Fresh hope just adds to the frustration

IT is, naturally, pleasing that the closing games of Scotland’s World Cup qualifying section will now contain real meaning.

It is nice, too, for players so often written off as substandard and incapable of competing at international level by Gordon Strachan’s many apologists to enjoy praise after a good result.

Just shows what picking guys in form and delivering regularly at a high level can bring.

There remains a deep frustration with this campaign, though. A feeling that we should be more in the mix in Group F than we are.

Sheer desperation brought us to this point rather than design. Sheer desperation after two ghastly performances against Lithuania and Slovakia resulted in all those changes away to England and, despite the three-goal loss at Wembley, the creditable performance that came with it.

Leigh Griffiths should have been playing from the start. We have looked a different team since he was brought in at Wembley.

Good luck to Grant Hanley at Norwich City. Let’s hope he can develop into the kind of strong, experienced centre-half we need. The fact remains, though, that he should not have been in the team when he couldn’t get near a game at Newcastle.

This is starting to look like another agonising hard-luck story in the making. And it is difficult to take.