Unleash the Dogs of War

HAVING spent a few years, if not in 'Middle England', then most certainly in the semi-independent Republic of West Yorkshire, I've actually observed our cross-border neighbours in their natural state.

Truth is, they're by-and-large a likeable bunch, but, when it comes to football, they've got their foibles which we Scots will never understand.

We immediately realised, post-Argentina '78, that we were nowhere near as good as we had thought we were. Thankfully we appointed Jock Stein as boss and even if not even that managerial magician could turn us into genuine contenders at European or world level, he did inject some realism into our conceit of ourselves and our place in world football.

Of course, being Scots, the breeeze in our faces immediately took on hurricane proportions and we probably still feel underwhelmed by our footballing selves.

Not so England - given that in terms of player and fan base, the financial state of their game, their influence in the history of the game and the way they are perceived elsewhere in the world - England is a BIG football nation.

So, you would think after the disappointments of Spain 1982, the 1988 and 1992 European Championships, not even qualifying for USA '94, it might have dawned on the English that they weren't as good as they thought they were.

And that was before the ludicrously over-hyped "Golden Generation", Sven the sexy Swede and the Wally with the Brolly.

Then there is this claim about the English Premiership: "The Greatest League in the World".

OK, they've got two big teams, led by outstanding managers (Arsenal and Manchester United), Chelsea - a third big team based on a billionaire's ego and Liverpool, the fading remnants of a once-great dynasty, still occasionaly able to rage against the fading of its light. But, the fact is, a lot of the over-priced, over-hyped football played in the EPL is pure mince. It's "English" only to the extent that the league is based in England - and the English still don't get it.

Now, after the disaster that was their South African campaign, their polluted press are intent on-rewriting history. On the basis that: "We were bad, but France and Italy were worse", they are clutching at straws in the hope that a bunch of kids who can barely get a start in the Premiership will stun the world, starting with Hungary on Wednesday.

Now Hungary's slide from the cosmic heights of Puskas and Co in the early 1950s emphasises how Scotland's decline has been the long, slow, descent into penury of an old aristocratic family which has in-bred over too-many generations. They (Hungary) will have their moments at Wembley, but they will not win and England's recovery will have started.

The fact is, even more than Scotland, England (the international team) is ham-strung and held back by a system which is weighed against a successful international side. Their league, like ours, is based on a high-tempo, high-power, low-skill style of up and at them football, totally different from the lower-tempo, technically efficient, passing game which is the norm at the top of the international tree.

The foreign-trained players who are the backbone of the English domestic game can adapt to the lower-standards and expectations of the fans and administrators with whom they are working - the domestic players find it difficult to adapt to international play.

The same failings and false conceits hold in English rugby. But, at least, prior to winning the Rugby World Cup in 2003, the RFU bought into Sir Clive Woodward's vision of how England might win and backed him to deliver - which he did.

If the FA was to be as supportive of Fabio Capello, England just might pull it off in Brazil 2014. But they will not and, with the Running Dogs of the Red Tops having taken up their default position: It's all the manager's fault - I fear further pain for our neighbours.

Ach well, that we CAN enjoy, after all schadenfraude is a wonderfully Scottish sentiment.

History Is Bunkum

HENRY Ford, hardly the epitome of the billionaire benefactor, is credited with thinking-up the heading to this piece. Ford, of course, ruthlessly introduced the concept of the production line and among his many failings was a total disregard for the dignity of labour.

What's he got to do with football? You ask.

Other than the fact that today the Ford Motor Company is a major sponsor of FIFA and UEFA, very little actually. However, certain factions within the game seem to share the late Henry's view of history.

Yes West Ham United, I mean you - with your decision to rename the Bobby Moore Cup, played for annually in a pre-season charity match - after your on-line betting firm sponsors.

Well you'd expect nothing less from a club prepared to take the odious David Sullivan on as its figure-head. But to ditch the Moore name, well that stinks with every football fan.

Let me say here, I never bought into the Bobby Moore for God school of thought. Sure, he was a good player, but he was never as good as the English made him out to be, even before he was deified as captain of the Boys of '66.

