THE first Old Firm clash of the new season has come and gone. As far as I know Glasgow has not been sacked in the aftermath; the Riot Act did not require to be read from the steps of the City Chambers and life goes on pretty much as normal.

Rangers now have a four-point lead over their arch-rivals at the top of the two-horse race which is the SPL, but, if anyone thinks it's all over - they will surely have a few rude awakenings between now and May 2012.

The ratio of good goals to comedy cuts was three to two, there were some excellent passages of play and little in the way of controversy. One hopes the politicians who attended, in pursuit of the rapidly being discredited anti-sectarian legislation learned a thing or two, but, having a healthy scepticism where politicians are concerned, I doubt it.

Of course the fact that the match earned such a good "press" ought not to deflect us from the main concern in Scottish Football in this year of 2011 AD - the fact we are shite.

We have, as we have always had in Scotland, one or two players who are better than average and it was arguably the contributions of two of that apparently dwindling number of Scottish-based professionals: the two Steves, Davis and Naismith, which made the difference yesterday.

Certainly there was the rare sight of Allan McGregor making a mistake, but, by the law of goalkeeping averages, he was due a howler, but, over the piece, Davis and Naismith as much as anyone made the difference.

Rangers will push on from here, Celtic will re-group and continue the chase; the rest - well with each successive year in which it boils down to Celtic or Rangers, Scottish Football goes backwards and becomes more and more irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Let's face it, for all their excellence yesterday, neither Davis nor Naismith is going to get anywhere near anyone's who has any lengthy relationship with the Ibrox club's  All-Time Rangers XI. Similarly nobody in yesterday's Celtic contingent is going to challenge for a place in the AT Celtic XI. Indeed, I might suggest you'd be down to about the seventh or eighth teams before any current player's name would be thrown into the selection mix - yet still they dominate.

The onus falls not on Celtic or Rangers to lift Scottish Football our of the current doldrums, it falls on the other ten clubs.

If they raise their game - the Old Firm will be forced to raise theirs in response and we might see Scottish clubs in Europe beyond August on merit rather than on the whims of what passes for football "justice".

It our current masters are not regularly and seriously challenged, the increasingly vocal successors to Private Fraser and Victor Meldrew will b ecome ever-more vocal and their protestations that we are all doomed will be accepted as fact.

One Old Firm remembered for the football rather than the arguments does not signal the end of the bad times. It doesn't even signal a sighting of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Scottish Football is more than the Old Firm; it is time for the rest to remember that and do something about the status quo, if the good times are to return.

Call Them Out

SOME years ago, when we still had sufficient footballers of the quality which at least partially endorsed Scottish football's collective self-image - ie players who could trap something livelier than a bag of cement, whose second touch wasn't a desperate slide tackle, intended to regain the possession their initial mis-kick off either shin had lost them and who weren't labouring under the misapprehension that tactics were small, white mint sweets -  during a late-night "brains trust" amidst a bevvy of football writers, I threw-in a curve ball.

"Why not", I mused, as we discussed the impending announcement of the Scotland squad to face San Marino, Andorra, Luxembourg or England, one of the real diddy teams of Europe: "Select Auchinleck Talbot en bloc?"

After the shouts of: "Taxi for Socrates"; "Nae mair drink fur him"; "Ye aye were a bag o' piss, but wi that yin ye went too far"; had subsided, I was invited to  explain my: "Rush of shite to the brain".

Simples. The perennial minnows of European competition - Andorra, San Marino, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Malta, Faroe Islands and the like have lang syne adapted their game to their talents. They "park the bus" and defy their allegedly more-talented opponents to break them down; they break-up play, waste time, frustrate and seldom if ever cross the half-way line, for fear of an immediate nose bleed.

So, my plan was, embarrass them into having a go, by deliberately selecting a team, some way below our optimum squad and thereby inviting our opposition to answer our slur by attacking us.

I reckoned that if a team of part-timers - postmen, electricians, white van men, couldn't entice a team of waiters, barmen or fishermen to break the habits of a life time and have a go - nobody could.

I further reckoned that the likes of any given Auchinleck Talbot side, given the chance to represent Scotland at the top level, would show a bit more passion and commitment than the over-hyped and over-paid "stars" of the SPL or EPL.

These guys would be fans who would metaphorically die for the jersey and since there wouldn't be that much difference in ability, our perceived greater organisation would carry the day.

Craig Brown, when I suggested this ploy to him, didn't laugh out of hand; but then "Granpaw Broon" has never been anything less than a gentleman - he maybe thought I was mad, but was too well-brought-up to say so.

I would be tempted to offer this pick our diddy team scenario as a potential means of getting the required three points from our up-coming clash with Leichtenstein, except, if we do put out a diddy team, Craig Levein would be as well sticking with what he's got in his regular squad - we have sunk that far.

THOSE Celtic fans who remain concerned as to the possibility of their club being re-instated to the Europe League are, I feel, right to air these concerns. Little if anything is ever black and white where football politics is concerned; UEFA and FIFA have a long and tarnished track record in reaching puzzling decisions, so why should the menage a trois between UEFA, FC Sion and Celtic be any different?

On the face of it, Sion broke the rules when they signed the players when banned from so doing and ought to be flung-out on their ears. But, on the other hand, given they had signed them before they kicked a ball - they ought probably never to have been allowed to play them.

Then there is the disputed definition of the length of the ban; something doesn't add up there. Finally, there is what I see as the main bone of contention. The way Sion are using the Swiss courts to embarrass UEFA and FIFA.

Both these organisations are Swiss-based, therefore, they would, one would think, be tied to Swiss civil law. The two governing bodies are sticking to their assertion that they are the law as far as football is concerned, and the Swiss law cannot intervene in football matters.

Against this, there is the convention that every organisation within any given country ought to be law-abiding as far as the law of that country is concerned and the perception that the laws of the land ought to carry more weight and hold primacy over the laws of the game.

In which case, if the Swiss civil courts say the players can play - UEFA and FIFA have to bow before this and let Sion field these players.

It's a complex one, but, if I was Celtic-minded, I wouldn't be checking out Ryanair's and Easyjet's prices to Madrid just yet.

POOR wee Robert Earnshaw, missing that golden chance to put a spoke in England's wheels at Wembley the other night. Never mind wee man - the day will come, perhaps when you are old and bald, when the thought of the miss doesn't flash through your consciousness at least once every ten minutes.

Do We Really Want To Succeed?

ONE of my oldest friends in journalism switched off his laptop at the end of the 2009-2010 season, to concentrate on other things, such as (so far very successfully) fighting-off the cancer cells which were attacking his body, completing his grand tour of every state in the USA and keeping fit.

Last season, as a favour,he helped-out his successor by covering a couple of games, but otherwise he is happily out of the football coverage rat race and, he says, all the better for it.

This now retired gentleman tells a great story about his time as the Scottish Football Writers Association's liaison officer with the SFA. His first meeting inside Hampden in that post involved the planning meeting for a World Cup qualifier. My mate arived with a dossier on what the football writers might require to allow them and their friends following the opposition to fulfill their role properly; he had some suggestions to put forward, but never got the chance.

"The bulk of the meeting was taken-up with a discussion as to which wines and of which vintage would be served at the post-match banquet", he recalls.

