Taking over as United manager when the club was trying to stave off relegation, he guided them to safety and, this term, has manoeuvred them up the league.

But it is this afternoon's CIS Cup final which offers the most tangible reward to date.
For some the quick metamorphosis of both club and man from underachievers to trophy contenders may be dazzling but those who know Levein are unsurprised. An unyielding man when his mind is set, he is as focused and driven as anyone in the game. "I made a lot of mistakes at Leicester but I never ever doubted I could do the job properly," he says. "When I started back at Raith Rovers (after returning north] I didn't go there to stay. I was even more ambitious then than I was when I started out and I'm a better manager because of that. It gave me even more determination to prove myself all over again.

"Sometimes you have to take a step back to progress and if you've got enough determination to succeed, you'll do it. If you get a setback and give up, you'd never have been a good manager anyway. You need to take the blows and not fall down. There has never been a time when I have thought about quitting."

Until that point the only setbacks he had endured in is career had been injuries, offering him no reason to doubt his ability as a player or a manager. Mentally he is durable but having tried and tried there was ultimately no way of beating the knee ligament damage which curtailed his playing career. There are no such physical barriers to him bouncing back and ensuring managerial progress, though.

Sentiment can be an inspiration but it is never as powerful a force as raw ambition. While there is no doubting Levein wants success – in the League Cup final this afternoon and in the SPL – for cancer-stricken chairman Eddie Thompson, the determined manager admits he has his own agenda as well.

Having professed a desire to return to England one day to right some wrongs, he was then bestowed with the title Director of Football at United but even with a Hampden final looming there is no politicking. Honest, he confesses the label is not one which will tether him to Tannadice for life.

"I took the Director of Football job here because the chairman asked me but I'm still the manager. Maybe 15 years down the line I'd like to be a chief executive at a club but I've got a lot to do as a manager before that.

"Even if I won the cup with United and finished high in the SPL I'm not sure the people in England would be convinced I'm a good manager so I want an opportunity some time in the future to go back to England and show people I can do a job down there. That's what it will take – because that's the place where I wasn't successful."

A man intent on exorcising demons, the Tannadice boss hopes to banish a few this afternoon. His only cup final involvement was as a player in 1986. That day Hearts lost 3-0 to Aberdeen, a double-whammy of disappointment because the Tynecastle side had been pipped to the league title seven days before. As a manager, cup finals have thus far eluded him.

"I only played in that one cup final and, as manager, I actually didn't have a good record in cups at Hearts – the semi-final was the furthest we got. Ironically, at Leicester our most successful games were in both cups. We got knocked out in the quarter-finals by Blackburn to a dodgy penalty at Ewood Park. We beat Charlton and Reading. Then in the League Cup we got knocked out in extra-time by Bolton."

It wasn't a case of unearthing some grand plan which guarantees cup success. "Cup competitions are just about taking opportunities when they come your way and that's what we've done this season. You can't predict who'll get to a final and I don't know if we're ahead of schedule – I didn't have one when I came here – but we have had a good season so far and I'm just trying to put a decent side together and not look too far down the line at all."

A thinker, he may not be willing to project thoughts too far ahead but the brain is constantly ticking over. This week his head has been filled with formations, personnel and tactics – his own and Rangers'. Some of his squad are cup-tied but the return to fitness of others gives him a myriad of machinations to ponder, as does the absence of certain players and the possible return of others in the Rangers ranks. He knows Rangers' strength is their defence and rediscovered unwillingess to cave in. Both are credited to Walter Smith, a man he respects and perhaps even aspires to emulate.

"There's a lot of the resilience in Walter that I admire and I would love to have. Looking at the situation when he was down south, at Everton, and things didn't really work out for him, he just dusted himself down and showed he still has amazing desire and came back to do the Scotland job and turned that around and gave everyone a little spring in their step and then, of course, he gets the Rangers job. There, he has looked at the team analytically and realised that he needed to solve certain problems first and foremost. And I like him as well, I think he's a decent guy.

"Rangers are, for me, quite an interesting story since Walter came back. If you look at what was wrong before Walter came in – the defence – that has now become the strength of the team. It has all turned about completely. Rangers have some amazing flair players in their team but I still think the strength of the team is they are difficult to beat.

"This time around, my thoughts are all about how to beat Rangers, not how to stop Rangers beating us and that's a huge compliment to what Walter has done about his defence. If Bremen can't break them down then it is going to be a real challenge for us and that's what all my time has been consumed with. Monday, Tuesday this week and Thursday and Friday, it's all about how we are going to score."

In between he took time to engineer a draw at Parkhead and while he knows the difficulty of the task this afternoon, he's far from willing to write off his team's chances. He talks with real pride about the players like Darren Dods, Sean Dillon and Christian Kalvenes, who have delivered the "7/10 every week consistency" he expected, about the development of the likes of Mark Kerr and the surprise packages such as Morgano Gomis and Prince Bauben, youngsters who have contributed much more, much sooner than anticipated. And when he talks about his squad, he does so with real belief in their combined usefulness.

"I like players who are hungry, winners, guys who are determined to be successful and that theme goes through the whole of the team."

As we talk, he hasn't yet decided what his final message to the players will be this afternoon. He doesn't think there will be much need for inspirational words. "There won't be some Churchillian speech," he laughs.

It was Churchill who said that history would be kind to him for he intended to write it. This afternoon Levein and his players can pen their own chapter.