Fortune smiles on McLeish just like old times

TAKE heart from the result. Draw encouragement from the dominance of Scotland’s performance. And, above all, be deeply reassured by the revelation that Alex McLeish is — even after all these years — still making his own good fortune. After the longest false start in history, five friendlies of variable import including an ill-advised misadventure halfway round the globe, the returning national-team boss made some big calls in the one game that really mattered. That his gambles paid off against Albania shouldn’t come as such a shock. After all, this is what McLeish does. What he once did with metronomic regularity, anyway. Back in his pomp, McLeish always had a reputation for — not to put too fine a point on it — being a lucky manager. Now, let no one pretend that this was his only quality. The old Gary Player adage — ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get’ — certainly applied. But there was a feeling, particularly at Rangers and then during his brief first stint as Scotland boss, that things simply had a way of working out for McLeish. If he needed his rivals to throw away points on the final day of the season in order to clinch an improbable title, well, of course that would happen. Should beating France in Paris require a moment of miraculous intervention remarkable even by the standards of the greatest Scottish player of his generation? Done. These things didn’t just occur naturally, of course. McLeish’s Rangers kept the pressure on Celtic by pushing them all the way on Helicopter Sunday. He picked James McFadden at the Parc des Princes — and encouraged him to do whatever came into his beautifully inventive, mischievous wee head. He also devised a plan that nullified a truly magnifique French side. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, right? Against Albania, McLeish stuck his neck out with a number of major decisions, none more so than the selections of Steven Naismith and Stephen O’Donnell. Leigh Griffiths and James Forrest would have been the popular choices. But not for McLeish. Is he going to get everything right on the road to Euro 2020? Hell no. Every Scotland manager has a Georgia away in them. As McLeish can testify. He’s entitled to feel, though, that he’s earned any rub of the green out there. After all, since upsetting the footballing gods by moving from Birmingham City to Aston Villa in 2011, he hasn’t enjoyed many good bounces or serendipitous kicks. So stay lucky, Alex. If you can’t be lucky, be good. Or carry on as you’ve started — by being both.