Moore was lucky. Had Duncan Edwards not perished after Munich in 1958, he and not Moore would have lifted the Jules Rimet Trophy at Wembley in July, 1966. Edwards would then have been 29 and at his peak. He would surely have been the England captain and while Moore would still have won England caps, he would never have achieved the position he now holds in the affection of the English.

But he would still have been a West Ham legend and, particularly given his stature and status, to drop the name Bobby Moore Cup from the albeit meaningless prize from a meaningless tournament is the sign of a club which has forgotten what it is and where it came from.

Just like Henry Ford, the guys running West Ham and much of English football now care only for the money.

**********

MIND you, there are some people in Scottish football who don't even care about themselves, if what I saw yesterday was any indication.

I was having a rare sight of the bottom tier in Scottish senior football, as I helped-out a mate by covering a Division Three match for him. I was pleasantly surprised too, it wasn't the hoof-it-up-in-the-air-and-chase-it type of game I was half expecting. Both teams got the ball down and played passes, one marginally better than the other.

The trouble was, the team with the better passing game also contained several players who, quite frankly hadn't enough self-respect to be fit. I haven't seen so many beer guts on a park since the last time I was dog-walking round our local park when the Sunday Pub League teams were playing.

I'm 17 stones and I reckon at least two of the guys on the park wear trousers with a bigger waist size than mine. They had the skill, but not the fitness.

I realise training for professional football is a balancing act between skill and fitness and I know how hard it is for part-time players to balance home, work, fitness and skills, but these guys were letting themselves down, they were letting their club down and they were letting the fans down.

And what about their team manager? Maybe he was taking the money and not caring either - or is he just another victim of Scottish football's core value - so long as I can keep my nose in the trough, bugger the game.

********

TRAVELLING back from covering away games in Aberdeen and Dundee, back in the days when we went by train, the Intelligence Corps of the Tartan Army, or the Scottish Football Writers Association members as they were better known, would sometimes pass the time by playing: What I would do with Scottish football.

The idea was, you were a millionaire who wanted to get involved in football - which club would you buy and how would you run it?

I always went for Queen of the South as the team I would buy and run.

Perhaps not a sleeping giant, but a slumbering club which could be a contender if run properly. Far enough away from Glasgow to not be totally under the Old Firm's shadow, no near-by competition, a decent core support which could be built-on, no glittering past history to overly-raise expectations.

Properly run, the Doonhamers I felt and still feel, ought to be a top six to top eight SPL club, competing in the cups with realistic expectations of European entry.

For years it was run as wee Willie Harkness's personal fiefdom. The club has come through the hard times, has a trim ground ripe for upgrading to SPL standard and a hard-working board under a fine man in fan and chairman Davie Rae.

Rae and his directors are pragmatic, allowing first Gordon Chisholm and now Kenny Brannigan to base the football side of the club in Glasgow, to better attract the level of Scottish player they think they need - upper SFL1/lower SPL standard Scottish players who can still cut it as full-timers, but don't want to move too far from their west-central Scotland comfort zone.

But this means, other than the estimable Jim Thomson and the club's community coaches, Queens don't have a local presence in Dumfries other than every second Saturday, and I think this is hampering them.

What they don't need, however, is this week's newspaper outburst from manager Brannigan. Own goal there Kenny boy. And if the board is forcing you to manage with one hand tied behind your back, as you claim - maybe it's because they reckon, with both hands free you'd make a real mess, with just one, your ability to cause damage is limited.

I'm certainly not impressed with some of the new players KB has recruited and fear Queens will struggle to match their finishes of recent seasons; in which case it's: "Taxi for Brannigan".

I'd still think about buying the club if I ever win the lottery.

Print The Legend

I CANNOT remember the line word-for-word, but it comes from the John Wayne/James Stewart Western: 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance'. It is delivered towards the end, when Jimmy Stewart reveals that it was Wayne and not he who had actually shot Lee Marvin's hoodlum who was terrorising the frontier town - an act which had made Stewart's reputation.

The line if uttered by a newspaper man and goes something like: "When the truth undoes the legend - print the legend."

Some of today's real-life newspaper men appear to be taking that advice to extremes. This morning, we again read about how poor Rangers, with their "threadbare" squad will struggle in the new season.

FFS guys, start telling it like it is.

