BITING BACK AT CRITICS

players – along with my coaches and their club coaches – to give them a chance to kick on. Because most players need help, most need a hand up, either tactically or emotionally.”

It’s unusual for a new manager to find defending an unbeaten record among his first tasks. Strachan may have gone but his legacy remains in the shape of a run of seven games without defeat this year.

That sequence kicked off in underwhelming fashion in March with a 1-1 draw against Canada. Few could have imagined then that Scotland would play another six competitive matches without losing. But then it’s possible for draws to feel like defeats, as they did against England and Slovenia. Scotland had to treat the last time they went a full calendar year unbeaten as compensation for failing to reach a World Cup, in 1970. With the globepreparingtobewowedbybrazil in Mexico, Bobby Brown’s side gritted

“Plenty people constantly knock Scottish football into the gutter and eventually there might be a point when it never recovers – we might be halfway there already. Butiamontheothersideof that. I see talent in Scotland”

MALKY MACKAY their teeth and drew two and won one of three Home Internationals played in April that year, scoring just once. They also defeated Denmark 1-0 in the opening game of the European Championship qualifiers. Scotland did not reach the next major finals