Lisbon Wasn't That Bad - You Might Have Been In Auchinleck

I DISCOVERED, several years ago when compiling my Family Tree – which took me back as far as several martyrs during the Covenanting “Killing Times” that there is a bit of nero-divergence running through my ancestry -one or two ancestors were deemed: “a wee bit funny” - as in funny peculiar rather than funny ha-ha. And before the usual suspects from the massed ranks of Ayrshire Rugby point a finger: “guilty M'Lud”.

My latre elder brother William was always considered, even for a tight-head prop, a wee-bit touched. For instance, he was never a great believer in Murphy's Law – If it can go wrong it will. However, he did hold that O'Reilly's Corollary: Dat Murphy always was an optimist was of far-greater relevance to the modern world.

I commend this approach to those Tartan Army foot soldiers, currently in full Frankie Howard – woe, woe and thrice woe mode following last night's two-goal loss to Portugal in Lisbon.

It has long been one of the pillars of this blog, that Scottish Fitba has to be one of the most crazy-mixed-up areas of sport in the world. No nation has greater and more-glorious wins: Wembley Wizards 1928, Wembley Wizards 1967, Jimmy Cowan's Match 1949, Madrid 1963, or more-disastrous losses: Peru, Iran, Wembley 1955, Wembley 1961, Wembley 1975.

Following Scotland as a Tartan Army foot soldier sometimes looks like a civilian version of the great George Macdonald Fraser's take on the fighting Jocks of the 51^st Division: “They would follow their Anglo-Scottish officers anywhere, usually out of a morbid fascination as to what manner of trouble they would lead them into this time”.

So, while naturally upset at the results against Poland and Portugal, I am not weeping, wailing or renting my clothes asunder – I've seen this movie before.

One of the reasons behind the formation of the UEFA Nations League, the competition we are currently playing in was to better formulate the UEFA and FIFA rankings, by doing away with meaningless friendlies in favour of games which meant something.

On paper this should have played in Scotland's favour, since we have traditionally done better in meaningful games as opposed to “friendlies” or “challenge games”. The reality is, however, the better you do in lesser leagues, eventually you hit your ceiling and find yourself perhaps a wee bit out of your depth. That is where we are at the moment.

Some good results a few years back have got us into the European Nations A League, the international equivalent of the Champions League – we are now playing with the big boys.

{an explanatory paragraph is required here. I have, for the purposes of this post, ignored the overall FIFA Men's rankings; according to that grou0ping, Scotland is the 48^th best country in world football. However, until we qualify for another World Cup, we will not be facing, in a competitive game, some of the nations above us – the African, South American or Asian nations – but we will be facing other European nations. So, for the basis of comparison, I have used each country's UEFA ranking.}

Thus we find, in our Group A of the Nations League, we are in with Portugal (ranked 6 in Europe), Croatia (8) and Poland (15), Scotland is ranked 24 in Europe. There are 16 nations in the four groups in the Nations A League. The only countries ranked lower than us are Israel (37) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (36).

The following countries, all ranked above us, are in League B or lower: England (3), Austria, Ukraine, Turkiye, Sweden, Wales, Russia, Slovakia, Romania, Czechia. In a way, we've got lucky, but our luck has run out and we are swimming with sharks.

So, perhaps those keyboard warriors who are calling for the head of Manager Stevie Clarke, or demanding a cull of the squad, should shut-up and enjoy the ride. I repeat my oft-used words of warning, our game is in such a poor state, it would not matter who we had as manager, we don't have many diamonds, unpolished or polished, among the players the Scotland boss could call on.

If you measure Scotland's standing in European football via how our domestic league is viewed, the situation is slightly better. According to UEFA'S Association Co-efficient table, Scotland's SPFL is the 17^th best league in Europe, and we are competing in the Nations League against Portugal (7), Poland (18) and Croatia (19). Aside from Poland and Croatia, the only other domestic leagues among the Nations League A nations are Serbia (20), Hungary (22) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (39).

Our Associations Co-efficient is defined by the performances of our clubs in the three European club competitions – Champions League, Europa League and the Conference League. The ranking points we earn this season will be accrued by Celtic, Rangers and Hearts.

Each club is mandated to register a 25-man squad for whichever competition they are involved in. This season, Celtic, for the Champions League, have registered 25 players, only 8 of whom (32%) are Scottish. Rangers, in the Europa League, have registered 21 players, only 4 of whom (19%) are Scottish, while Hearts, for their Conference League campaign, have registered 19 players, of whom 9 (47%) are Scottish. So, out of the 65 SPFL-registered players due to play in the three major European competitions this season, only 21 (32%) are actually Scottish.

If Scottish clubs are so unwilling to feature Scottish talent, how can we expect to nurture the necessary quality of player to take the national team to where many of the Tartan Army think it should be?