"For the SFA that was the most-important thing, making sure they had the right trough in which to place their snouts".

As far as I know, a couple of decades on, little has changed at Hampden. The football and the needs of the guys working at it come a long way second to the requirements of the "blazers", as the Hampden High Heid Yins are called.

To take a slight diversion here - I always preferred the now somewhat old hat description of the rugby equivalent of the "blazers" - the 'Alickadoos', as in: "Him, all he can do is talk".

Let's face it, Scotland, particularly now Craig Levein is down to the bare bones of his squad, are by no means a shoo-in to beat Lithuania tonight. We ought still be able to get a draw, but I am far from confident in our ability to beat them.

If we don't, it's not so much Goodnight Vienna as goodnight Warsaw and Kiev; we'll have to endure another early summer of wall-to-wall televised "Ingerlund, Ingerlund, Ingerlund" in nine months time.

But, the blazers' bandwagon will roll on. Our guys who have secured their places on the various UEFA sub-committees, our own committee-men, the very guys who have presided over our tournament qualifying travails, they'll be OK, out there in Poland and Ukraine on their UEFA/SFA funded "jollies", meeting and greeting, quaffing fine wines and eating fine food - they'll be fine. It will be the usual suspects, the PBI of the Tartan Army, back home growing frustrated in their confinement to Scotland, who will be suffering.

When we fail- that failure may well be signalled tonight, or when, as past Scottish form suggests it might be by only drawing with Leichtenstein, or when the Spanish matadors are awarded Darren Fletcher's ears and McShagger's cojones after the final game - the disapproval of a nation will rumble down on the head of poor Craig Levein.

He will be castigated left, right and centre - he might even be forced from office, signalling the start of a lengthy process before the next patsie is unveiled to a somewhat disinterested world at Hampden - whereupon the whole sorry pantomime will start up again.

Or he may limp on, forced to carry the nation's aspirations on a rickety wheelbarrow, with a flat tyre, holes in the side and unequal-length forks.

The guys who got us into this mess - the directors who actually run our clubs and our game, they will escape censure and will get back to doing what they do best - arguing about Sauvignon over Shiraz, over Merlot and whether they have cheesecake or profitterols for dessert.

They don't have to worry about results, about what pot we are in for tournament draws, about national co-efficients. So long as they get their accustomed five-star luxury, everything is fine.

And until we shake them up, force them to make the necessary changes - we will get nowhere other than an ever-lower place in football's European and world pecking order.

The fact that none of us, press or fans, are taking to task the ment at the top, the ones we ought to be taking to task forces me to again consider the question at the top of this post - and conclude: WE DON'T REALLY WANT TO SUCCEED.

Otherwise, we'd have done something long ago.

Don't Blame The Referee

MY friends of a Celtic persuasion - yes, I have a couple - have been somewhat jubilant since Peter Lawwell was voted onto the new SFA Professional Game Board; feeling that after what they have perceived as generations of por-Rangers bias within Hampden's corridors of power, bringing a Celtic big wig on-board would mean a new and better future for Scottish football.

Well, at least, in the wake of Saturday's disappointing draw agbainst the Czech Republic, we can sign-up for Celtic-style revisionism and excuse-making. It was indeed a conspiracy, we were unable to win because of a perverse follower of the Princes of Oranje - Dutch referee Kevin Blom.

Mr Blom might not agree - he came across during his time in Scotland as the sort of arrogant prat who is ideally suited to life as a referee - but he didn't have the best of games at Hampden. To me, he got the really big calls - the Czech penalty he awarded and the Scottish one he didn't - wrong. But, that said, I thought he also got it wrong on an earlier possible Czech penalty. So, not the match official's best game.

But, at least his inadequacies allow us to play the old Scottish "We wuz robbed" card.

After around 50 years of such post-match bleating, I'm a wee bit fed-up with reading how Scotland was robbed, didn't get the rub of the green, was shunned by Lady Luck. Poor us, it's no fair, we never get the breaks.

Maybe, in not getting the benefit of so-many contentious calls, we get what we deserve, which maybe isn't a lot. Perhaps it's time for us to to stop feeling so hard-done-by and realise: we get the luck we deserve. I honestly don't think we here in Scotland exactly buy-into Gary Player's old aphorism: "The harder I work, the luckier I get".

Take a look at our team yesterday. Hutton didn't look match-fit; Fletcher got bye on sheer class; Naismith wasn't fully-fit; Scott Brown proved, yet again, at international level he's a liability - with a silly booking. Kenny Miller also copped a stupid yellow card - but, don't worry - it was all the referee's fault.

OK, the Berra booking was a joke, but when are we going to stop self-harming through picking-up needless bookings? When are we going to realise, the sort of clumsy challenges which are allowed every week in the SPL will not be tolerated in Europe.

Rugby internationals today are so-often settled by what the referees will and will not allow: fair enough, that's rugby's problem, but, when will our football teams, like our rugby teams, start playing the referee? Have him watched, find-out his wee foibles, what he will jump on, what he will allow. It's called preparation. You know what they say: "Fail to prepare - prepare to fail".

There is one way to avoid the sort of situations like yesterday, when refereeing errors cost us. That is, simply, take the referee out of the equation. Control the tempo of the game, take your chances, score your goals and the referee cannot influence matters with his mistakes.

But that would call for players with technical qualities over and above those of the current Scotland squad. It would call for greater concentration on the essentials of football - ball control, touch, vision, team work, the ability to make your passes, your crosses and your attempts on goal matter.

These are qualities Scotland hasn't shown, when it matters, much of late. Until we get back to playing the game properly, we aint gonna qualify for the major trophy finals.

Blame our own inadequacies, the way we've allowed Scottish football to stagnate, deteriorate and repeatedly fail; the way we've stopped producing truly world-class players - but, don't blame the referee, that's no excuse for our own failings.

Don't Throw Stones - The Window's Closed

SO, that's the transfer window closed for another four months; for the remainder of 2011 managers will have to piss with the cock they've got (forgive the profanity - but in Scotland at any rate they do generally piss-about).

It says much for the poverty (in every respect) of Scottish football that there were no 'jings, crivvens, help ma Boab' moments, even during the frenetic final hours, as one club or another pulled a veritable rabbit from the hat with an eye-popping signing. It might well be that you need the sort of silly pocket money sloshing around in England for a club to be so self-indulgent.

I have never been a fan of the window. Certainly it mitigates against the former fashion, whereby a rich club, or a club with an indulgent bank manager, finding itself in trouble in or just above the relegation zone, could perhaps buy its way out of trouble. But, for me, it would be better were transfer activity to be kept strictly to the close season; on midnight, on the eve of the first competitive game of any new season, the window closes - thereafter, you go with what you've got.

Perhaps, if we had the winter shut-down we deserve, it could re-open during that closure, but, again, at midnight on the eve of the re-start, down would come the grilles - if I had my way.

So, who are the winners and losers from this window? Only time will tell, of course. For instance, Celtic's new Moroccan left back might be the business, but he could just as easily flop.

Rangers had already recruited well in advance of the last day shenanigans, spending the final hours off-loading. Messrs Little and Fleck now know, they have to impress during their loan spells, or they have no Ibrox future. Beattie being off-loaded was hardly surprising. On form and talent, he should have blossomed in Glasgow, sadly for him - he didn't.

