Paul Lambert has gone head to head with the legends of the Premier League this season, and not been found wanting.

They may have nicked the yellow and green scarves, but Manchester United are in a gracious mood when it comes to Norwich City.

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Take the Wayne Rooney tweet which popped up out of the blue: “Have to say, the job Lambert has done at Norwich last three years is incredible.”

City’s progress this season also hasn’t passed by his team-mate, Michael Owen, who tweeted: “Looking at the league table, I can’t believe how well Norwich have done so far. Everton, Swansea, Newcastle and Sunderland also warrant a shout.”

Indeed they do: all have contributed to an exciting Premier League season – and that’s not something that anyone could have said with great conviction too often in recent years.

Swansea are, of course, the media darlings: they have a manager who is user-friendly, who doesn’t mind fronting up for the cameras, and he has a team which play the passing game so beloved by the purists. But do they have a Plan B? Maybe not.

Lambert has assembled a squad for all occasions – and it’s squads that win things. What Swansea have achieved has been excellent as well (although the jury is still out on QPR). All that City fans want is for the blokes who speak out of the big shiny box in the corner of the front room to appreciate that it isn’t quite as good as what the Canaries have done. But that’s just being picky.

In a week and a half’s time Paul Lambert will share the Carrow Road touchline with the greatest domestic manager of the modern era, Sir Alex Ferguson, a man who has cornered the market in building successful squads, breaking them up and building more successful replacements. He is the best because he knows what constitutes a winner and he knows how to put a lot of them together in the same dressing room. If he were a chef, he’d be Delia.

In managerial terms, Lambert is a pup compared to Sir Alex (although Lee Clark’s departure as manager of Huddersfield has moved the Norwich boss up to 18th in the list of longest serving managers ... after two and a half years) – but should he emerge at the end of his career with a fraction of his fellow Scot’s success he will have done more than your average football manager could dream of.

It isn’t beginner’s luck: that’s an insult. There’s no such thing as luck – that’s about as ridiculous as those who says decisions will “even themselves out over the course of a season”. It has little basis in reality. What managers do is calculated, planned, thought over time and time again. Decisions are made to win matches, not lotteries.

What Lambert has done so far beggars belief – a favourite phrase of his – and you’d bet most of the Premier League would agree. Which is refreshing.

The big test – and one comes along at regular intervals, it seems – will be against United.

A sterling effort at Old Trafford in October ended in defeat and if United win the return – and they need to if they are to maintain the chase of Manchester City at the top of the Premier League – it will be the first time Lambert has been doubled since he took over at City. That is incredible, but the forward motion that has been almost ever-present since Lambert arrived still shows no sign of abating.

One wonders what on earth is around the corner. Beating United is always a possibility and it if happens it will simply confirm that the Premier League may be a whole lot more entertaining than it used to be.

Norwich, Swansea, Newcastle and Tottenham are all proving, to varying degrees, that there is life outside the top four.

Almost all of them, if I am not mistaken, play pretty decent football. They’re value for money. They don’t bully the others into submission, they don’t rely on a Crazy Gang mentality to intimidate those nice chaps in the blue shirts.

They play football that we want to see, that we pay good money to see and feel we have spent wisely.

It’s not just the league: with both Manchester teams out of the FA Cup at the last-16 stage, and if results go City’s way this weekend, Wembley glory might be something that Lambert cannot avoid talking about.

Suddenly, City are within touching distance of something really big – in league and cup.

Survival in the first and getting past the third round in the second would be considered successes as far as City fans are concerned.

If it doesn’t happen, then so be it. But wherever City finish this season, there is little doubt that they have contributed hugely to a campaign that has finally seen the old guard’s feathers ruffled.

And for that we must be thankful. It was in danger of becoming boring.