ALEX RAE has spent various spells out of football since hanging up his boots in 2008 – but he always pined to return. Prior to being appointed the manager of St Mirren last month, Rae had done a tour of duty as assistant to Alex McLeish at Genk, with six months either side of that job on the outside looking in.

Those who know the reflective Rae didn’t really give it much thought – he always sounded appealing over the airwaves of the various media outlets he was working for, and a career in front of the microphone seemed no great hardship.

But Rae always saw it differently. He knew, deep down, where he wanted to be. “There was one occasion when I was out of football and I was doing radio work covering a match at Kilmarnock,” he recalls. “It was the start of the new season, a scorching day, and I was speaking to Gary Locke, and Gary was really excited about the new season. I enjoyed working in the media but I remember thinking, ‘man, I need to get back in somewhere.’”

The authentic football man, with the game in his veins, needs to be on the inside working, not on the outside observing. You find this again and again with ex-footballers who have the instinct to coach or manage.

“I’m not a guy to boast,” says Rae. “I don’t go around saying ‘I’m this and I’m that.’ But see when it comes to football? I feel I’ve got a pretty decent understanding of the game, based on my experiences over the past 30 years.

“I’ve managed at Dundee, under financial constraints. I’ve worked at Blackpool in incredibly difficult circumstances. I’ve worked at Notts County and at MK Dons. So I’ve built up a lot of experience in the various dynamics of football. Plus I had a career that spanned 700-odd games.

“I feel I have knowledge and experience. As much as I enjoyed my media work, doing the BBC, Radio Clyde, BT Sport, Talksport and more, to me there is nothing to match standing on that touchline, with your heart pounding, trying your best to get your team to play their best.

“The media is a breeze – you just sit there and talk about other people’s misfortunes. But it doesn’t tick the box. It doesn’t come close to that heart-pounding thing.”

Rae is a fascinating character, who conquered his own addictions, and sought to help others with equal afflictions, but who time and again could not quite get over feeling that he had a point to prove in football, that he would “show people” what he was about, either as a player or a coach.

This nagging desire to prove himself time after time threatened to wear him down, until the point of liberation came, via a conversation with a friend.

“A journalist once wrote something about me when I was 33,” he says. “I was playing for Wolves in the English Premier League. And he asked in his piece, ‘even though Alex has done well for Wolves, the question remains, why did Sunderland let him go?’ I remember thinking, ‘you cheeky b*****d, who d’you think you’re talking to?’

“The guy then asked, ‘has Alex Rae got it to be in the English Premiership and perform there?’ I had been top scorer for Wolves that season [2003-04] going into February, so I was raging. I thought, ‘I’ll show you, I’ve got 700 games behind me, where is your credibility?’

“There was also a time, while I was at Sunderland, and had played 32, 33 games when Peter Reid left me on the bench for a game against Spurs. I was raging about it. Again I was thinking, ‘right, I’ll show you.’ I finally got on the field that day, desperate to prove something, and I got sent off.

“I was always raging, because I always felt I had a point to prove. But then I spoke to people about how I was feeling, and a guy in Glasgow called Barry Docherty said to me, ‘look, wait a minute, Alex. Why are you trying to prove anything? You’ve played a pile of games in the EPL. You’ve finished seventh there with Sunderland. In the six teams above you – Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal etc – there wasn’t a Scot playing among them. You were the highest-ranked Scot playing in the English Premier League that season. You’ve got nothing to prove to anyone.’

“It taught me a lesson. I was always wanting to prove a point. But now I realise I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. It was brilliant advice, it freed me up. It made me realise I just need to be true to myself.”

Over two and a half years as manager of Dundee between 2006 and 2008, Rae took the club to third place in the old second tier in Scotland, while his playing budget was cut in half. In Belgium last season with McLeish they took on a floundering Genk side and hoisted them up the table with a 54% win rate. His experiences in coaching and management are piled high – with fire-fighting in there as well – which is what persuaded the St Mirren board to go with Rae as Ian Murray’s successor.

“I was two and a half years at Dundee – I mean, that’s a lifetime for a manager up there – and I have fond memories of that club. Genk was something else entirely – we had Belgian, French, Dutch, Slovakian and Georgian players, a United Nations, plus two Scottish guys – me and Alex – trying to make it work. It was a brilliant experience.”

And what now of St Mirren? How much scope is there right now for “success” in the months ahead? Rae sighs slightly at the extent of the challenge.

“When I came in, we were in a relegation fight – and we’re still there,” he says. “So my first objective is, let’s just try and get above the guy above us. And after that, let’s keep nippin’ and tuckin’ away. That’s what it has to be about at the moment. I’m not going to say anything that will end up with me being shot down.

“I felt a little overwhelmed at first, trying to get things organised, trying to get to grips with everything here. I said to someone after a week, ‘I feel overwhelmed with everything that I need to do here.’ But I’ve got to grips with it now. It was just a case of getting settled in.

“January is a terrible month. You get a million agents trying to send you players from everywhere. You are inundated. And what I’d love, just once, would be for an agent to come on the phone and say, ‘you know what Alex, I’ve got this wee guy, he’s not got a left foot, he’s desperate in the air, he’s towing a caravan…but he’s got a nice right foot.’ I mean, everyone you are punted is the best player in the planet. So me and Fazz [Davie Farrell, his assistant] are just trying to fix it, put things in place, and bring improvement.”

Rae’s love of the game is a bit perverse, as he explains quickly before rushing out to his next task.

“It’s difficult to actually enjoy football,” he says. “Okay, if you are winning every game, you are on the crest of a wave. But it is so up and down: you get injuries, you are chasing people, and you get knock-back after knock-back from players. Listen, I’m loving this job, I’m really enjoying it. But it’s a challenge. What I’m trying to say is, every day, something hits you. But when you’re out of football, you miss all that so much. It is a part of your DNA.”