Clearly, Alistair McCoist has been told from the top: "Go with the kids if we have a spate of injuries". His squad is lighter than Celtic's in terms of numbers, but he has versatility in his squad. Kirk Broadfoot has his critics in Scotland, but, in our domestic league he can play in every position across the back four; Steven Whittaker has yet to find his pre-new contract form, but he too can fill-in on both rear flanks, as a second centre half and as a midfielder; Lee McCulloch and Kyle Bartley can both switch from midfield to defence if required, while, where a big target man was called for, McCulloch could do a job as well.

Maurice Edu is another capable of playing in various roles, as are Steve Davis, Steve Naismith and Kyle Lafferty. Of the kids, Jordan McMillan is a versatile player, as he has shown with Queen of th South - so the lack of numbers at Ibrox ought not, in the purely Scottish context of this season, be a problem to McCoist.

Neil Lennon does have numbers at his disposal. His problem is, too-many of his players are either - unfamiliar with the particular demands of playing for the Old Firm in a domestic context, or as yet unproven. With a highly-demanding fan base, desperate to see an end to Rangers' run of SPL titles, the Celtic new boys will not be permitted the luxury of easing themselves into Scottish football.

On paper, Celtic has the stronger squad and ought to be stronger than last season and capable of over-taking Rangers. On grass, things might become tricky if there are any more St Johnstone-type performances.

I do feel, when push comes to shove, Lennon might regret the lack of a true-green, brought-up in the faith Celtic fan in his squad; a Neil Lennon, a Roy Aitken, a Tommy Burns. Celtic NEED a guy like that, Rangers, in Davis, Lafferty, Broadfoot and McCulloch have several of that type and in the end, they could maybe tip the balance away from a football-wise, more-talented Celtic squad.

After all, the most-important part of a sportsman's being is the six inches between the ears; the part which refuses to countenance defeat and here, I think, Rangers are collectively stronger than Celtic.

You will notice, I do not mention the rest of the SPL. I do hope for a consistent challenge to the Old Firm from Hearts, Motherwell and Kilmarnock. I discount Dundee United, they have sadly been too-weakened by departures to mount a challenge I feel. But, unless Paulo Sergio can work miracles at Tynecastle, and Stuart McCall can keep his first-choice players on the park, I fear another two-horse race.

But, the window is now closed, the clubs have to get on with things - let's go.

I HAD intended steering clear of the fall-out from the Neil Lennon assault case, but, needs must.

I have maintained from the start, attempting to hurry through anti-sectarian law was guaranteed to end in tears. It is a highly-emotive and divisive subject. From what little I know of Scots Law, it appears the case against Watson failed because the Crown Office failed to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that his actions were motivated by bigotry or sectarianism.

Given that only one witness mentioned any kind of religious bias by the accused and the lack of corroboration - that leg of the prosecution case was always going to fall and with it the assault charge.

Several persons with legal training have maintained that existing law is good enough to tackle such cases, but, the reformers are in charge, so reform we must apparently have. They (the reformers) have fallen at the first hurdle.

Had the Crown Office prosecuted under existing assault charges, it seems likely they would have won; indeed, there is anecdotal evidence Mr Watson would have pled guilty to assault - had the sectarian element of the charge been dropped.

Own goal by the Crown Office then.

Where now for football and for the two clubs (three if you include Hearts) who, apparently have a sectarian element within their support.

Until the clubs bite the bullet and pro-actively root-out the bigots themselves, the law will not leave them alone. Rangers, to be fair, have taken action against a reported 3000 fans, banning over 500; Celtic do not appear to have been so energetic in pursuing the bigots; Hearts are, apparently still in denial.

That's a poor start, so the clubs HAVE to do more. If they do, legislation might be avoided. The ball is in their court, and if they kick it properly football will stay out of the law courts.

Time For The Scottish Inquisition

AS every Monty Python fan can tell you: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition".

OK, in the wake of last week's European disasters, lots of people are looking, but still. Maybe it is time for a Scottish Inquisition - certainly nobody expects questions to be asked about the state and future for the national game, even at this time of deep depression and distress after last week's triple knock-out blow in the play-off round of the Europa League.

Sure, the fans' forums have been red-hot, the big-name sports writers have pontificated and postured, but, even allowing for the fact that knee-jerk reactions don't often amount to a hill of beans, a wee bit of reaction, of: "We feel your pain" from the "blazers" within the Hampden corridors of powers might have been expected.

Of course the managers, particularly Neil Lennon and Alistair McCoist, have been slap bang in the cross-hairs of the snipers' "rifles". That comes with the territory, it's one of the prices they pay for the kudos and big-money which comes the way of the two Old Firm bosses.

However, the guys who should be in the firing line will not be seen - these guys are the REAL power brokers: Craig Whyte at Rangers, Dermot Desmond at Celtic and Vladimir Romanov at Hearts. Romanov may speak in riddles, on the rare occasions he does communicate with the common herd. In any case, as a Russian oligarch, he doesn't do interviews, he issues proclomations.

Desmond also rarely comments on Celtic matters, he leaves that to Chief Executive Peter Lawwell, who is now also, of course, an SFA "blazer". Whyte, will maybe be allowed this season to bed himself in, as the very new owner of Rangers. There is already some unease about his ownership of Rangers - does he have the money it will take to freshen up the squad? What are his true motives? Even - is he a true Rangers supporter? These questions are being asked on the forums - but not in the press conferences.

Is there nobody among the serried ranks of the main Scottish football writers who is prepared to face-up to the real power brokers, the guys who actually own and run the clubs, rather than the front men who are installed as "team manager" or "first team coach" and ask them the hard questions?

Sure, we get sound bites from Messrs Regan and Doncaster, but what the fans, and I sometimes think some of my fellow journos, conveniently forget, these men (Regan and Doncaster) run the secretariats - the bodies which administer their leagues, the key decisions are taken by the club directors: Rod Petrie, Michael Johnston, Stewart Gilmour, Stephen Thompson, Stewart Milne, Geoff Brown and Co. We don't hear too-much on the big issues from these guys, unless it directly affects their club.

It's not so much: why are we so bad? Don't give them the opportunity to fob-off the interrogator with platitudes and evasions - be specific, be insistent, don't be put-off, go for the jugular.

Why do we have to put-up with third-rate imports? Why do so few of our better young players fail to make the grade? Are you happy with your club's youth development department? If so, what are your goals for these kids?

Why have so many of the Celtic Under-19 team which won the SPL U-19 League been freed as "not good enough"? Even the fact that they have been allowed to leave - what does that say about the rest, the U-19 teams from the other 11 clubs?

Why was Ally McCoist allowed to recruit his ready-made American and Australian imports, when his home-grown kids had already this season shown themselves capable of playing a big part in beating the then league leaders? I mean, it's not as if Rangers are going to be involved in Europe this season.

Why have imports, who made no contribution last season been kept-on, rather than moved-on to create a vacancy in the squad which could have gone to a young, talented and hungry Scots boy?

When will someone ask that question of the men who run the clubs, rather than the managers they employ to handle the daily grind?

What is the strategic goal and plan for reaching that goal for our big clubs, our big league and our international side?

