You Have To Fancy A Fairly Average England Team To Win, But, Tonight Is Not Mission Impossible

Wembley Week – Match Day

NOW'S the day, and now's the hour.....etc. Today is indeed D-Day.

Let's be honest, the first international I can remember being interested in was the 1954 Scotland v England match at Hampden, which was such a disaster for the Scots, they immediately binned most of the old guard, took a very callow squad to Switzerland that summer for the World Cup and were embarrassingly bad.

And that, pretty much, has been the story over the intervening 62-years. Even when we have been good, and played England off the park, we have never built on it. Of course, for so-long, beating England has been a Get Out Of Jail Free card for the SFA and various Scottish managers.

1963 We beat England with ten-men, then win a kicking match against a good Austrian team, before going off on our summer tour, where we lose to the part-time and mostly amateur Norwegians, then lose to a Repubic of Ireland team mostly drawn from the lower leagues in England, before, with the fans with typewriters baying for blood, we gub a Spanish team who would, within a year, be European Champions, 6-2 in the Bernabau.

1967 We humiliate England, the result was 3-2 for us, the reality more like 6-2. WE then go out in the next game and go through the motions, en-route to losing to the USSR. But, beating England puts us in pole position to qualify for the 1968 European Championship finals, except, we promptly lose to a virtuoso Windsor Park display from George Best, then go through a Hampden snore-fest of “a draw nae fitba” against England, and fail to qualify.

1982 We qualify for the World Cup Finals, but Alan Hansen and Willie Miller make a horrendous boob and we fail to beat the USSR, and thereby qualify for the knock-out stages. Still, we have a reasonably strong squad – Leighton or Rough in-goal; Miller, Alex McLeish, Hansen, David Narey in defence; Graeme Souness, John Wark, Gordon Strachan and Asa Hartford in midfield; Kenny Dalglish, Stevie Archibald and the young Charlie Nicholas up front. We have Jock Stein as team manager.

We go into the European Championship qualifiers, and produce our worst qualifying campaign ever.

That's Scotland – two steps forward, two-and-a-half back. We have never won 50% of the matches we have played in any decade since the end of WWII. No matter what the High heid Yins at Hampden do to try to sort things out, it doesn't work. No wonder we seek solace in the wise words of Private Fraser of the Warmington-on-Sea Home Guard; on this evidence, we truly are: “Doomed, Ah tell ye – doomed”!!

But, hey, we are Scotland, hope springs eternal. And, remember this – if the squad Gordon Strachan has at his disposal isn't the best we have ever sent south, we must not forget, this is not a great England side we are facing.

On paper, England should win, but, the game will be played on grass, and, while it will be a big shock if we do pull it off – Scotland can win tonight.

Me, I would settle for the jammiest, sclaffiest, least-likely goal ever, so long as we win. How about a huge David Marshall clearance from hand, bouncing over Joe Hart and into the English net for the only goal of a dire game? I'd be happier than Tam o' Shanter on market night.