Rangers' first team squad for season 2010-2011 contains 16 full internationalists: McGregor, Alexander, Whittaker, Webster, Weir, Broadfoot, McCulloch, Naismith and Miller (Scotland); Bougherra (Algeria), Papac (Croatia), Davis, Lafferty and Little (Northern Ireland), Edu (USA) and Velicka (Lithuania).

Celtic's squad also has 16 internationalists: Zaluska (Poland), Hinkel (Germany), Du-Ri and Ki (South Korea), O'Dea, McGeady and Murphy (Republic of Ireland), Brown and Maloney (Scotland), Juarez (Mexico), McGinn and McCourt (Northern Ireland), Ledley (Wales), Kayal (Israel), Samaras (Greece) and Rasmussen (Denmark).

You might argue about the relative quality of the two squads, but I reckon Rangers have perhaps a touch more; certainly they have more players who might be considered first picks for their international sides.

So, if Rangers' squad is considered threadbare, why isn't Celtic's? It's not as if you have to field all 16 at the same time. In fact, Rangers would have to be in the grip of an injury crisis of unprecedented proportions before they would need to rely on their youngsters in any match.

But still Scottish football's tame journalists - the Lap Top Loyal of newspaper website fame, parrot the Rangers' football management's cry of poor, under-funded us. It's pathetic.

For all their self-inflicted financial problems - and never forget, Rangers' money-worries were self-inflicted: nobody ordered various Rangers' managers to over-pay in transfer fees and wages for under-talented players, some of whom any long-time Ibrox-visiting supporter could have told them: "wisnae Rangers' class). Nobody told them to make talented Rangers-to-the-core Scottish youngsters so unappreciated that they were desperate to leave.

Nobody told them to meekly surrender to outrageous wage demands from players whose conceit of their talent didn't match reality - but they did, and now, when the money has run out and times are perceived as being hard - the Rangers management bleat to a compliant press, who, unquestioningly, out of fear they will be frozen out of the information loop, print the legend.

And don't think I'm just having a go at Rangers; that I'm a bitter, twisted Celtic supporter turning the knife or kicking them when they're down.

Celtic are just as bad - they've also bought a lot of dog mince in recent years, as have the rest of our so-called big clubs.

There's an old story about Manchester United in the dark days post-Munich and pre-Best, Charlton and Law. Matt Busby had been forced to promote a lot of young players before they were ready for the challenge of being Manchester United players and they were denegrated as: "A bunch of Teddy Boys in football boots".

One afternoon, after a particularly embarrassing defeat, Sir Matt was laying into his players in the dressing room, a rare sight in itself, when, out of the corner of his eyes he detected a smirk on the face of "Pancho" Pearson, one of the travelling reserves who had watched from the stand.

Pearson was clearly enjoying his mates' discomfort, when Busby turned on him: "I don't know what you're smirking for", said the boss.

"You're not even good enough to get into this team".

Well, I don't know why the rest of Scottish football is revelling in Rangers' self-inflicted wounds, since they're not good enough to stop them winning the SPL in the last two years.

Threadbare, skint, unable to buy a player Rangers may be - but they will still be the team to beat this season, so don't believe the prophets of doom.

An Enthusiastic Amateur Is Worse Than Any Pro.

JOURNALISTS enjoy refering to their craft as "the Fourth Estate". Some even claim it as a profession. However, under the strict dictionary definition of a profession, journalism doesn't qualify - since there is no pre-entry requirement to have undertaken a period of higher education. Also, there is no governing body with absolute control of standards and discipline of members of the profession - otherwise a lot of what you see served up every morning would never get published.

To be fair, efforts are being made to lift standards, there are now several post-graduate university courses in journalism, as well as those much-maligned (and rightly so) diploma and degree courses in "media studies".

The trouble is, all these kids who think they'd like to be journalists, who, in good faith get onto these courses are, by and large, wasting their time. What you learn at these collegeshas as much in common with journalism as third division football has with the Champions League.

I last sat in a class room in 1963, but, I have found myself having to take in hand and teach the job to graduates who hadn't a clue about spelling, sentence construction or grammar - far less spotting the hook on their story and presenting it properly.

Nowadays, as a Staedtler or Waldorf of the press box, I have the freedom to tell it like it is, and right now it aint pretty.

