New Boss - No : New Methods - Yes

WHAT I wonder is the Scotland equivalent of "succulent lamb" football journalism - you remember that - the way the mainstream media, and in particular the Lap Top Loyal, ignored the impending implosion of Rangers during the latter Murray years?

 

I ask, because my dear friends in what I have long referred to as the A Team of the Scottish Football Writers Association are once again up to their favourite trick, fiddling whilst Hampden smoulders.

 

Even before we take on Belgium in tomorrow night's "Must Win" World Cup qualifier, rather than meaningful analysis and conjecture, the men with the sharp suits, the Blackberries, the top of the range lap tops and the big expense accounts are getting themselves worked-up about just one thing - who will take over from Craig Levein when, probably this week, the axe falls on him.

 

Gordon Strachan, Joe Jordan, "Walter", "Big Eck"? Who is going to get the football gig which equates to Osama Bin Laden's successor approaching you with the plastic explosive waistcoat and the team who will film your farewell DVD. At least, the poor Jihadists believe they are going to a better place fighting an honourable battle - the poor Scotland managers are merely sticking their dicks in the dyke whilst being simultaneously shafted by the men in the Hampden corridors of power.

 

Let's face it, Scotland hasn't been the best team in the world since at the latest 1 April, 1928 - and even the XI which put them there the previous day wasn't exactly greeted with a standing ovation when it was announced. Browsing through the files in the Mitchell Library last week, I chanced upon the Sunday Mail's pre-match view of the team forever immortalised as the Wembley Wizards.

 

"This side is merely adequate - the forward line simply will not do", was the considered view of the Mail's man. That'll be the forward line which smashed five goals into the English net.

 

You'd have thought the lesson would have sunk in, but no. Ten years later, rounding-up his report on another Scottish win at Wembley, that of 1938, the great "Rex" (RE Kingsley) of the Sunday Mail - who was a sort of amalgam of Jim Traynor and Chick Young, over his some 30 years with the Mail - opined on one of the debutants in that winning Scotland team: "Right half Willie Shankly is simply not international class". That'll be the same Shankly who - now known as Bill - went on to rule Liverpool.

 

The message is dear reader - believe nothing you read in the Scottish papers.

 

For all that, Levein will, probably sooner rather than later, join the lengthening list of failed Scottish managers. I am not surprised, when the overall system has the flaws which are so obvious in Scottish football today, it doesn't matter a jot who the boss is - he will fail. The blame keeps falling on the fall guy, rather than on the real power brokers, the guys on the top floors at Hampden, who are more-concerned with feathering their own nests than with putting things right.

 

We are, already, almost-certainly not going to Brazil in 2014. At least, the last time we didn't go there, in 1950, we had already qualified before we opted out. Back then, we qualified as the tenth or eleventh-best team in Europe. Today, we are ranked in the mid-twenties in Europe. That fall hasn't just happened overnight - it has been a long, gradual and sustained slippage.

 

I think we have, perhaps bottomed-out; now, what are we going to do about getting back into the Top Ten? That will not take the short-term fix of replacing Levein, it requires serious joined-up thinking, right across the football board.

 

But, I'm not holding my breath for this happening.