From Manuel Pascali’s hotel room, you can see the Rugby Park pitch. He has set up a webcam to allow family and friends back home in Italy to admire these new surroundings. One night a couple of weeks ago, mamma’s face popped up with word of an old pact.

The day the midfielder signed his first professional deal with Alessandria, an unprepossessing little club tucked in the shadow of Turin’s big two, an agreement was struck that when he reached the top tier, his father would go clean shaven for the first time in 29 years of marriage. Only now does Papà feel able to look out his razor. Only now, after taking Kilmarnock to the summit of Scotland’s Premier League, does Pascali believe he’s made it. “This is far bigger than any opportunity I’ve ever had,” he says. “This is the chance that could change my life.”

When the midfielder signed six weeks ago, the line was that Killie had gone shopping in Serie A. This was never going to be the full story, but the depths they hint at in Italy have a horribly murky tinge.

There are two ways to explain the fact Pascali never played for Parma in the 12 months he spent at the now relegated club, never underwent a medical, never spoke to two of the three managers who passed through the Ennio Tardini during this period. He could have been one of those continental long-rangers, taken on one minute then packed off the next, for loan experience somewhere out of the way. Except Pascali was 26, not 17; levelling out rather than on the way up.

If Parma didn’t want him, what did they want with him? It’s here that the picture gets increasingly fragmented, and increasingly ugly. There are those in his homeland who believe Pascali to have been a victim of the ‘plusvalenze’ (capital gains) scam, whereby debt-ridden clubs wildly inflate the value of their assets to keep the banks at bay. Young or unknown players are brought in at minimal cost, presented to the accountants as multi-million euro assets then sent out, effectively permanently, on loan. These players cost the club nothing but put off the need to pay the ultimate price — confronting their own fiscal mortality.

Pascali won’t talk about his case on the record, but it nudges you in some troubling directions. Tommaso Ghirardi, the man who rescued Parma from administration in 2007, had been Pascali’s president the season before at Carpenedolo, a Serie C2 non-entity based on the outskirts of Brescia. With Parma’s debts touching extraordinary levels, the squad could afford no fluff, yet Pascali was among half-a-dozen players seconded from the fourth division then promptly despatched back, never to appear for the Emilia Romagna side.

“There are many things I could tell you, I’ve a few stones to get out of my shoe,” frowns Pascali. “There are certain things that are difficult to explain. I never felt like a Parma player. They bought me, but they didn’t want me. I was wandering about Italy. Do I regret that I never had an opportunity? Put it this way, they’ll end up regretting it more.”

If Pascali isn’t a Serie A player, he is at least one well suited to the dynamics of the SPL. In four of the five seasons he spent in the Italian lower divisions, Pascali was a driving force in teams who reached the promotion playoffs. Essentially a midfield holder, he is all persistence and aggression. On debut against Hibernian, a lunge at David Van Zanten earned him a booking five minutes into his SPL career. “Three minutes,” he corrects. “Three minutes.”

Since then, he has put the winner past Hamilton, and a spark in the Killie midfield. “You need players like me, who give it everything each day,” he says. “Aggression is one of my things. If you have an opportunity, you grasp it tight.”

While Celtic’s Massimo Donati, whom he played against at age-group level, is an obvious point of comparison, Pascali talks of a mix of Daniele De Rossi and Rino Gattuso when asked to define his game. Like the Roma player, he looks to link with the team's attacking threats — in Kilmarnock’s case, Mehdi Taouil and David Fernandez — but like Gattuso, knows his main responsibility is seeking to smother those of the opposition.

The pair have other things in common, like the influence of their parents, who all hail from Italy’s arcane deep south. The Pascalis moved to Milan for work, and it was to the south of the city that his own career began, with the amateurs of Sant’Angelo. There followed two years at Pizzighettone, halfway between Milan and Parma, where Sergio Porrini was a teammate.

The former Rangers player was to prove a positive character witness for the Scottish game once Stefano Salvatori, Pascali’s advisor and a member of Jim Jefferies’ Scottish Cup-winning Hearts team in 1998, had introduced the two parties. “I can’t wait to repay the manager’s faith,” says Pascali. “I was earning more at Parma, and could have got more even on loan in Serie B or C, but I’ve never had an opportunity like this before: someone else’s Serie A. I’m discovering a whole new world. Once, in the fourth division [in Italy], we lost a game and the president threatened to withdraw us from the rest of the season and not pay us any money. Here, there is a purer football. I already love being part of it.”

He may have been oversold, but there is a passion in Pascali that should not be underestimated.

So what's gone right at Killie?

Jim Jefferies always said Kilmarnock should only be judged once their injury crisis cleared. Last year’s 11th place, their lowest ever in the SPL, was coloured by a list of walking wounded that at times threatened to stretch the length of Rugby Road.

Their flying start to this SPL campaign — three wins, one draw and no goals conceded leaving them second only on goal difference to Rangers — has been powered by the return to full fitness of David Fernandez for perhaps the first time in a season and a half. The Spaniard’s plotting has found a willing accomplice in Mehdi Taouil, whom Jefferies has hung onto in the face of interest from Hearts

Pasali has brought verve and bite to the centre midfield, where Craig Bryson is also flourishing, while Gavin Skelton, signed from Gretna, is providing genuine width on the left. Up front, Irishman Connor Sammon is a handful, and will have Allan Russell on hand for help now that the former Airdrie man has returned from knee ligament damage.