I'm not saying Scotland's full-time football writers are all paragons of virtue and potential Pullitzer prize-winners. OK, the lap top loyal and the members of "the Celtic Family" in particular will not criticise or properly examine the conduct of our two biggest clubs; we've got our fair share of chances, charlatans, crooks and comic singers, but by and large, we do a better job than some of the players we're writing about.

Sadly, things can only get worse, because of the penny-pinching attitudes of some of our media managers.

I now pick my games, I am no longer in the daily "pick me, me sir, I'll cover it" rush for match-reporting commissions, although some of my best mates in the game are still, putting themselves through this purgatory as too-many journalists chase too-few commissions from too-few titles.

But their lot is being made harder by an influx of enthusiastic amateurs, who feel they have a God-given right to cover football matches. These often deluded dummies are being encouraged by media managers who really ought to know better and the result is, you, the public, are not getting the service you are entitled to from your papers.

So bad is the situation, that this season, I am sure we will see blood on the benches in our press boxes.

One jobbing freelance, who has 30-years of experience as a football writer; who can produce the goods at the drop of a hat was moaning to me this week. Towards the end of last season he covered a midweek First Division clash for one of the red top tabloids. There were eight "journalists" in the press box - he was the only one who was a full-timer.

There were a couple of journalism students, getting experience, which is fair enough, we all have to start somewhere: but the other five consisted of two moonlighting policemen, one civil servant and two teachers.

My mate wondered how the teachers would feel if he was to roll up at their school the next morning to teach English or maths. But, of course, it couldn't happen, because teaching is a proper profession, journalism isn't.

Some day it might be, then the moonlighters and chancers would be kept out and perhaps the game would be properly covered, but I fear I will not be around should that day ever arrive.

Until then, when you pick up your morning paper and discover that the match report of the game you watched the previous night bears no resemblence to how you remember it; when John Smith's wonder goal is credited to Joe Jones and names are wrong, as are times of incidents - don't hold this as a reflection on Scotland's football writers, blame the penny-pinchers who are driving down rates and standards and letting the lunatics take over the asylum.

Mind you, it's nothing new. I remember back in his first season as player-manager at Rangers, Graeme Souness took a Rangers XI down to face Troon Juniors. The then number two football writer for the Daily Record crashed his car on the outskirts of Troon and while he sorted things out, I came off the bench to fill-in for him.

I duly filed my match report, but when I opened the Record the next morning I read that Graeme Souness had apparently missed a penalty. This was news to me; he had certainly fired a 25-yard free kick narrowly past, but there wasn't a penalty in the game.

Of course, at the same time as I was reading this, Mr Souness was on the telephone, reading the riot act to the Record scribe, whose name was on the match report.

He in turn telephoned me to find out if I had been drunk when I had filed; but when I confirmed there hadn't been a penalty and voluntarily mentioned the free kick - he went into the Record's production system to check the original copy - when all was revealed.

No penalty was there mentioned in my report, but, a local radio reporter, an un-supervised trainee had sent a report in to the Record, on spec, believing they hadn't had a reporter at the game. A casual Record sports desk sub had spotted the reference to the penalty and without checking, had wrongly added it to my report.

So, because an enthusiastic amateur couldn't tell a 25-yard free kick from a 12-yard penalty and a sub-editor didn't query the differing reports, one of the top men in the game was on the , receiving end of a Souness special.

You can never be too careful, we are told freedom of speech means we have an open media, but, there is less chance of calamity if you trust the professionals, who, I'm afraid are a dying breed in Scottish football coverage.

Enjoy your football coverage this season, but be aware, the report your reading, or the radio reporter you're listening to might not be a professional.

Let It Be True

REFEREES have long been the true, largely unsung heroes of Scottish football.

OK, even at boys club and pub league level, they get paid, but I've always felt a large proportion of their match fees is danger money. Their parentage, eyesight, intelligence, neutrality and judgement is questioned minute by minute during games, and while players who struggle to trap a bag of cement and couldn't find a team mate, unmarked ten yards away with the ball get a relatively free ride from the critics in the stand, woe betide the referee who is even marginally out in his calls.

