Scaling the European summit? We’ve barely reached base camp
What a week it has been for Scottish football. It’s finally safe for our poor wee coefficient to come out from the basement.
Stand down Theresa May, we’re sending a SPFL delegation to handle the Brexit negotiations because our boys know how to get a good deal in Europe.
Hang on, let’s just hold our hold our horses a wee bit here.
There’s no doubt the last week has been decent for our clubs. But it’s been decent in like having a drunk uncle managing to get through the full wedding without throwing up on the bride.
Rangers winning in Croatia was a cracking result. Hibs coming back from the dead to Asteras was a relief, Aberdeen giving Burnley a right good game was a morale booster and Celtic bleaching Rosenborg was job done.
But perhaps we should hold off on the champers. This stat about being unbeaten in 10 games in Europe so far is the worst massaging of statistics since Donald Trump got Boris the Hacker to wreck Facebook.
It’s changed days but if you think we should be handing out medals for beating teams from Armenia, the Faroe Islands and Macedonia then we’re already a lost cause.
Some folk have got too excited, which says a lot about how rank rotten our teams have performed on the continent in recent years.
The way we were going we were going to need to start one of those tug-at-the-heartstrings campaigns on telly to save our game.
You know the ones ... for just £2 per month, you could help save Scotland’s battered coefficient.
It is pleasant not to be talking about a national crisis again. But we’re far from out of the woods just yet. Scottish football has fallen off a cliff in European terms and last week was just us catching hold of a ledge.
Don’t kid ourselves. If it goes to pot in the next few days – and we all know it could – then the fall will continue.
A decade ago our league was ranked 15th in Europe and we had three teams kicking around the competitions beyond Christmas.The game has moved on but there’s still no excuse for constantly losing to sides who even we should be beating. The thing about the coefficient is that it doesn’t just have to go down. It can improve. It’s what the David Brent office types would call a virtuous circle. The better you do, the more results improve, the easier it gets to improve further. But every Euro pumping at the hands of the Lithuanian Dog and Duck has sent us tumbling further down the cliff.
The only way to fi x it is to keep winning.
Scotland is down to 23rd in the table, heading to 26th. One good week isn’t going to all of a sudden get our teams byes in three rounds of qualifying.
We need to start doing what the diddy teams have been doing to us – causing a few upsets.
Celtic have been doing their bit but we need the rest to step up. We need Hibs to hang tough in Greece. We need Rangers to keep a cool head. We need some heroics from the Dons.
Last week gave us confidence. Now we need belief. The slide stops here – it’s time to start the coefficient climb.