I like to try to finish on an optimistic note. If you disgruntled Tartan Army foot soldiers, wearily coming back from Lisbon think you've had a hard few days, please spare a thought for those Talbot Bees down in God's County.

Auchinleck Talbot, going out of the Scottish Junior Cup in the second round, beaten 2-3 at Fortress Beechwood, by Lossiemouth United, now that is what you call a bad result.

 

Disaster For Scotland 79 - Yet Another Sequel

AT TIMES like this, I don't half miss dear old David Francey. Nobody ever quite verbalised the hope that kills with following Scotland like David, when he uttered those immortal words: “Oh Deaer! Oh Dear! Oh Dear! It's disaster for Scotland” - followed by an in-depth surmation of whichever rush of shite to their brain any given ancestor of Grant Hanley had just perpetrated to help us snatch defeat from the jaws of either victory or at least a morale-boosting draw.

One of my journalist friends, a stalwart of that vanishing segment, local newspaper journalism, contacted me on Friday morning, suggesting he was keen to read what old Socrates had to say about that shit show against Poland on Thursday night.

I had to tell him, he had mistaken me for someone who still gave a shit about the failings of our national team – until such time as some footballing anarchist blows-up Hampden during a meeting of the SFA Congress, those quarterly meetings when most if not all the High Heid Yins of the various strata of our game are together inside Hampden – I am firmly on the sidelines channeling my inner Private Frazer.

Of course, the usual suspects were spouting the usual pish which follows a Scotland defeat; the same-old, same-old excuses and potential cures. One of my Facebook friends, himself a former Scotland intrnational in another sport, a now-retired former PE teacher and, to be honest, not a bad footballer in his youth, came up with some pish which was typical of the reaction.

According to this seemingly educated man: six years at a good Scottish Senior Secondary, four years at the Scottish School of Physical Education to qualify, a further year of teacher training, then some 40 years at the chalk face – the problem was:”The Manager needs to take-off his green-tinted specs”. If that's one view from the educated, Officer's Mess end of the Tartan Army, what might I hear from the PBI of that august body.

That particular gentleman, however, does view the game through red white and blue glasses, supporting a Scottish Football Institution where curtrently they do not have many players who are Rangers Class, far-less Scotland Class.

The reality is, we could at the peak of their powers Sir Matt Busby, Sir Alex Ferguson, Bob or Willie Shankly, Jock Stein or Bill Struth managing Scotland at the moment, and we would still be mince. The talent just isn't there and that's a fact.

Received wisdom has it, the basis of a successful football team is its spine: a good goalkeeper, a dominant centre half, a midfield general and a prolific striker. Think one of the first Scotland squads I ever got behind, when we had Bill Brown in goal, Billy McNeill or Ian Ure at centre-half, Jim Baxter and John White running things in midfield and Denis Law up front. The current Scotland squad has journeymen down the spine – where we need artists, it's that obvious.

It would be easy to sack Stevie Clarke and hand the poisoned chalice of the Scotland managership to someone like Davie Moyes, the current bookies choice, apparently, to be the next taxi off the rank; but, in reality, nothing would change. Clarke, Moyes, anyone else you might care to name, could only use the present-day talent pool, and at the moment, that pool is barely a puddle.

Ok, thanks to the likes of dear old Jimmy Greaves, Scottish goalkeepers have never had a good press. But, taking the need for a quality back-stop as one of the building blocks for that spine of the team, the outlook is bleak.

In last Saturday's Scottish Premier League team line-ups, the 12 goalkeepers used were Englishmen: Ellery Balcombe (St Mirren), Josef Bursik (Hibernian), Jack Butland (Rangers), Kieran O'Hara (Kilmarnock), Aston Oxborough (Motherwell) and Jack Walton (Dundee United), Scotsmen Craig Gordon (Heart of Midlothian), Ross Laidlaw (Ross County), John McCracken (Dundee) and Ross Sinclair (St Johnstone), plus Denmark's Kasper Schmeichel (Celtic) and Dimitar Mitov (Aberdeen).

So, that gives Clarke the choice of a mere one-third of the goalkeepers in his domestic top-flight. Gordon has been a wonderful servant to the national team, but, he is now in his forties, while the other three are all unproven at this level. The English Premiership, as it has been for most of this century, is barren of Scot4tish goalkeepers and the man who was handed the gloves on Thursday night – Angus Gunn, plays for what is currently the 33rd-best team in England.

Mindful of Willie Shankly's dictum that the secret of winning in England was to have enough Scots to make a difference, but not so-many that they fell-out, this sage advice appears now to be heresy to the increasing number of foreign managers down South. They simply do not appear to rate Scottish players these days, and this has been the situation for a while now.