I wouldn't do it, so I admire guys like Hugh Dallas, who not only did it very well but encouraged his son Andrew - who just might be as good as his dad - to take up the profession as well.

"Mr Bonkle from Dallas", as the late Tommy Burns was want to call him, was in the news this morning, in his role as the SFA's Referee Development Officer, for telling his men to not be afraid to give penalties for shirt-pulling.

Well said Hughie, but, a bit late.

To show he is serious about this, Hugh has also told representatives of Scotland's 42 senior clubs that the shirt-pulling penalties are coming. Just wait for the explosion the first time Dougie McDonald penalises Scott Brown at Parkhead or Davie Weir at Ibrox.

I've long felt football would benefit from a short, sharp spell of zero tolerance, rigorously enforced by referees. Sure, there would be a week or two of matches finishing up as seven-a-side, there would be blood on the carpets inside Hampden's corridors of power, but, in the end, the game would benefit immensely from a bit more discipline.

During the World Cup, one of the perennial comments from the British TV commentators and analysts was: "That wouldn't be a free kick in the Premiership", and that's one reason why British teams too-often fail in Europe.

We've got this old-fashioned ethos of "football is a man's game", we allow over-aggressive tackling, which is alien to the rest of the world. British players have always got stuck in when it comes to tackling and Europe's response to this was the dying swan act - "Hamlet" Haller of the 1966 German team begat Jurgen Klinsman and Lother Mattheus in one country, Maradona gave acting lessons in another as the problem worsened.

The old-fashioned clean, ball-winning Scottish tackle: Tam Forsyth on Mike Channon for instance, is one of football's great sights; but, thanks to the tackled player of today's penchant for the flying two and a half piked somersault with one and a half twists response to a good, fair tackle, it is hardly seen.

Clamp down on jersey-pulling, time-wasting, simulation, stealing yards at free kicks and throw-ins, placing the ball outside the arc for corner flags, rolling over after tackles, inviting the referee to book an opponent. There might be a few weeks of mayhem, but, if the referees stick to their guns and are consistent - every referee singing from the same hymn sheet, we would have a much better game.

I live in hope.

But, I'm not holding my breath.

Some years ago I watched an Under-15 inter-area game in which a wee ginger-headed midfielder from one of the sides questioned every decision by the referee and was screaming for his opponent - who was being out-played in the skills stakes but stuck to his marking task manfully and tackled fairly but with gusto - to be booked after every challenge.

Eventually, the referee had to hand out a stern lecture to the ginger whinger, whose response was a classic exhibition of not-so-dumb insolence.

I told his coach: "If you were any good as a man manager, you'd drag him off now and sub him as a lesson in manners", my observation was met with disdain and disapproval. In fact the teacher encouraged him to continue to moan and misbehave.

And that folks helps to explain how Mickey Stewart became the man he is today.

That same coach, by the way, has a nice wee earner as a scout for an SPL club.

Another of my old school team mates took up refereeing and, while he never made Grade One, he had a long career in the middle. But, he gave up in disgust when he had to start dishing-out red cards in the Under-13 leagues to boys who simply had no self-discipline and weren't getting any from indulgent team managers.

"When teenaged boys are being encouraged by their team managers to lie, cheat, question decisions, be cheeky to referees and not accept rulings, I'm out and that day has come", he told me. So Scottish football lost another unsung hero.

That referee, by the way, had played for Scotland Schools at Wembley - he knew the game and he cared.

Tackling the Elephants

IN the day job, I spend a lot of time trawling through Scottish football archives, which can be fascinating stuff, given that Scottish football's past is more interesting than its present and a lot less worrying than its future.

Over this close season I've been looking in particular at post World War II league football and trying to figure out what it can teach us.

We all know that the Old Firm are much-bigger than the rest of Scottish football, but I must admit even I was surprised at just how much bigger they were. In the SPL years, we've become familiar with the concept of the Old Firm disputing the destination of the league flag, with the rest trailing in, a distance adrift. If you know your football history you will say it was ever thus; well not quite.