Why, when we have such a highly-regarded coaching course, is the standard of coaching within Scotland so poor?

It is time somebody asked these questions, and kept asking them until he or she got a credible answer?

It's time for the Scottish Inquisition.

When Will We Ever Learn

"It matters not who won nor lost - so-long as you beat the English". Max Boyce, Welsh "entertainer".

"Never mind, they'll forget this result once we beat England". Unnamed SFA council member following Uruguay's 7-0 defeat of Scotland in the 1954 World Cup Finals.

"The Scottish football public will not pay to watch that sort of stuff on a weekly basis". Unnamed Scottish football writer, walking away from Hampden after seeing Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in 1960.

"Youse is shite and ye'r oot o' Europe, ha-ha, ha-ha". Various "cyber-warriors" from both sides of the Old Firm divide, on various web sites last night after the final whistle in the Europa League games.

Yes, that's the level to which we have fallen - that's the way we clutch at failiar old straws, the comfort blankets to which we have always clung. So long as Scotland beats England, Celtic beats Rangers, Hearts beats Hibs, Auchinleck Talbot beats Cumnock - all is well with the world.

Rewind 500 years: so long as Campbell beats Macdonald, McLeod beats McNab, McGlumpher beats McRassler - it matters not that we live in grass-roofed hovels, which we share with our cattle, without running water, adequate sanitation, windows and that we are scraping a living from poor, rocky ground - so long as we perceive ourselves as better than the clan next door - we're fine.

Scotland - here's tae us, wha's like us.....and we all know the answer to that.

"Maribor - they're the equivalent of Hibs". Celtic fan posting on a Scottish newspaper website this morning.

Maribor 6 Hibernian 2 - result from the third qualifying round of the Europa League competition, season 2010-2011.

See, our capacity for self-delusion, for refusing to face the obvious si quite wonderful; we forgot all about that result from exactly a year ago and dubbed the Slovenians "a pub team". Can I drink in that pub, it's clearly better than the one I frequent here.

"FC Sion - they're Swiss, easy for Celtic". Received wisdom in Scotland when the draw was made.

2011-2012 Europa League, play-off round: FC Sion 3 Celtic 1

2002-2003 Champions League, third qualifying round: FC Basel 3 Celtic 3 (Basel win on away goals)

1993-1994 UEFA Cup, first round: Celtic 1 Young Boys Berne 0 (Celtic through via an own goal)

1991-1992 UEFA Cup, second round: Celtic 2 Neuchatel Xamax 6

1973-1974 European Cup, quarter-final: Celtic 6 FC Basel 5

1969-1970 European Cup, first round: Celtic 2 FC Basel 0

1966-1967 European Cup, first round: Celtic 5 FC Zurich 0

1963-1964 European Cup-Winners Cup, first round: Celtic 10 FC Basel 1.

So, you have to go back to the days of Jock Stein, the Lisbon Lions and the Quality Street Kids to find days when Swiss teams really were easy for Celtic. In the last 20 years, Celtic have met Swiss opposition four times, winning just once - via an own goal. Easy, aye right.

And the lessons of history are equally harsh across the city. Rangers beat Maribor 6-1, over two legs in the Champions League, second qualifying round, in 2001-2002. Tor Andre Flo got three of the goals, Caludio Cannagia bagged a brace and Klaus Nerlinger got the other goal. Rangers promptly lost to Fenebrache in the next round, dropped into the UEFA Cup and had a good run all the way to the last 16.

But that was the Rangers of the big-money buys the de Boers, Lovenkrands, Amoruso, Konterman, Ricksen. Would any Rangers fan like to tell me they'd have today's bought-in "stars" before even "bomb scare Bert" or Flo?

Some Celtic fans on fans' forums since last night have been (rightly) laughing at the "wearrapeepel" attitude which still afflicts the cheap, and expensive seats at Ibrox.

OK, Rangers are no longer "rapeepel", haven't been for ages - but, they are still the reigning Scottish Champions, have been for the last three successive seasons; they are still rated above Celtic in Europe - they might be bad, but, reality says: you're worse.

So, we're at our lowest ebb. What do we do?

Short of ripping the whole thing (Scottish football) up and starting again, there's nothing we can do which will bring long-term improvement. We've got to face facts, come late June, early July of 2012, our best teams will be setting-off to try to qualify for Europe alongside the representatives of the wee countries we have long laughed-at.

Maybe they should start preparing now - after all, one of the great sporting aphorisms is: "Fail to prepare - prepare to fail"; we haven't been paying much attention to that recently, have we?

At least Rangers thanks to Sir David Murray's management incompetence, have some young players coming through  - Celtic simply jettison most of their young talent as soon as they become too-old for the Under-19 League.

If I was Ally, I'd be looking NOW to have a settled European squad of mainly young players, following a strict preparation schedule - geared to having them hit the ground running for the 2012-2013 European qualifiers.

Yes, he's bought-in some experienced players for this season, now, thanks to the European elimination - these are what he's left with. There will be no new cavalry riding to the rescue in the next week.

Split his squad, keep his best for the bigger games, get the kids into the match-day XI for the games against the SPL's diddier teams; field all the kids, plus the experienced pros such as Neil Alexander, Dave Weir, Lee McCulloch, David Healy and James Beattie in the League Cup. Rangers' optimum XI should still be good enough to win the SPL, but get the rest ready for the qualifiers.

Same with Celtic - they've just jettisoned their future. Neil Lennon has, I feel, th ruthlessly prune his squad and rebuild. Some of his buys have shown, time and again, they lack the bottle for the battle. He too has to start preparing for next season. If he doesn't, we'll be here in 12 months time writing the same old, same old, about further embarrassing defeats at the hands of European "pub teams".

Isn't it time we stopped repeating past mistakes and moved on?



What Will It Take For Reality To Strike

YOU take a week off and what happens - you return to find the world, if not turned upside down, has perhaps moved slightly on its axis.

Looking at the Europa League first leg results - what can one say. Hearts losing to Tottenham was hardly a surprise, even if the 5-0 score line was a real kick up the back-side to everyone around Gorgie.

Rangers' loss in Maribor was perhaps something of a self-inflicted wound, losing a last-minute goal undid what was, up until the ball hit Allan McGregor's net, a good result. One would hope that Rangers can make home advantage pay in the second leg, but home advantage in Europe is perhaps not what it once was for Scottish clubs, given Celtic's travails against Sion at Celtic Park.

That 0-0 draw was seen as a "one-off" disappointment for Celtic; such results happen. Then, on Sunday, St Johnstone travelled to Kerrydale Street, took an absolute hammering, but still won 1-0. Another one-off? Maybe, but, two bad results in a row for Celtic have the doom mongers in full song.

Of course, Sion might still be thrown-out of the Europa League, Celtic could still turn the tie around and win in Switzerland on Thursday, while Rangers, after sweeping previously table-topping Motherwell aside with what was hardly Ally McCoist's first-choice line-up, will surely be expected to beat Maribor at Ibrox - or could we maybe see another bad night in Europe?

If I was a Celtic fan, I wouldn't be putting too-much faith in UEFA giving Celtic the equivalent of a Junior football "protest" ticket to the Europa League group stages, should Sion beat them on Thursday. I would, similarly, not be too-confident of the squad's ability to put away the chances which they have hitherto been squandering.

