The Scotsman

Sport: Stop dragging your feet over new Scotland boss, Brown tells SFA chief

● National team captain keen on Northern Irish boss but ridicules idea there’s no rush

- By ALAN PATTULLO

Scott Brown has accused the Scottish Football Associatio­n of dragging its feet while searching for Gordon Strachan’s successor.

The Scotland skip per was known to be unhappy at the SFA’S decision not to renew Strachan’s contract last month and has now launched an astonishin­g attack on what he perceives is procrastin­ation on the part of the governing body.

Brown claimed chief executive Stewart Regan’ s comments that the associatio­n has time on its hands because Scotland’ s next competitiv­e game is not until next autumn were “just silly”.

Brown endorsed the case for Michael O’neill, thought to be top of the SFA’S list of candidates. This pursuit has been complicate­d by the death at the weekend of the Northern Ireland manager’s mother, Patricia, following a long illness.

Brown is neverthele­ss frustrated by the lack of progress from the SFA as they seek to identify the person to help Scotland reach the European Championsh­ip finals in 2020.

“There’s quite a lot of people that have been linked with that job,” said Brown. “He [ O’neill] has done a great job at Northern Ireland taking them to the Euros, so he’d be good if that’s the man they are going to go for. But I think they need to get the finger out a little bit and get them an sorted out, because there’s not a lot of time between now and the start of the qualifiers.”

Scotland are planning to arrange three friendlies, one of which is reported to be against Morocco, before the start of

Uefa’ s new national team competitio­n, the Nations League, in September. It’s still unclear who will lead Scotland next year following the end of SF A performanc­e director MalkyM al kay’ s one-match spell as interim manager.

David Moyes was also linked with the permanent post but has since joined West Ham United until the end of the season.

“We’ve only got three games,”

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 ??  ?? 0 Scott Brown is greeted by local youngsters i n Cardenden as he opened the John Thomson Park.
0 Scott Brown is greeted by local youngsters i n Cardenden as he opened the John Thomson Park.

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