The 20 years post-WWII and pre-Jock Stein's return to Celtic Park as manager, are seen as the golden years, when we did have competition in Scotland. These are the years when Hibs, with their Smith, Johnstone, Reilly, Turnbull and Ormond "Famous Five": Hearts under Tommy Walker, with the "Terrible Trio" of Conn, Bauld and Wardhaugh, backed-up by the likes of Dave Mackay and John Cumming: the Motherwell team of Paton, Kilmarnock and Shaw: and the Aberdeen of Archie Glen, Paddy Buckley and Jackie Hather all won trophies.

It was a time when Kilmarnock under Willie Waddell could win the league, regularly contest cup finals and, along with Hearts provide real competition to Rangers. Clyde could twice win the Scottish Cup, Dundee could lift the league with a squad: Liney; Hamilton and Cox; Seith, Ure and Wishart; Smith, Penman, Cousin, Gilzean and Robertson, which is still the benchmark for Tayside teams and the Paisley Saints could march into Hampden and out again with the Scottish Cup safe in the arms of Davie Lapsley.

Yet, for all this provincial success, there have only been two post-war seasons, 1959-60 and 1964-65 in which both halves of the Old Firm have finished outside the top two in the league. In these 65 post-WWII seasons we've had an Old Firm League Champion on 53 occasions; they've finished first and second 24 times and the last non-Old Firm team to win the league was Aberdeen in 1985, 26 seasons ago.

If you take those 65 seasons as a single league table, Rangers are top, with 3736 points from 2300 games - that's 71.9 per cent of the available total, while they've won 62.4% of these matches. Celtic have 3616 points, 69.6% of those available, while they've won 59.5% of the matches they've played. Third are Aberdeen, the only other side to have been ever-present in Scotland's top division since 1945. The Dons have accumulated 2796 points, 53.8% of the total available to them, winning 44% of their matches.

These three clubs, the two Edinburgh clubs are the only sides to have taken more than 50% of the available points: Hearts have taken 53.7% of the points they might have, Hibs 50.5%, while Dundee United are just under the 50% mark.

In all 33 clubs have graced Scotland's top flight since 1945, from the three ever-presents to one-season-wonders such as Albion Rovers, East Stirlingshire and Gretna. The fact that ambitious new clubs such as Clydebank, Gretna, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Livingston can join the senior ranks and progress to spend even a season mixing it with the big boys is to the credit of the Scottish football system.

But the fact that Third Lanark, who folded in 1967 are still, overall, the 19th best side in post-war Scottish League football, perhaps indicates that the tail is still wagging the dog.

Only 18 of our 42 "senior" clubs have enjoyed top-flight football this 21st century. Raith Rovers, Morton, Airdrie (whether 'onians, United or Clydebank) have never featured in the SPL. Ayr United and Dumbarton last graced the top table in the dark days pre-Graeme Souness; Arbroath, East Fife, Stirling Albion and Cowdenbeath had their last days in the sunshine back when there were just two divisions in Scotland while Albion Rovers, East Stirlingshire, Queen of the South, Queen's Park and Third Lanark were last jousting with the big boys in the years when Jock Stein was making his way as a manager and Alex Ferguson, Craig Brown and Walter Smith were playing.

You might think pre-determination, that 18th century Church of Scotland belief of such as Holy Wullie, that: "wha it pleases best thine sel, sends ain tae heaven and nine tae hell, awe fur thine glory" is still gospel in Scottish football. The Old Firm and the city clubs can play on the big park, most of the others cannot.

The reality is, we don't have four levels of senior football, too many clubs and officials are all about merely surviving as senior clubs and administrators - when the reality is the juniors are in a lot of cases more professional.

When will we face reality and make the necessary changes? We're tinkering around the edges, we're wallowing in the way it has always been and we're going nowhere fast.

The fact is, if you take the two elephants out of the room, Scottish football has a thin, competitive layer floating above some pretty rotten undergrowth. We cannot get shot of the elephants, so we have to give the rest a firmer footing from which to take them on.

But, we have to do something, doing nothing is not an option.

Never Mind The Quality Feel the Narrowness

THE Taliban and Al Quaeda apparently owe their continued existence, in the face of US/NATO military might to the support they draw from the Tribal Areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Here in Scotland, George Peat and the other members of the Hampden Taliban owe their continued existence to the Tribal Areas in Scottish football. Now Craig Levein, whose career kicked off in perhaps THE Tribal Area - Fife, has persuaded the blazerati that it would be a good idea to appoint a Performance Director for the SFA.

