Long ball dinosaur? Nah, Big Sam’s now a visionary. He was using sports science when Pep Guardiola was still in stabilisers .. how English press changed their tune in Lion’s heartbeat

The Three Lions are always good for a chuckle.

It’s always fun to stick on Mike Bas s e t t : England Manager during summers when the neighbours are involved in major tournaments and we’re stuck at home.

The spoof from about 15 years ago is so close to the bone you can taste the marrow.

The lower league gaffer who gets the top job and ends up picking players called Benson and Hedges by accident after writing his squad on the back of fag packet.

But it turns out the film wasn’t a parody of England from the nineties – it was a vision of the future.

Big Sam: England Manager. You’ve got to giggle. Sam Allardyce as national boss?

Scot l and might have plummeted to 50th in the world rankings but our chances of reaching the World Cup in 2018 just shot up a

notch. It’s been f u n ny wat ch i n g t he response down south to the appointment. The media have slaughtered Big Sam for years and insisted the FA shouldn’t be touching him with an Andy Carroll-sized barge pole.

But as soon as it was clear he was getting the gig, there’s been a complete rewriting of history. Allardyce isn’t a long ball dinosaur after all. His football isn’t from the 19th century, as Jose Mourinho once snidely said.

Nah, Big Sam’s a visionary. He was using sports science when Pep Guardiola was still in stabilisers.

Aye, keep it coming lads, tell yourselves whatever you need to help you kip at night.

The English will eventually wake up and realise they have given a Vauxhall Conference boss the keys to a Formula One supercar.

It’s good news for Scotland given we are up against them in the qualifiers.

England are still far better than us. They should be. There’s loads more of them for a start.

They have guys who are on 80 grand a week playing in the EPL, while our boys tend to be shuf f ling around in the Championship.

But when it comes to the dugouts it’s no contest.

Gordon Strachan has shown some worrying signs of being scunnered of late but hopefully he’ll have perked up and got his mojo back by the time the rea l stuf f comes around again. We’ve got a who has

in the g uy done it Champions League. He took Celtic in to the last 16 twice in a row, and mas t erminded wins aga inst AC Milan and Manchester United. Strach’s got more than 50 caps for his country, played in World Cups and had a taste of silverware.

Big Sam? Winning a league at Notts County and keeping diddy teams in the Premiership with his eye-bleeding brand of hoofball. Hardly scary.

If England see him as their savour then good luck to them. Delusion can be fun for a while.

The talk down there is Allardyce will be pragmatic.

He’ l l play percentage football. Winning football they call it, which is a bit of a stretch for a guy with a one in three record in the last 20 years.

If England go direct it will play right in to our hands. We st ruggle when we face technical sides.

In fact, any outfit that can string two passes together can get us in a fuddle. But the other stuff? No bother.

Martin O’Neill brought his brand of bore ball in the last campaign and Scotland played them off the park at home and in the second half in Dublin.

When the World Cup draw was made and we got lumped with England, there was a resigned sigh from the Tartan Army. There was a sense we were gubbed before a ball was kicked. Not any more.

England have technically gifted players who are bossed by the most modern club managers on the planet.

They didn’t respond to one relic in Roy Hodgson, so don’t expect them to suddenly sober up now they have another – less qualified

one at that – in charge.