Mind you, we don't appear to rate Scottish talent up here. Celtic has just announced its 25-man squad for this season's Champions League. Only eight of them are Scottish, and only two of those – skipper Callum McGregor and Greg Taylor are likely to start; with only another three – Luke McCowan, James Forrest and Anthony Ralston likely to get close to the bench.

That the club which famously won the European Cup with the only entirely home-born squad, nine of whom came through the club's development system should be reduced to being another home for badge-kissing mercenaries is a betrayal of its rich heritage and the passion of its core support.

But we cannot blame Celtic, after all, that club is currently owned by a non-Scot. But, we can blame the stumblebums who infest Hampden's sixth-floor “Corridor of Power” for being unwilling and seemingly unable to lift their snouts from the trough of entitlement they sup in to put right the many wrongs of the management of the game up here. I've been shouting for change for years, but, nobody who could make a difference is interested in so-doing.

The words of Private James Frazer, of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard still resonate across the ages of Scottish Football: We are all doomed, doomed I tell you.

 

This Is A Hard Week If You're A Red-Top Hack

I SELDOM have much sympathy for the staff football writers at the red-top tabloid end of the newspaper industry. OK, I can accept it might be difficult, by a Wednesday or Thursday, to find a new slant on whatever that week's big Old Firm story is, but, it's not as if they have to work too-hard to find stuff to write about. So long as their particular institution is mentioned more than the alternative one across the city, the poor saps who subsidise the duopoly via their unquestioning deference to the cause are happy.

Then you have weeks like this. The Rivals have clashed for the first time this season, with what those tongue-in-cheeks Tennent's TV adverts from some years back dubbed: The Green Team rather spanking The Blue Team's bahookies. One fears, Ra Peepul might be in for a long and painful season, from which the ripples will spread far and wide. For instance, what might a faltering Breengers' season do for Murdo Fraser's campaign to become Chief Blue Holyrood House Jock?

I honestly do not know – nor particularly care – who has the loudest shout on the Anderston Quay Sports Desk, but I know there is nobody there today with the stature of the likes of Hugh Taylor, Jack Adams, Alex Gordon, or even the star writers such as 'Waverley', Alex “Chiefy” Cameron or Janes Traynor. Whoever has the title Head of Sport these days, I suggest he might, if he has not already, be summoning-up the legendary cracked Rangers' club badge graphic for use in the paper.

And, whichever one of the deminishing band of scribblers still on the payroll, who has the joy of being on the paper's end of the Hotline this week, will earn his wage, as he fields the spittle-flecked abuse from the Blue corner and has to endure the crowing from the Green one.

Aye, it's a hard job, but someone has to do it.

Mind you, perhaps Rangers picked a good week to mess-up. With Scotland playing on Thursday there will be less-focus on the travails down Edmiston Drive way so they may well get off comparatively lightly this week.

I do not think this is a great Celtic team, I do not think Brendan Rodgers is a great Celtic manager, but, squad and gaffer are currently the length of London Road ahead of their opposition across the city.

When Graeme Souness took charge at Ibrox, his timing was spot-on, with the English clubs banned from Europe, he could easily recruit better players than he inherited and this gave Rangers a short-livved advantage. However, David Murray repeated the trick he had pulled in basketball, by recruiting better players to try to win in Europe, and when that failed to work in football, and the financial picture changed, disaster accrued.

Post-Murray and liquidation, his successors at the top of the club failed to adapt – Rangers overall club management over the past decade and more has been a textbook example of madness, doing the same-old, same-old in the vain hope of a different outcome.

Had they, as they ought to have done, kept a clutch of seasoned professionals and gone with the kids, under an experienced manager with a coaching background, when they were dumped in the bottom tier of the Scottish Leagues, by the time they got back to the top-flight they could have had a young, but tempered squad ready to compete.

But no, they went the recent Rangers way, and bought cheap foreign shite. They are still doing this and now they have an inferior squad of players, few of whom are Real Rangers Class. The pressure is now on Mr Clement to close the widening gap on Celtic – the question is, is he a good enough coach to achieve this? Are his players intelligent enough and good enough to learn?

After Saturday, it now appears to be a question of:

1. How big will the gap be between Celtic and the rest by the end of the campaign?

2. Who's going to be second? Because an Aberdeen resurgence just might be on the cards.

3. Ok, Celtic appear untouchable in Scotland, but, is this squad good enough for them to make an impact in the Champions League?

Truly we live in interesting times.

We are still of course in the early miles of what is a marathon campaign. Making predictions other than it will probably end-up with Celtic well-clear of the field could come back and bite one on the bum rather hard. But, looking at the current state of the table, with the New Firm as the meat in an Old Firm sandwich, wouldn't it be nice if that situation continued for a while yet?

Any way, this is probably the last day on which we can discuss domestic issues, as attention turns towards the Nations League, and the make-up of the team to face Poland.