The booby prize is still a sauce of huge frustration
Playing the role of devil’s advocate as a Scotland fan requires a pause for breath to find a balance between ambition and reality.
A week of gloating at England’s Nations League relegation also doesn’t sit comfortably.
That fact of life will hit home next month when Gareth Southgate leads his team out at a World Cup in Qatar while we’re in the usual default position of looking on from the outside with envy.
Our own promotion from Group B1 feels a bit like being handed the booby prize long after the jackpot has been lifted.
Topping our group while laughing at our English neighbours after we’ve bagged the bottle of brown sauce at the tombola.
October 9 will also see the draw for the next European championships in Germany and Steve Clarke is already stating his belief his side won’t need a back-door route to get to the finals.
There’s little to no evidence to back his confidence and it’s not about being churlish.
Two wins and a draw from three games with Ukraine and Ireland were more than welcome and did mask a dreadful summer for the national side but a closer analysis is required.
Clarke has stated on many occasions that he doesn’t read the newspapers so where’s the harm?
The game which mattered in June was a World Cup play-off against Ukraine where his side failed to perform.
Then there was a 4-1 win in Armenia which, from this observer’s seat in the stand, was a display which could – and maybe should – have been a 4-1 reverse if chances had been converted. That June night in Yerevan was a get out of jail free card if ever there was one.
Sandwiched between those games was a 3-0 hammering from the Irish in Dublin – a performance so bad there was dissent from the Tartan Army which had many demanding a change of manager.
Clarke has conceded that things can change quickly in football and, credit where credit’s due, he’s steadied the ship and injected a genuine passion in playing for the jersey. But his Scotland team remain unconvincing.
Oleksandr Zinchenko, Ukraine’s best player, was missing from both the recent games. Andriy Yarmolenko and Taras Stepanenko sitters, an Artem Dovbyk one-onone squandered opportunity and Craig Gordon’s wondersave from Mykhaylo Mudryk’s curler were all huge slices of good fortune.
It all added up to massage the facts – if the Ukrainians had been clinical it would be a completely different conversation and the national mood music haunting.
That’s football and Pot 2 for the Euros qualifying draw is the real boon from what’s been achieved this week.
The hyperbole from a superb debut by Ryan Porteous is another example of there being no half-measures for a player whose first contribution was to pass the ball straight out of the pitch and turning a blind eye on a few occasions when Scotland’s defence was ripped open.
There will be good and bad from the Hibs player, hero to zero and back again is why he’s still in the Premiership.
So Scotland’s topping of a Nations League group should be a cause celebre of sorts – the brown sauce in a sandwich of World Cup qualification failure and a dismal European Championship finals.
Game that mattered was play-off against the Ukrainians back in June