RAB DOUGLAS: Hopefully arranging the England friendly won’t be a decision Scotland end up regretting

Forget half-full, my cup is still brimming as far as Scotland is concerned.

Even a sobering night against England won’t change that.

The reality is that the Auld Enemy have a squad packed full of brilliant players, some of them world class.

The strength in depth they have in midfield is frightening.

Jude Bellingham is a star and Declan Rice is some player as well.

I like Gareth Southgate as a manager too – England will have a great chance to win the Euros under him next summer.

Having said all that, I do wonder about the wisdom of arranging Tuesday night’s friendly.

Steve Clarke is never going to say it publicly but I wouldn’t be surprised if he is thinking along the same lines.

The game would have made the SFA good money.

The one-off kit has been a big hit with the Tartan Army and Hampden was packed, as we all knew it would be.

But, purely in football terms, this wasn’t a great time to suffer a chastening defeat in a fixture we chose to arrange.

Momentum is everything in international football.

We’d built that up with a run of good performances.

It’s Spain next and then another friendly against a top nation, France.

I’m not giving up hope that we can get the result we need to cross the qualification finishing line in Seville but it wouldn’t be the biggest shock in the world if, by the time we travel to Georgia in November, we’ve lost three on the bounce.

Steve’s biggest job over the next couple of months won’t be tactical – it will be making sure there’s no damage to the confidence in his squad.

I’m confident there won’t be and I’m also confident that Scotland will be in Germany next summer when hopefully we can put our experience against some very good teams to good use.

The Premiership gets going again at the weekend but Dundee fans won’t be seeing Tyler French in action for a while – maybe not at all.

His loan to Morton has split opinion amongst the fans but I can understand Tony Docherty’s thinking.

He needs to play games after nine months out, it’s that simple.

And the quickest way of doing that is a loan.

That’s a better plan than reserve and bounce games.

It’s a season-long deal and if Tyler does really well, Dundee will have the option of recalling him early.

The decision to switch Arbroath’s next game against Dundee United to a Friday night hasn’t gone down well at Gayfield.

As the manager said, we’ll now have boys playing who have done half-shifts at their work earlier in the day.

There will be commercial people at Tannadice who have come up with this plan to commemorate the centenary of the club’s name change from Dundee Hibernian but will United get a bigger crowd than they would have got on a Saturday afternoon?

I doubt it.

I’ve already spoken to United fans who won’t be able to go now.

We would be highly motivated for the game anyway because we weren’t happy with our performance when we faced United on the opening day of the season.

And a bit of extra motivation when the game comes around won’t hurt!