Great idea in theory, I'm not so sure in practice, because the long-established working practices of the SFA will not change overnight and by the appointment of one man, but we live in hope.

Levein has also announced his 23-man squad for the friendly with Sweden and while some will say it's the same old same old, that's hardly surprising at this time of the year.

Big Craig's problems are, well they're the same old same old - a lack of quality and depth in the players available to him and a lack of new kids forcing their way into his thoughts.

Being a time-served member of Scotland's goalkeeping guild, I always take an interest in who might wear the number one shirt. Craig Gordon is injured (again), so we obviously have a problem in replacing him. That problem is a minor one though - he might be a half-wit off the field, but when it matters Allan McGregor is top-notch and will start in Sweden.

It might have been a good move politically for Scotland to have left David Marshall of Cardiff, our acknowledged third-choice 'keeper off this particular trip.

If McGregor is starting, then maybe better to have taken along another 'keeper for the experience, since he will only get on should the Rangers' man be injured during the game.

And therein lies Levein's problem with lack of depth. Let's look at the pecking order: 1, a fit Gordon; 2, McGregor; 3, Marshall; 4, Neil Alexander (McGregor's club deputy); 5, Jamie Langfield (uncapped 30-year-old); 6, Paul Gallacher (31, last capped in 2004); 7, Ian Turner (Everton reserve). Thereafter I'm running out of ideas.

Look at our 12 SPL clubs: Celtic, Dundee United, Hibs, Motherwell, (our other European respresentatives), Hearts and Hamilton all have non-Scots as their first-choice goalkeeper, while I doubt if Irish international Jonny Tuffey has swapped playing in the First Division in Maryhill for warming a bench in Inverness.

Where is our next young 'keeper? I know Jamie MacDonald at Hearts is highly-rated and a former Under-21 internationalist, but, he's not Jim Jefferies' undisputed first-pick, at an age by which the likes of Gordon, Goram, Leighton and Rough had already been blooded internationally.

Cammy Bell at Kilmarnock did well last season, but, for what looks likely to be another season of struggle, Mixu might still prefer the tried and tested 36-year-old Alan Combe.

Messrs Brown and Smith at Hibs have both been down the Under-21, B team path, but Yogi prefers the non-Scot Graham Stack for the big games.

There are other positions in which we struggle and we don't seem to have a development plan in place to cover this lack of depth and experience.

Perhaps the SFA should have a look at how the SRU does things. I must first acknowledge that the men at Murrayfield have one advantage in that most of the potential internationalists are centrally-contracted. They may play for and be paid by Edinburgh and Glasgow, but these two clubs are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the SRU.

What the SRU does have is a clear development path; it might be typically Scottish that the Murrayfield way isn't universally admired within Scottish rugby, but it seems better than the SFA's non-existent development programme.

The Scotland squad is drawn from the professional players at the two pro clubs, plus those professionals playing outwith Scotland (of which there are more rugby players than footballers, from a much smaller player base).

The full international team plays a maximum of ten internationals per season - slightly more hopefully in a World Cup year: three Autumn Tests, which are a warm-up for the five Six Nations games in January - March. Then there will be two Tests during a short summer tour.

The full team is backed-up by the A team, which gets to play three tests per year in the IRB Nations Cup, has annual matches with Ireland and Italy A and which also generally gets at least one game against the "diddy" team in the Autumn Tests rota.

Not a great schedule I will admit - but at least there is a mechanism for finding out how a player has developed once he's too old for the age group internationals. Football doesn't have that established set-up. Once you're too old for the Under-21s, you might wait years before you are back on the Scotland scene.

Berti Vogts, knowing how it worked in Germany, tried to provide a stepping stone, with his Futures internationals; but, once he had gone, Walter Smith, the man with absolutely no trust in young players, dropped the Futures fixtures and they've never been revived. Hardly surprising, Scottish football has a great past - little or no future.

I live in hope that Craig Levein will use the proposed British Isles Cup matches, if they're still going to happen, it has all gone quiet over there, as a sort of development tournament for fringe players.

I live in hope, but I will not be holding my breath.