Lennon was physically attacked as a player and, as Celtic boss this season, has been threatened with bullets and bombs and jumped on by a fan, the victim of shameful and shameless bigotry.

Manager of the season? There can only be one.