Let's just say, if we have more than one club still in Europe on Friday morning, I for one will be surprised. And if we have none and are set for life among the minnows for a year or so, I will not be surprised either. We live in interesting times.

Rangers' comfortable win over Motherwell was achieved on the back of the club being denied, through injuries and visa/work permit problems, a considerable number of what we should consider first and second picks. This worked-out well for the likes of Jordan McMillan - who was, until Sunday, probably most armchair selector's fourth-choice right back. Ross Perry would similarly be ranked behind four or five players for one of the centre back slots - while young Gordon Wylde was at the heart of some: "Coisty doesn't rate him, He's fallen out with the gaffer, He's going to be moved-on" headlines and innuendo.

McCoist is perhaps on the way to re-considering his previous ideas as to his optimum XI; he has another three new boys to ease into his squad, but, top of the league and unbeaten since Malmo's win at Ibrox last month, he is in the fortunate position of being able to tinker on the back of a run of form.

Neil Lennon is now the man under pressure. His comments after the St Johnstone debacle have, naturally, been spun to just short of the graphics crew slotting the cracked club crest into the page plan; it will be interesting to see how some of his squad react to being publically grabbed by the goolies by an upset manager. The next two games are crucial to Celtic's season.

As to Hearts - they are already out of Europe. It will be interesting to see what sort of squad Paulo Sergio fields at White Hart Lane and what he does to quickly get his club into the top six and challenging the big two - the very least his club owner will demand.

The early weeks of the season have shown that there are some coaches in the SPL - Danny Lennon, Kenny Shiels and Stuart McColl being in the van, who are prepared to put their faith in football in an effort to get close to the perennial big two.

I am disappointed at how things have gone in Europe, but not overly concerned. I feel better days are around the corner. Now, if other clubs would follow the McCoist lead and let young Scottish players show what they can do - I'd be even-more confident about the future.

Things were bad last week - this need not be our usual state. I asked at the top, what it would take for reality to strike; hopefully, last week's poor results were the wake-up call.

Sort Out The Set Pieces And You're Half Way There

THERE are several types of football: American, Association, Australian Rules, Canadian, Gaelic, Harrow, Rugby Union and Rugby League being the most-popular. Of these, Association Football, or the real game, stands out - because it is the most-continuous and flowing. Play only becomes static after a foul, a goal or a corner kick - otherwise play is continuous over the 45 minutes of each half.

In Rugby League, teams re-group following the fifth tackle in each phase of play, in Rugby Union they can re-set themselves after each scrum, line out or breakdown (ruck and maul). In American and Canadian football, there are a set number of plays (downs) to move the ball a set distance, while in Australian Rules the players re-group after each clean catch or thereabouts.

So, in these games, teams consciously practice set pieces; they have control of the ball - they know what they are going to try next, the opposition might hazard a guess, but they have to react quickly to counter whichever more the team in possession comes up with. Everything stems from controlled possession at a set piece, with the intention either to control the next attack or to gain field position from which to launch an attack from the next set piece.

Watching the highlights of the SPL games on Saturday and Sunday, I was struck by how little control our teams appear to have over set pieces - free kicks, corners and so forth, also, how little attention they appear to pay to defending such moments in games. Peter Houston, for instance, was not happy as Rob McLean's studio guess on Sunday night's highlights programme, with his Dundee United side's efforts at set pieces during Saturday's defeat at Celtic Park.

Yet, it stands to reason, if a corner kick is seen as a good attacking opportunity for the team winning one - surely the defending side should put more effort into organising their efforts to prevent goals from corners - I don't think they do, from some of the shambolic defending I saw over the weekend.

I have said before and will doubtless say again - we are not professional enough in Scotland; we do not work hard enough at the basics of team play or indeed at the technical aspects of football. Until we do, our game will struggle.

I DO not pay a great deal of attention to the English Premiership: over-paid, over-rated and over-hyped, that's my take. Certainly, when Manchester United are on-song, they play some wonderful football and although they weren't operating at peak efficiency, there were some wonderful moments in the highlights slot from their meeting with West Brom, on MOTD2 on Sunday.

There has been a lot of comment about their new Spanish goalkeeper David De Gea. He is very young for a goalkeeper, only 21, but, he looks the part, he will mature and get better and if he made a slight error in conceding Albion's goal - no keeper is ever faultless.

The big question around him is: how will he react to the in-depth analysis of his every move? Glad though I am to see him still playing in Scotland, I still feel SAF may regret not going for Allan McGregor - there is a top-class keeper, made for the Old Trafford cauldron. And, he's one o oor ain.

HOWZAT For The Way To Win

I CAN make this confession today, a couple of decades ago it would have been well-nigh possible for a Scotsman to say: "I like and enjoy cricket". Even then, Scotland had one of the highest players-per-head-of-population figures in the world when it came to England's game - those Jocks who enjoyed the thwack of leather on willow simply tended to keep quiet about it though.

Cricket was an effete English pastime, a rather meaningless way of filling-in the weeks while real sportsmen - full backs, wing halves and inside forwards rather than batsmen, bowlers or wicket-keepers - reinvigorated themselves for the new season.

But, these days are past and as someone who has had as much fun and entertainment on the huge West Terrace at Headingley as on the blessed slopes of Hampden, I can say not before time. Be he from a mining town like Barnsley, a mill town such as Accrington, a farming town such as Taunton or a stockbroker living in the commuter belt of Surrey, Middlesex, Essex of Kent, an English cricket fan can be every bit as passionate, knowledgeable or commited to his team as any Old Firm, Hearts or Auchinleck Talbot fan.

So, I am delighted to see England become, officially the Number One Test Match-playing nation. It's not like winning the World Cup: let's face it, a World Cup of test match cricket would last longer than the 100 Years War, so, it's never going to happen - but to be THE best, at the purest form of the game - will surely swell the chest of every Englishman.

There are many reasons why England got there, and there are few lessons which Scottish football can learn from their success - but, there are some.

The main lesson is - the way the English do not over-play their top talent. County Cricket, for so long the mainstay of English cricket is, to be honest, about as gripping as your average SFL Second Division game, and is watched by a similar fan base of the old, the indolent and the very, very few who still care.

One-day cricket is true knock-out, knock-about stuff, with a guaranteed outcome, even if Duckworth-Lewis (don't ask) is hardly a penalty shoot-out, but does give a winner.

Twenty-20 is the cricket equivalent of three-and-in and has about as much relevance to the real game. No, Test Cricket is the real deal.

And England are best, because, as far as possible, they keep their main men fresh for the real game. After the mental high of Edgbaston, Strauss, Cook, Broad, Anderson & Co will not be asked to turn up tomorrow to play county cricket at the English equivalent of Station Park, Forfar, Bayview, or Ochilview. Instead, they will rest, recuperate and prepare to twist the knife in the next test.

If, as happened to captain Strauss earlier in the summer, they are out of form and need a quiet run-out somewhere, telephone calls are made, arrangements put in place and it happens. Someone, somewhere within the England and Wales Cricket Board, oils the wheels to make England the best.

