We Could Do With Someone To Cut Through The Bullshit And Tell It Like It Really Is

WHEN the European Nations League was first suggested, I had a notion it would be good for Scotland. This was based on the little-known or appreciated fact, at least in Scotland, we always do better in competitive games.

One of the best of the many pro-independence websites is one entitled: “Talking Up Scotland,” it is run by Professor John Robertson, a former senior teacher at the University of the West of Scotland. The good professor has been waging, ever since he was “retired early” - apparently for not singing of the British Establishment hymn book – a one-man campaign to counter-act the many lies, items of misinformation and downright shite published by our rabid right-wing mainstream media.

Professor John Robertson - we coud do with someone in Scottish Football doing his job

Maybe, given the way the Lap Top Loyal, the Celtic-Minded and the Hingers-Oan of our football media have been anti every Scotland manager since Craig Brown, we need a Prof. Robertson type, to cut through the bullshit and tell it like it is.

The caveat is, as always – there are three ways of doing anything in sport: the easy way, the hard way and the Scottish way. We are the absolute masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. No victory is ever greater than a Scottish one, and no defeat is ever as ignoble as a Scottish loss.

But, given the lack of cash in our game, the lack of administrative talent, the lack of foresight and forward planning our game, you know, we are not in as bad a place as we perhaps believe ourselves to be.

Of course we have this long, long history weighing us down. After all, while you can credit England with codifying and organising the game, it was the Scots who adapted the basic English method and made it work – we invented the passing game, every early advance had a Scot or two. Then we allowed the SFA blazers to have too-big a say, we allowed a couple of clubs founded on sectarianism and bigotry to become too-powerful, and we stagnated.

Today, we see ourselves as too wee, too poor and too stupid to get back to where we think we ought to be, well, I concede, there isn't a lot of cash slopping around in the Scottish game, but, if we make the best of what we have got – we can surely live with the wealthy and have as good a quality of football.

We have been playing international football for almost 150 years, we are in our 15^th decade as an international-playing country. Here is our record over these 15 decades:

1870s – played 12 – won 8 – 66.7% wins

1880s – played 26 – won 22 – 84.6% wins

1890s – played 30 – won 19 – 63.3% wins

1900s – played 30 – won 15 – 50.0% wins

1910s – played 15 – won 7 – 46.7% wins

1920s – played 33 – won 23 – 69.7% wins

1930s – played 42 – won 22 – 52.4% wins

1940s – played 17 – won 7 – 41.2% wins

1950s – played 67 – won 32 – 47.8% wins

1960s – played 63 – won 29 – 46.0% wins

1970s – played 88 – won 37 – 42.1% wins

1980s – played 88 – won 35 – 39.8% wins

1990s – played 89 – won 37 – 41.6% wins

2000s – played 85 – won 33 – 38.8% wins

2010s – played 80 – won 34 – 42.5% wins

These figures give us an overall record since 1872 of having played 766 games, of which we have won 362, or 47.3%. Of these games, 226 have been friendlies, while the other 540 have been competitive – in the sense there were league points or a trophy at stake. If we separate the two types of games we find:

Friendlies – played 226 – won 100 – 44.6% wins

Competitive – played 540 – won 262 – 48.5% wins.

We tend to disparage today's players, as being not as good as the ones we once had. We long for a new Dalglish or Law, we wonder if we will ever see another Johnstone, or Baxter, Souness or McGrain. Just have a look at these figures above, our present bunch of no-hopers are actually doing better than our star-studded sides of blessed memory.

The current crop of players and managers are actually doing better than the giants of the past. For instance, our Teams of the Decades for those “great years” of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, when Scotland were near ever-presents at the World Cup finals are:

Team of the 1970s: Rough; Jardine, McGrain; Bremner, McQueen, Buchan; Dalglish, Gemmill, Jordan, Hartford, Morgan.

Team of the 1980s: Leighton; Gough, Malpas, Souness, McLeish, Miller; Dalglish, McStay, Archibald, M Johnston, Strachan.

Team of the 1990s: Leighton; McKimmie, Boyd, McCall, Hendry, Calderwood; Gallacher, McStay, McCoist, McAllister, Collins.

Even with these two in the side, we didn't do as-well as the current squad

There are some sterling names in there, but, their under-rated modern-day successors are actually a marginally more-successful outfit. We may not be featuring on the big stage, as we were back then, but, we are winning more games.

Of course, it is always difficult to compare eras, perhaps it is a case of while we have made marginal gains, other countries have simply got better, had better coaching and player development strategies in place, made better use of the available talent.

Maybe we should try to be a wee bit less Scottish. The wind is not always in our faces; perhaps good things are for the likes of us. He might not, for now, be getting credit fot it, but, I would like to hope, by delivering those last two results, perhaps Big Eck has started us of on the upward staircase again.

We might never get back to where we were in the 19^th century, but, perhaps, in the remainder of the 21^st, we can get closer to where we want to be – and, the last two wins were a good place to start from.