Whatever the score against Gibraltar on Sunday evening in Scotland’s immaterial final Euro 2016 qualifier, it won’t be who plays well and who doesn’t that is the subject of most media and Tartan Army debate.
It will be should national coach Gordon Strachan stay or go?
Here are a few points on both sides of the argument.
GO
Fourth out of four
Scotland were effectively in a four nation qualifying group. They finished fourth. Once the final round of matches are complete it is likely that the gap between the Scots and automatic qualification will be six points, and the one to the play-off place will be three points. Those bald statistics represent failure, the sort of failure that would have got Strachan’s predecessors Craig Levein and George Burley the sack. Granted, Group D was by far the most difficult to get out of, but the bare minimum should have been to still be in the shake-up on the last day.
Ireland
Strachan has regularly made play of the fact that we don’t have a world class player a Bale or Ronaldo to transform a team of pretty good players into one that can get out of their group. Apart from the fact that Northern Ireland have shown that a galactico isn’t essential (Kyle Lafferty and Josh Magennis will do, it would appear), there is also the Republic of Ireland. Man for man Scotland have better players as the two games showed but tables don’t lie. Martin O’Neill has done a better job over the course of a long campaign than Strachan.
Downward curve
Scotland peaked last November. Their win against Ireland at Celtic Park was the high water mark. Since then there has been the dodgy defensive set-up against Gibraltar, a bizarre team selection (Craig Forsyth?) in Dublin that Scotland got away with, and the woeful display in Georgia. The Germany and Poland games were a bit better, but the beginning and middle of the campaign were certainly better than the end. There’s a possibility that we have already seen the best of Strachan’s Scotland.
Team selection
You pays your money, you takes your choice on this one. Team selection is as subjective a topic as there is. There’s no denying that there’s a battalion of the Tartan Army that believes Strachan has been overly reliant on players who are out of form with their club sides and even out of the team, citing Tbilisi as the night that caught up with him. The age-old frustration that players only get called up if they play down south or move to the Old Firm has dogged Strachan as it has many who have gone before him. Stevie May’s call up soon after he left St Johnstone is a typical example, as is the overlooking of Graeme Shinnie for so long.
STAY
Player power
Players will never publicly say that they want a change of head coach, but I think we can safely take the Scotland boys at their word. Probably to a man, they want Strachan to stay. You can argue that shouldn’t matter but it’s remarkable how many niggles, strains and colds start cropping up if a player doesn’t fancy a manager and would rather give a long flight across eastern Europe in the middle of winter a miss. They turn up for Strachan and they give him their all. That shouldn’t be taken for granted.
One bad game
Although the table doesn’t look too clever, there is a case that out of nine matches played, Scotland have only had one truly bad performance. It cost them dearly, of course, but four or five good ones and four or five OK ones would have been more than enough to qualify out of most groups this time around.
Team selection
Like I said, you pays your money, you takes your choice. Other managers would have ditched Steven Fletcher for Thursday night’s game but Strachan stayed strong and was rewarded with what should have been the winning goal against Poland. Had it not been for an uncharacteristically unreliable German team, it would have taken Scotland into the play-offs. Matt Ritchie was another one who came good. There are no overlooked centre-backs out there who would drastically improve our backline, and there are unlikely to be any by the time the World Cup qualifiers comes round. The next Scotland squad won’t look too different regardless of who the manager is.
Alternatives
There is plenty of time to find a replacement, and plenty of time for him to get ready for the next set of competitive matches, which are the best part of a year away. But if it isn’t to be Strachan, then who? Ferguson, Dalglish and Souness are non-starters, and the Tartan Army would be split down the middle in the event of a return for Walter Smith or Alex McLeish, who jumped ship when Rangers and Birmingham flashed their skirts. David Moyes isn’t ready to give up club football and out of work Paul Lambert would be more of a gamble than sticking with Strachan. Possibly only a foreign manager can stop the national team’s endemic failure, but this is a nation still scarred by the Berti Vogts era and the type of continental manager the SFA would be able to attract wouldn’t be from the A list.
VERDICTStrachan will have learned on the job. He should be a better-equipped Scotland manager at the start of the next campaign than he was at the start of the last. The final result may have been the same as the previous eight qualifying campaigns, but that isn’t the whole story. Scotland, with a squad that is at a good age, are in a better place than they have been in nearly a decade. The World Cup draw has been more favourable and second place (and the play-offs) is more attainable. With no outstanding candidate waiting in the wings, the risks of wiping the slate clean with a new manager are greater than those of sticking with Strachan. If he wants to stay (a big if), keep him. If he doesn’t, then it would be time to look abroad again.