Now, look at the SFA, where you often get the impression someone, somewhere, is moving the goalposts to try to derial Scotland. 'Twas ever thus. In 1950, we scored a spectacular own goal, when we knocked-back a guaranteed place in the World Cup finals in Brazil. Four years later, we allowed Rangers to go off on a club tour to North America, which coincided with the World Cup finals in Switerland.

In 1962 and 1966 we went into crucial "must win" World Cup qualifiers without players, injured in meaningless league games which ought to have been postponed. Things have improved since then, thanks mainly to FIFA initiatives, but, today still, what our clubs want takes precedence over what the national team needs - and with most of the TV money going to the clubs, this will not change shortly.

Also, all of the English cricketers play for English clubs. Just think back over the 130 years since the first Scottish amateur accepted a job down south, provided he played for Darwen, or Accrington Stanley, or Preston North End. The English clubs have never been keen to let their "Scotch professors" return north on international duty. Of course the afore-mentioned FIFA rules mean they have little option today. But, unless we have our top men, playing in Scotland and in a culture where Scotland, rather than the Old Firm, Aberdeen, Hearts of Hibs, is the priority - we will never again be woprld-beaters.

Of course, introducing a football version of cricket's centrally-contracted core of the international side will never be easy. The Rugby Football Union in England has tried it, but has yet to reach the sort of agreement the ECB has with the Counties. But, I am sure it could be done; and if it was - perhaps we would see Scotland back in at least the second pot in World Cup or European Championship draws, and perhaps, in time, in the first pot.

Mind you, for that to happen, as well as the internal organisation, we would need one other thing which we don't have at the moment - a squad of talented players. England beat India at cricket because they had the bowlers - the strikers of that game.

Anderson, Bresnan, Broad and Tremlett were better than what India had. English football is in a bad way because they lack quality strikers - in cricket parlance Rooney is an all-rounder rather than a specialist striker.

How much worse off are we? A new Denis Law and proper organisation and what might we achieve?

Let's Become Borrowers

THE news that Hibernian were signing young Airley from Newcastle United on a six-month loan deal set me thinking this morning. Might this be the way ahead for Scottish football and a means of making the SPL better?

By common consent, our top-flight league is considered fairly mediocre by European standards. OK, we are still within the top 20 of the 50-odd national leagues within UEFA, but we are a long way off the overall standards in the big leagues.

Increasingly these big leagues are recruiting their new blood from the poorer European nations, Africa, the traditional South American recruiting grounds of the Italian, Spanish and Portugese Leagues and now, in greater numbers, Asia. They bring in callow youths, feed them up, school them, then the bigger clubs send them to lesser teams to have the rough edges polished off, before re-calling them if they think they'll make it and selling them on if they think not.

The top English Premiership clubs have bought into this, the squad lists in the Premiership Academies reads like a League of Nations, with French, Spanish, Italian and Eastern European names are frequent, if not more obvious than Smiths, Jones and Macdonalds. Once through the Under-19 age group, these kids are either loaned-out or moved-on. So why shouldn't we up here get more of these kids on loan?

OK Airley is at Hibs, Kyle Bartley is at Rangers, Fraser Forster was at Celtic last season; but why don't we have more on-show up here? We are proud of our super seven Scottish-born Premiership managers, so why don't we approach King Kenny, Sir Alex and the five commoners, Messrs Coyle, Kean, Lambert, McLeish and Moyes to send us some of their youngsters for a year or two's tempering in the fire of the SPL?

Might they tell us, what some English critics have been telling us for years: "Your league's shite Jock"? I would not doubt their lack of patriotism - so maybe it's time we asked them to help-out the folks back home by sending us their youth, that we may teach them the right way, the Scottish way, to play football.

I watched a youthful Manchester United squad rip Ayr United apart in a pre-season friendly. None of these kids is anywhere near a first team shirt at Old Trafford; but I see no reason why Sir Alex might block-out a season at his beloved Pittodrie, under the tutelage of two men he surely trusts as being able to look after the kids and bring them on - Craig Brown and Archie Knox. It makes sense to me. And if Jack and Victor could bring them through, why not other Scottish managers?

STILL on the subject of player development, I was researching a historical piece this week, one which is due to be published in about two months, and I had a Eureka moment - let's use the juniors more.

Once upon a time would-be footballers followed a well-trod path. You started playing at school. If you were presumed to be any good and were lucky enough to get a Schoolboy cap - you had every chance of being whisked off to England, aged 14 or 15, for a ground staff job at a big club there. Then, it was up to you - if you made the grade, in time you'd get into the first team and perhaps win Scottish caps.

If you failed, you came back up the road and joined your local junior team. Getting into the juniors was also a stepping stone for your less-talented friends, who might leave school, play secondary juvenile or juvenile football, even churches league football, and in time get the call to a junior side.

The juniors was the ultimate finishing school; it made a man or an exhibit for medical students out of you and if you survived, there was every chance you could step-up to the senior ranks - but, in getting there you had survived a hard and at times lengthy apprenticeship.

Then, in the mid-sixties, it began to change, boys clubs began to become more important than schools in teaching the basics, schools football withered and all but died when the teachers went on strike in the early 1980s. Ground staff jobs gave way to apprenticeships, and somehow, we began to lose more talent than we developed.

The English clubs grew rich on the back of TV money and suddenly Scottish recruits were dull, over-familiar, buying continental became the thing.

Some boys still went down the boys club route into the junior ranks, where they were increasingly competing with one-time boy wonders who hadn't made the senior grade and been dumped - while all but the lesser Scottish senior clubs stopped scouting in the juniors, prefering to recruit drop-outs from the bigger clubs's disjointed youth development ranks.

But, I feel, in today's fiscally-challenged Scottish game - it is time to look anew at the juniors.

The SPL no longer runs a Reserve League and increasingly all but the very best youngsters are released once they are too-old for the U-19 team. Some of these players might be "late developers" - look at Steven Dobie, released by Rangers at 20, eight years later, after a peripatetic career in the lower leagues here and in England, is in the Premiership with Swansea; others simply not good enough; still more needing more time.

How might it work if an SPL club, say Kilmarnock, had half a dozen players coming out of their U-19 team, whom they couldn't immediately put into their small SPL squad, but whom they wished to keep tabs on. They could surely find a way of keeping them within the club's sphere of influence, by perhaps loaning them out to a local junior club, let's say Irvine Meadow.

These players could perhaps train two or three days per week with Killie - on reduced wages; train the other two with the Meadow, for whom they would play on a Saturday - but could be re-called to Killie if needed.

I'd call that win, win all round. That's just a sketched outline of what could happen; making it happen would need more thought. But, I could see such a scenario benefitting both the junior and the senior club - not to mention the player, who would be getting regular games. I feel we ought to be looking at such schemes more.

One of the things which got me thinking about the desirability of a spell in the juniors was reading 'The Ghost of White Hart Lane' Robert White's book, co-written by Julie Welch, about his late, brilliant father John White.

"The Ghost" - John White - was never more than nine and a half stone, wringing wet, but he and the equally slight "Slim" Jim Baxter formed the best Scottish central midfield pairing I have ever seen. Together they destroyed teams, while the Spurs midfield trio of the wonderful 1961 double-winning side: White, skipper Danny Blanchflower and Dave Mackay was sensational.

