BLESSED are the geeks – for they will inherit the football earth. The once-scorned football hipsters are on the move, out of their bedrooms and basements and into training academies, technical areas and television stations. If taking an analytical, forensic approach to watching the game was once derided as a pursuit only for obsessives and nerds, then no more.

Gary Neville, despite his struggles at Valencia, remains the poster boy for this new, tactically literate generation. Monday Night Football on Sky Sports took football punditry in a whole new direction, away from the clichéd “say what you see” ramblings of former professionals towards more thoughtful, intellectual discourse. Viewers could already ascertain for themselves the “what” and the “how”. Now they were learning the “why” as well.

Neville may be the most recognisable figure among this new breed of analysts, but he is far from the only one. In the unlikely setting of New Delhi, India, a Scot can be found explaining football’s nuances to a television audience that stretches from the Middle East, through East Asia and all the way to Australia. Perth-born Stevie Grieve may self- deprecatingly describe himself as “a ginger idiot” but his story speaks of a shrewdness that has served him well.

Here is someone without previous television experience, and who has never played or coached at a professional level, but is now making a career as a television football pundit. Audience figures that regularly reach 12 million to 15 million people suggest he knows what he is doing. So impressed were broadcasters Ten Sports with Grieve’s analysis on their Champions League programmes that last year they gave him his own show. The Mind Game is described as “covering every detail of the game in terms of football strategies, playing tactics, squad formations, fan reactions, and analysis”, and Grieve believes it is a model all football programmes should eventually try to follow.

“If you go on Twitter and the likes then all you read is people moaning about how bad most punditry is,” he said. “And in most cases they are right. I think most football fans want more now. I wouldn’t even say it was a niche market any more. There is a mass-market demand from people who want to know more about the game and why certain situations have unfolded in a match. People don’t want regurgitated commentary of what they could see for themselves or other clichéd nonsense.

“If you put on Sportscene or a live weekend match on British TV, it’s just someone talking about something obvious. That now bores people. They don’t want to see that, they want to see something genuine and interesting. Some folk will still say this level of analysis is for people who don’t enjoy watching football. That’s rubbish. It’s just people who want to take a more analytical and intelligent approach to the game. They want to be educated about what has actually gone on. Monday Night Football has opened it up to a huge new audience and showed what they should be expecting.”

Convincing people he was worth listening to was the hard part for Grieve. A former youth coach at Dundee, Raith Rovers and East Fife, the 29-year-old has never played football at senior level, arriving in India almost three years ago via a stint coaching in Switzerland. Through mutual acquaintances he was given the opportunity to pitch for the television job and it snowballed from there.

“The TV station was moving its base from Dubai to Delhi and they were looking for someone fresh. Before they had John Burridge and Carlton Palmer and it was just arguments every week. They didn’t want to go down that route. So I got put forward on the basis that I had done some tactical analysis before and written some books on it. We didn’t even have a proper interview. Basically I sat down, gave them two of my books and showed some presentations on my computer. After about 25 minutes they asked if I could turn up the next Monday. I was given four shows as a trial and then kept on until the end of that season. And that was more than two years ago.”

Winning over a sceptical audience, and his ex-professional colleagues, was the hardest part initially. “If I were on the screen next to, for example, Thierry Henry then chances are people would want to hear what he had to say over me as he’s a former player. Over time, however, I think people get used to you. When I was first on the TV the view was, ‘who’s this ginger idiot?’ And then, about four to six weeks later, folk were realising, ‘actually this guy is pretty good’.

“I started off working alongside Paul Parker and he was asking me: ‘What teams did you play for?’ I had to tell him I’d never played football at any level. And then I explained to him what I did. Then after two shows he started calling me The Machine as he was quite taken with it all. So I think if more TV companies were willing to open up opportunities for other people then I think the elitist thing would eventually go away.”

He is not deterred by the manner in which Neville has struggled to make the transition from television studio to the Valencia dugout.

“I think if he had done really well it would have helped clubs be braver in looking at someone who reads the game well instead of someone from the merry-go-round,” he said. “But there is a difference between analysing the game that happened and preparing for an upcoming game; do you know the main areas to exploit or how to stop the opposition from winning the game? There is more skill in being able to predict what will happen before a game than analysing it afterwards.”

Coaching remains his primary passion, however. Grieve is head of coach education at Bhaichung Bhutia Football Schools, and is in charge of 1800 players, 120 coaches, and 12 full-time coaching staffs, as well as being technical director of Garhwal FC. His long-term goal is to return home and put the knowledge learned through analysis to good use.

“I want to eventually become a manager even if that is still 10 to 12 years away. I need to get my foot in the door at first-team level first. If I end up just working in TV I’m not going to complain, but my ambition when I was younger was always to become the manager of first St Johnstone and then Scotland. And that feeling never leaves you.”