Papa Lambert

      

  Some celebrations are hilariously incompetent: it's lucky for Alex Ferguson that the only time he looks anything less than thoroughly terrifying is when his side have just scored. Others - naming no Pardews - have a faintly suspicious air about them, the practised contortions of a man who, having attended a course entitled Get An Edge Through Personal Presentation, has decided that, like Geoffrey Boycott with his forward defensives, his celebratory technique needs to be rehearsed, refined and tweaked in front of a full-length mirror, wearing nothing but a carefully-furrowed brow.And Lambert, while not the most demonstrative or flamboyant, is a particularly interesting study of the football manager in loco parentis. Papa Lambert. While all of the various managerial styles and stereotypes - the Great Dictator; the Middle-Manager; the Tactical Maven; the One Of The Lads - have their own strengths and weaknesses, and depend for their success as much on context and personnel as anything else, the Paternal Overseer is by some distance the most endearing for the neutral.Still others, though, are nothing but joyous, which brings us nicely onto Paul Lambert. On Monday night, as Aston Villa rattled six past Simon a-Mignolet a-Mignolet a-Mignolet a-Mignolet, Lambert's celebrations progressed from the happy through the disbelieving to the completely delirious. For a man that's spent so much of the season looking vexed, to see him capering up and down the touchline, throwing his arms into the air, and skipping - skipping! - was enough to drag grins from even the stoniest of faces. Er, apart from Sunderland fans. They weren't really into it. Spoilsports.It helps, of course, that Lambert's team is comprised largely of actual, literal children, giving the whole adventure a vaguely Disney feel. If Aston were some interchangeable part of small-town America, and Lambert were in charge of - say - a little league baseball team, then he'd be ideal as the slightly-embittered-coach-who-rediscovers-the-joys-of-living-by-bonding-with-a-difficult-player-while-simultaneously-mending-his-relationship-with-his-ex-wife-and-finding-inner-peace-even-though-they-don't-quite-manage-to-win-the-pennant-or-whatever. But this is the bottom of the Premier League.Watching managers watch their players is a fascinating and rewarding pastime (which is handy, because watching football is often a dull slog). Every game is a drawn-out psychodrama, enacted through cryptic gestures, whistles and an awful lot of shouting.