White's career included a spell with Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic, Mackay played for Newtongrange Star, as did the almost as celebrated Alex Young, Baxter played for Crossgates Primrose, Kenny Dalglish played for Cumbernauld United, Jimmy Johnstone for Blantyre Celtic, Billy McNeill, like Jock Stein before him, served Blantyre Victoria.

A spell in the juniors didn't hurt these icons - let's bring it back.

Scotland Flowering

OH Flower o Scotland, when will we see yer like again? I'm not that bothered about the return of King Robert the Bruce and his coterie of mainly Norman barons, who master-minded Bannockburn and sent Proud Edward's army homeward tae think again. I'm looking more for the likes of Baxter, Bremner, Dalglish, Johnstone, Law, Mackay, Souness and Co - the footballing legends we grew up with.

To be fair, they, wonderful talents though they were, never exactly put the world to rights and put Scotland back to where it hasn't been for well-nigh a century: the best team in the world. Indeed, realistically, we may never take-on Brazil or Italy or Germany in a World Cup final - but we can dream.

And that dream maybe came a wee bit closer last night, when we beat Denmark, at Hampden. OK, it was "only" Denmark, it was "only" a friendly, it was the sort of night which could even define "dreich" to an Englishman - but: WE WON.

Friendly wins have been rare for Scots fans to celebrate lately, ditto competitive wins, although, our record when a game actually matters has long been better than when it doesn't. But, for purely morale reasons, going into the sharp end of the Euro' 2012 qualifying process, this one was a good one.

It, of course, wasn't perfect, Allan McGregor made what might well be his only mistake of the season in conceding the Danish goal; a vote among the members of the Tartan Army would probably find a majority agin playing 4-5-1, but, we are maybe starting to get back to where we want to be.

We won without skipper Darren Fletcher, Scott Brown was forced off early - a couple of years ago without these two, we'd really have struggled. Today, guys such as James Morrison and winning goal scorer Robert Snodgrass are looking as if they belong in the international arena, ditto Stevie Naysmith. We still need a viable alternative to the ageing Kenny Miller, but Phil Bardsley might well have made the number two jersey his own last night, Stephen Crainey looked assured on the other flank while Danny Wilson and the much-maligned Gary Caldwell looked the part in the middle - we have a defence.

Craig Levein has little room for manouevre in the remaining qualifiers, one bad night at the office could still derail us en route to the play-offs; but Private Fraser and Victor Meldrew are now talking to themselves.

And, looking ahead to the World Cup 2014 qualifiers, buoyed-up by the good showing of the Under-21s - we can look forward confidently.

SPL honcho Doncaster was trying to be chipper this week in the wake of the publication of the latest PWC report on the finances of the SPL clubs, which I blogged on yesterday.

He used statistics wonderfully, when he pointed-out that Scotland has the highest "per-head of population" football attendances in the world - because 1 in every 63 persons living in Scotland attends an SPL game each week.

Aye Right. Take away those who attend games involving Celtic and Rangers and the figures don't look so good. Stop trying to kid people Mr Doncaster, without the Bigot Brothers, we'd be a lot lower down the order.

Until the other clubs get their acts together and begin to really challenge the big two, in a manner we have not seen - the all-too-brief flowering of the "New Firm" between 1978 and the Souness Revolution apart - for half a century, we are going nowhere other than down the drain.

The paucity of ideas and ambition in the 40 senior clubs other than the Old Firm is the biggest stumbling block to Scotland getting back among the top football countries in Europe and the world. Until this is addressed, we will struggle.

Forgive Us Our Debts

WE should all know where this post's headline comes from; and if the newly-published PriceWaterhouseCooper report on the finances of the SPL clubs is any guide, prayer may well be a major strategy in the management of our top football clubs.

An overall profit of £1 million by the 12 clubs isn't all-that-impressive; things get worse when you consider that only Rangers - on the back of a good European run - and Dundee United actually turned a profit by their own endeavours, while the figures were somewhat massaged by the largesse of  "Mad Vlad" at Hearts and Jamie Moffat at Kilmarnock in writing-off £8 million and £1 million in debt to them as individuals. Remove Rangers' European run from the picture, which the abject, indisciplined performance against Malmo has already done and things are looking so bleak that Private Fraser and Victor Meldrew look like optimists.

And it isn't going to get any better - soon.

Let's look at how things have gone since the end of last season. Rangers changed hands just before the title was secured, a brave new dawn was breaking - or so we were told. A "tired, threadbare, average" squad had just completed a hat-trick of SPL wins and added the League Cup for good measure. Celtic, under Neil Lennon, had re-grouped, battled Rangers every inch of the way in the league race, but still managed - by imploding at Inverness and by Giorgio Samaras's penalty miss at Ibrox - to lose a title which seemed theirs for the taking, albeit they had the consolation of a Scottish Cup win. Hearts, having at one time looking like the potential meat in an Old Firm sandwich at the top of the table, fell away to be the best-best-of-the-rest, but in horse racing terms "a distance" adrift of the two in the photo-finish up front.

Hearts have (again) changed managers, with Mr Romanov's insistence in actually implementing some of the tried and tested business management techn iques I've been discussing these past two days concluding that Jim Jefferies maybe wasn't doing that great a job. The great and good in Scottish football's chattering classes were initially aghast at this suggestion, before realising, maybe the so-called mad one had a point.

Rangers' new management has shown remarkable naivety in their transfer dealings to the extent: "Let's all laugh at Rangers" has become the most-popular game on the Scottish football websites; and when they have managed to recruit, "I'm not impressed" has been the general reaction of fans and others at their efforts. They have also lost the near-mythical "Walter" as manager and it is fair to say successor Alistair McCoist's early efforts have to some extent mirrored his early days as a Rangers player some 30-years ago. That said, if he goes on to have the success as a manager he enjoyed as a player, his statute will eventually go up alongside that of John Greig outside Ibrox Stadium.

Across the city Neil Lennon, emerged stronger and wiser from an at times horrible and amazingly stressful and trying season, with his first trophy landed and high hopes for this season. He has continued his policy of building slowly and steadily - recruiting mainly young players who should improve. But, as ever with the Old Firm, questions remain. These mainly concern the mental fortitude of his squad, the lack of a top-class goalkeeper and the belief that, for all he has a bigger squad than Rangers at his disposal - the quality isn't there. The fear among some Celtic fans is that, when the going gets tough, he doesn't have the same number of hard yards grinders-out that McCoist has. But, time will tell.

Hearts should again lead the resistance from outwith Glasgow. Like Celtic, they have a big squad, which lacks depth. The absence of the talismanic Kevin Kyle was keenly felt at the end of last season; he has yet to kick a ball this. Also, they are having to try to give new manager Sergio a crash course in Scottish football's ways. Things will be tough down Gorgie way until Christmas I expect.

Dundee United - minus David Goodwillie and last season's midfield, will struggle; likewise Kilmarnock - because they will toil for goals, so don't be surprised if Stuart McColl's Motherwell emerge as the provincial standard-bearers. The rest, who knows what will happen?

One thing we do know is - the fans will increasingly ration their attendances. Going to football today is an expensive business, and the punters have long ago decided they will not pay out good and harder-to-earn money to watch rubbish.

Gates were down last season, they will likely drop again - unless the clubs can come up with a better product, at a better price - and there is little chance of that.

