A Pain-Filled Rant

I SIMPLY fail to understand the mindset of my younger media colleagues, still toiling at the coal face of Scottish football reporting. They appear to have decided, Wee Gordon Strachan is a dead man walking. It is now a case of when, not if, he hands-in his track suit.

When I was Strachan's age – 59 – I found myself in the sort of situation he is now in. I was farting against thunder – in my case a new Editor who had been promoted about five levels above his abilities. Aided and abetted by a News Editor, who was quite the most-poisonous of the many female poison dwarves I have met in the Fourth Estate, this supertwat was starting the process of running a once great paper into the ground.

I got out, took a deal and left to freelance, to suit myself what I wrote. It hasn't always been easy, but, the years since have been great – I have the freedom to comment as I wish; to take the work I want and I still love it.

If I was WGS, I'd have my agent negotiate the best severance deal I could get from the SFA, then settle down to a good few years as a talking head on MOTD and other football programmes. He could make as much money, with a lot less stress, than he currently suffers.

I will not reprise the warning I have oft posted on here. Suffice to say, given the way we have repeatedly failed in either qualifying or finals campaigns since 1950, even when we have had managers of the quality of Jock Stein or Alex Ferguson, I doubt if anyone could lead Scotland to success.

It's the system, it hasn't worked for years, it isn't working now, and there is no prospect that I can see of things changing any time soon.

The Scottish football establishment and the Scottish football media have conspired for years to kid-on the fans that we are somehow good at this game, and should be among the leading nations. The SFA, for years, by and large kept us away from the “big” nations – except England. The press and broadcast media helped maintain the deception, that Scotland was still the football nation it was when we were good – in the reign of Queen Victoria. We, the fans, bought it.

We are now in pot four, when it comes to the qualifying draws for the European Championships and World Cups. We are more-likely to be in pot five next time out. Will we have to sink to the level of San Marino, Andorra, Liechtenstein and the other traditional minnows, before the SFA acts and puts in place the necessary and long-overdue changes to the fabric of Scottish football which must be made, before we can climb back to a reasonable level, far less the level we think – or more-properly have been conditioned to think – we belong.

Ach – Ah'm seek – nothing will change soon. Go back to your clubs and prepare for more and continuing pain.