I’m not going to be hypocritical here.

The last time I spoke with Keith Alexander, I couldn’t have disagreed with him more.

City had just come from two down and battered Alexander’s Macclesfield. The game in October finished 2-2 and it still felt like two points thrown away.

But Alexander wasn’t having any of it.

“I’m not sure why Bradford seem so unhappy with it,” he said afterwards. “Sometimes bigger clubs come here expecting us to roll over but we were in control for a lot of the match.

“Some people have given us, and me, a lot of grief about our supposed style of play but there was only one side trying to play football out there.

“We were trying to get it down and play and they were knocking everything up to the big lad. No one can tell me that they are a better football team than we are.”

If I remember rightly, Macclesfield’s first goal was hardly a work of beauty. It came from a 50-yard punt from the keeper which caused total panic stations in the City back four – one touch later and the ball was in the net.

But Alexander wouldn’t have any media criticism about Macclesfield’s directness and refused to back down.

He fought his corner – as he had done at every club he managed before his shock and untimely death this week.

Alexander’s teams would never have passed for Arsenal in disguise but they were gritty, battling and fully committed, just like the man himself.

It would have been interesting to see how he would have got on in charge of a side of so-called fancy-dans. He never got the opportunity, always getting basement-division jobs where every penny counted.

It was down to the manager to exact every last bead of sweat from the meagre resources available – something he did willingly and without complaint.

As Lee Bullock said yesterday, he was always smiling; always positive. Alexander made his players feel better than they probably were and the results showed it.

He led Lincoln to four successive play-off appearances; keeping Macclesfield in the league at all was on a par with that achievement.

Alexander was a pioneer as the first black manager in the English game. He was also a fully-qualified referee.

Those who knew him well say he never tried to push the colour issue. He got the jobs on merit for his coaching ability and nothing else.

He would have smiled at the national media attention his passing has received this week.

TV and the papers have been reminded that football does exist beyond their hallowed Premier League.

Googling Alexander’s name, the first page contained a thread from a Blackburn Rovers forum where a fan asked the question “who was this guy?”

Thousands of others around the country knew very well. And now, hopefully, so do those who never watch the football results beyond the Man United score.

England wore black armbands in his memory at Wembley on Wednesday. Who would have thought the manager of Macclesfield Town would earn such an honour?

Alexander made a real impact right to the end. His death has opened eyes to the lower leagues and shown the general public as a whole that there is far, far more to English football than the top ten fixtures.