Get Real - Both England And Scotland Must Realise Where They Are In World Football

I HAVE been saying for years - Scotland is a small, far-off nation of which our English neighbours know nothing, and care even less. I am unashamedly and unapologeticly pro-independence. I have actually lived and worked in England, on a personal level they are lovely people, but, with the usual reservations about Civil Service and Political Minds, I firmly believe Scotland could survive and prosper as an independent nation.

One of the greatest variances between Scot and Englishman is in our attitude to the well-being of our international football team. Maybe it's the class system in England, I don't know, but, at the moment, when both nations are operating at a level some way below where the followers of both think they ought to be, there is such a difference in attitude to the respective midweek results?

We will not be going to Brazil next year - this we already know. England still harbour dreams of participating in the 2014 World Cup finals. Realistically, given the state of play in their qualifying group, I can see no reason why they will not be there. It will be tight in the group, but, with just two home ties to play and topping their group, England should qualify.

That, however, will not be good enough for their fans in the English media and their readers/listeners/viewers. England are being roundly castigated for only getting a draw - a turgid one at that - in Kiev in midweek. Don't the so-called "experts" realise, that was a bloody good result.

The days when England could simply turn-up in Europe and roll-over their hosts are long gone - they vanished somewhere between the two World Wars - the reality simply hasn't hit homeyet. Today, England are ranked 17th in the world and 11th in Europe, and I reckon, for all the pish we see about the English Premiership, that is about correct.

Our current rankings of 63rd in the world and 33rd in Europe, is, I feel, a false one. There are several teams above us in Europe, whom we should be beating - but, aren't being drawn against in qualifying groups, somehow, we always seem to end up in really tough groups. Similarly, in the FIFA world rankings, there are some countries ranked above us whom we should beat any day of the week - Uzebekistan, Burkino Faso, Iran, Honduras, Mali, Panama for instance.

We, England and Scotland, have singularly failed to address our diminished standing in the world and, until we do, we will continue to languish where we are. It is way past time we had a reality check, then did something about it.

We, at least, learned from Argentina 1978. There hasn't been as much: "Here's tae us, wha's like us" around Scottish football since then. England had bad days, both before and since 1978, but their attitude is still: "We are England, we invented this game don't you know, we are the masters". Aye right.

That said, we still have some remnants of HTUWLU in Scotland. I had to laugh at the weekend as I listened to the Saturday Night Radio Scotland football phone-in, to learn that: "We used to turn-over the Belgians regularly in the 1970s and 1980s. To hear a breathless account of a great Kenny Dalglish goal in Belgium - we lost that game, by the way, but, who's counting.

Our record against Belgium actually reads: p 17 : w 4 : d 3 : l 10. We have beaten the Belgians once in our last ten meetings with them, in 1987. This is the sixth time we have been in the same group as Belgium in either the World Cup or the European Championship qualifiers, they have out-qualified us every time. But, let's not allow facts to get in the way of our guid conceit o' oorsel's.

And, if we've got it bad - England has it, only ten times worse. I am no great fan of the FIFA rankings system. But, that said - I don't think our need for that is as great as it is for our southern neighbours.