In times of acute financial peril, as now, you cut your costs, pull-in your horns and live frugally. Slashing squad sizes, giving youth its chance, coming up with new marketing and pricing strategies, offering greater value for money and added-value: these are the things successful businesses such as Tesco are doing to ride-out these hard times. I do not see Scottish football following this successful business model, so maybe, indeed - prayer is the only answer.

TONIGHT, Scotland take on Denmark at Hampden in a friendly international, aimed at helping Craig Levein prepare his squad for next month's crucial European Championship qualifiers. The build-up has been good; few call-offs, good harmony within the squad, players keen to don navy blue.

But, this is a friendly. Scotland doesn't DO friendlies that well, so it could and probably will all go pear-shaped early doors tonight. Not that I am all that worried by this. Come next month and the Czech Republic - when it matters, the bagpipes will strike up and we will get tore right intae them - with much more ardour and belief than we showed in the first match, last season.

It is good to see so-many English Premiership players in our team, although we still lack genuine quality in key areas, but, this is Scotland - come oan lads: Gerrintaerum.

What Would A Business Doctor Make of Scottish Football?

WHERE is the old fart going with this one? You might well ask; but bear with me please as I carry-on from where I left-off yesterday, with my piece about businessmen not taking care of business when that business is football.

I got the idea for this post from reading a copy of Des McKeown's excellent book, ghosted by my old mate Bill Leckie: 'Don't Give Up The Day Job'. This tome is a diary of a year in the life of office equipment sales director and part-time footballer McKeown. It was written a decade agom but is still relevant today, by which time McKeown, still flogging the stationery, is a valued member of the BBC Sportsound team.

One of the questions Des asked in his excellent book was: "When will football adopt good business practices, such as the annual review"? Of course, not all businesses go in for "the annual review" - certainly journalism doesn't. I well recall, again some ten years ago, when the big newspaper group which then paid me my pittance decided editors would have to conduct a twice-yearly review of the performances of their journalists.

The man to whom I then answered was decidedly old school, definitely not in favour of this, but, he had to go through with it. I should say here, had it been done properly, at least 20% of the editorial staff would have been out of the door, but, no chance of that. In my case, the interview consisted of him asking me how I thought I had done: me pointing-out how much more work I, as a one-man-band sports department did in comparison to the general news staff and how much-easier my job would be if he told the News Editor, who shared his bed, to keep her nose out of stuff she knew hee-haw about. I then added that I was being grossly under-paid and over-worked.

The review was then abruptly terminated as I was given a two word instruction, the second word was "Off". The review was never repeated.

Now, supposing reviews became common-place in football. Just what might be said between say a Scotland Under-21 internationalist, whose season had been spent warming the bench for an SPL side, whose squad comprised mainly cheap foreign imports, taking the money, kissing the badge but making it quite clear Scotland and the SPL was a convenient staging-post en route to the riches of a bigger league such as the EPL, and his manager; a man with no genuine man-management training, a coaching certificate, obtained more than a decade before and never updated by a refresher course since?

"Well Shuggie son - your warm-ups are impressive; you're out there quickly, your stretches seem deep and full. You're never late for training, you come on all the nights out, you put up with the wind-ups and awe that other pish - but, you're too-young and I cannot justify putting you on - maybe next season, keep it up son. Anything you want to ask?"

"Aye gaffer - how come that big Greek tit, who couldnae hit a coo oan the erse wi a banjo and scores aboot wance every five gemmes gets tae stert every week an ah'm stuck oan the bench, in spite o haen scored fower late equalisers and twa last-meenit winners aff the bench?"

"Well son, that's Scottish fitba - ye hae tae serve yer time."

"Right boss, OK."

Not that long ago Scotland was the destination of choice for English managers seeking to augment their squads - today, while admittedly the number of Scots in the EPL is growing by the season, this is far from the case. Where once the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal, Everton and Manchester United raided each year's Scottish Schoolboys Under-15 or Under-16 team for their future stars, today, zilch - they shop for future talent in Spain, France or Africa.

The English sides would have Scottish scouts, scouring the provincial clubs for: "the next big thing" - if a Dundee United or Hibs player got into the Scotland squad, it was only a matter of time before the big money move to England. Today, their successors have to arrange their own move South via a Bosman.

Look at the British motor industry. When we had an Empire, or a Commonwealth we were commited to: Austins, Rovers, MGs, Rileys, Hillmans and Sunbeam cars were commonplace on the city streets of Africa and Asia, while AEC and Leyland buses carried the poor into these cities, where the nation's goods were delivered on AEC, Leyland, Guy or Bedfor trucks and vans.

At home, a Leyland or Foden or ERF or Atkinson truck, powered by a Manchester-built Gardner engine hauled the goods up and down the A1 or A6. In Scotland, our own, Glasgow-built Albions had a strong local customer base: while the smaller Perkins-engined Bedfords or Morris Commercials, or the Slough-built Fordson trucks and vans plied our city streets. Hell, we even sent Ford Transit vans around the world.

But, the British manufacturers refused to move with the times: Volvo, Scania, MAN, Iveco, Renault and Mercedes trucks are everywhere today; sure, Alexanders of Falkirk still make bus bodies, but for chassis built by these foreign firms, no longer for British-manufactured AEC, Bedford or Leyland chassis.

These firms stopped investing in technical development, the British worker would not move with the times and our manufacturing industry foundered. Our bankers, who had supported British expansion, settled for American-style "casino banking", betting millions on currency movements and ignoring their British clientele.

Well, I would suggest - the Scottish clubs stopped investing in their raw materials, the kids. We ignored the traditional wee, red-headed Scottish wing half, who could play a 60-yard pass onto a sixpence, but could also, when required, tame a much-bigger, more physically-imposing opponent with the ferocity of his tackling. We stopped playing pass and move, we settled for a couple of generations of "players" who could run all day through a ploughed field, but couldn't trap a bag of cement, guys whose second touch was a frantic slide tackle to try to recover the ball which they could easily mis-kick off either shin.

We settled for mediocrity and that's what we've got.

The SFA boasts of the quality of its coaching courses. Well it sure doesn't boast of the quality of the management - and I don't mean the managers - of its clubs. I don't blame the team managers: the Scots bosses up here grew up in the era of only putting-in four, two-hour training sessions per week. Few if any of them came through the school which said: "Fail here and you're back down the pit or into the ship yard or the foundry on Monday". They had an easy life as players and they are happy to continue that easy life as managers.

If they fail, and most do, there is always the old pal's act of a gig on BBC Sportsound, where the rules are: "Don't criticise, don't be too-opinionated and remember, never criticise the Old Firm". Obey these and you've got an easy wee gig for years.

Just, don't demand too-big an improvement, don't ask for more from your players, don't question the status quo - get through it. The mugs on the terraces will put up with it.

Except, times are hard, the mugs are not putting up with it, they are voting with their feet, to find ways of watching better football on TV or on the internet.

Scottish football is dying and unless we get business doctors in to sort out the way the clubs and the game are run - in a few years we will not have a Scottish Football to worry about.

I can hardly wait to read the first prognosis from the first business doctor to properly analyse the management of a top Scottish club - it will, I bet, make fascinating reading.