GAME’S A BOGEY

Strach will understand there’s little point in him going on.. & we need a bigger personality at the SFA helm to pull it all together. Regan has been beleaguered by the post virtually since he walked into it

No one knows better than Gordon Strachan that his Scotland clock has ticked its last tock.

But anyone who thinks our problems begin and end with Friday night’s defeat is deluding themselves.

If the manager goes this week it shouldn’t be because of what his team did at Wembley. If anything, you can understand why what he saw may have given him pause for thought.

The clamour was for change. The clamour was for Leigh Griffiths, for Lee Wallace.

For a team to have a go in a game we had to win, not one sent out just not to lose. And lots of it was decent.

The team selection was interesting, they played England on their vulnerabilities in their half of the park but ultimately our own vulnerabilities were exposed more. The fact you could take all of our centre halves, roll them up into a ball and maybe make one proper one from the plasticine sausage that emerges.

The fact players in v ital positions are using international footba l l as a cr utch for nonexistent club football.

That the sharpness in their decision making when it mattered most was found wanting and England’s wasn’t.

No, Friday night was a long way from our nadir. Sadly, though, what it was feels like little more than a mini-plateau on our way down from a zenith Strachan reached two years ago tomorrow against the Irish at Celtic Park.

Which is why, ultimately, another campaign lies in ashes just four games in.

Hopes razed to the ground before we’re even halfway through the group. And why Strachan will understand there’s little point in him going on.

Sure, there were straws offered and clutched at deep in the bowels of Wembley.

It was impossible not to feel his pain. No one should doubt the passion with which he embraces this job. He cares.

And I get why a manager feels proud that his players go out there and put a huge effort in then feels disappointed they don’t get rewarded for it.

I’d be shocked if he didn’t feel that way. Disappointed that he didn’t share their pain.

But this is the highest echelon of international football we’re talking about here. Effort should be the bare minimum any manager expects.

If you’re in charge of a pub team on a Saturday morning you’re entitled to 100 per cent and your players should follow the game plan – as long as they’re sober enough to understand it. It needs more than effort. It needs quality.

Another straw? That having four of our last six World Cup qualifiers at home is a huge factor.

Is it? Where’s the evidence? We can’t beat Lithuania at home, a team hosed by Slovakia 4- 0 on Friday night.

So what are we seeing to suggest we can reverse 3-0 results against Slovakia and England and beat a Slovenia team who have taken double the points we have from their first four games?

At Hampden especially, a place which is all myth and nostalgia and absolutely worthless to us in modern stadium currency.

Other arguments? “But who else could do better?” If that was

We need a unifying figure at the top, someone who can persuade people to put their vested interests to one side for the greater good – and it has been proven the current incumbents can’t get that done

the case then no one would ever change managers. Some gaffers inherit teams who look doomed and transform them. Some take players only am other could love and make them world beaters. Look at Michael O’Neill with Northern Ireland. He only has 40 professional players to choose from. Doesn’t even have a professional league of his own to fall back on.

And most of them don’t play anywhere near the highest level of the British game. Yet he has turned water into wine.

That’s not to say he’d walk in the door with this Scotland s quad and make a difference. Maybe he has just managed to put lightning in a bottle once. But we’ ll never know until he tries to catch it with someone else.

And while we’re on the subject, for the people who say: “Just go and get Michael O’Neill…”

Sorry, but if I’m a Northern Irishman in charge of a team who have just beaten their nearest rivals for a play-off place 4- 0 and are well on the way to a second straight finals, am I going to quit my own country to take charge of a failing team?

The time to do that was in the summer after the Euros, not now. He would be nuts.

But the players have to take some responsibility here. This idea that “We couldn’t have done any more?’ Of course we could.

Grant Hanley could head the ball with his forehead instead of rocketing it off the top of his bonce like a

five-year- old with his eyes shut. Leigh Griff iths could show some awareness and pass the ball instead of seeing stars and f ireworks as he’s imagining himself smashing the ball into the top corner.

Doing more isn’t just about running harder. This is international football we’re talking about.

Ultimately though, to go back to the original point, this whole malaise we’re feeling now isn’t about a 3- 0 defeat to one of the top dozen teams in the world.

The problems lie deep below the surface and we’ve been over them 100 times.

The development pathway, the academy system, the fact that from the ages of 16 to 21 there’s a glass ceiling for our kids getting into first teams.

These problems haven’t been solved yet, we’ve had working groups and clubs dragging their heels through the treacle of self-interest. We’re looking for a third performance director in five years whose skills et apparently has to make him a combination of Sir Alex Ferguson and Henry Kissinger.

But we can get none of it done coherently and cohesively because unlike Germany, France, and Belgium – who all realised they needed revolution and all eventually sang from the same hymn sheet to create one – we can’t get the job done.

And listen, maybe we need a bigger personality at the helm to pull it all together.

Stewart Reg an has been beleaguered by the post virtually since he walked into it.

He can tick a lot of his Key Performance Indicator boxes but when we look back on his time, what’s his big picture? What’s the headline news?

More failure at the level he’s ultimately responsible for. He has over-arching power over Scottish football but can’t exercise it, can’t bring the clubs along with him when it matters.

And he has a presidential figure next to him whose very post is anachronistic. What’s Alan McRae’s vision for Scottish football? What does he want the legacy of his term in office to be? Or doesn’t he have one?

We need a unifying figure at the top, someone who can persuade people to put their vested interests to one side for the greater good. And it has been proven that the cur rent incumbents can’t get that done.

This isn’t a knee-jerk call for instant sackings or a plea for the manager to walk, although I think he will.

It’s a call to Scottish football to understand that if we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep getting the same outcomes.

And if anyone is prepared to settle for outcomes like Friday night, they should be nowhere near the place.