As Scotland’s party shuffled away from the Stadion Antona Malatinskeho on Tuesday night, the fallout from another wounding loss still ringing in their ears, there was cause for optimism from Hanover. Had Northern Ireland claimed anything from their meeting with Germany, Michael O’Neill would have become even more unattainable to the Scottish FA than may already be the case.
He is by far the outstanding candidate to replace Gordon Strachan when – and it is now when – the latter's increasingly unsatisfactory to the point of untenable alliance with Scotland comes to an end.
O’Neill’s managerial style personifies everything that Scotland so lacks, he has an inherent understanding of football in the country and doesn’t carry the dismissive public attitude which has lost Strachan so many admirers in recent months. Austin MacPhee, a 37-year-old from Fife, is a key part of O’Neill’s backroom team and rightly regarded as an analytical genius where football is concerned. Together they typify the maximising of every available ounce of talent from the fundamental cornerstone of making a team difficult to beat. Northern Ireland have proved the example Strachan’s Scotland cannot touch.
O’Neill’s work with Northern Ireland, a country of far less football standing and resource than Scotland, means the courting of his services should be a complete no-brainer. A glance at O’Neill’s relatively paltry substitutes’ bench for each game highlights the scale of his work. His knowledge of virtually every player within Northern Ireland’s system from the age of 15 upwards sets the 47-year-old apart from his peers.
Northern Ireland entered Tuesday night’s match with a record of no qualifying tie defeats since November 2014. They had conceded three goals in nine international games. All the while, Scotland under Strachan have flipped between varying forms of crisis as the manager seems to try to delude a clued-up public.
O’Neill may have other thoughts, of course. His standing is such that he should be easily worthy of a decent club post in England. The Scottish international scene has become so attached to failure that the key job is perhaps viewed as damaging to a coach’s career. Scotland’s slide into the international wilderness is such that perhaps O’Neill is not even affordable.
But the Scottish FA has a duty to at least try, thereby showing ambition in saving people from the latest spell of drudgery which constitutes following this international team. Almost two years will now pass before a qualifying match of consequence, save the rabble-rousing which inevitably attaches itself to meeting the Auld Enemy.
Nobody else among those linked with the position touches O’Neill’s standing including the favourite, and a recently failed manager, Paul Lambert. Alex McLeish has considerably more of a claim but Scotland have been there, seen it, done it and not qualified with him before. Neither of this duo would have glanced twice at Scotland when looking to make Premier League inroads not so long ago. Lars Lagerback, so successful with Iceland, is more worthy of attention.
First, the association must clean up this unseemly scenario around Strachan. The 59-year-old actually owes it to his country to step down from his job – as he has done elsewhere – such was the lame nature of Scotland’s showing in defeat to Slovakia. They had been no better when salvaging a last-minute draw against Lithuania just days earlier.
Strachan offered Tuesday night commentary which was effusive of his squad to the point where onlookers, once again, had cause to believe their intelligence was being insulted. He may well feel rejuvenated when at work but the combined effect on supporters is quite the opposite. Strachan’s ego and the relatively short timeframe between fixtures may well mutually carry this manager to Wembley and a once eagerly anticipated meeting with England when the reality should be the following of a new path. Strachan himself would probably even benefit from that.
The boring tactical stuff, which Strachan likes to swat aside questioning of, is damning. He set out a team against Lithuania which looked devoid of any plan. It had no means by which to run beyond an average defence or expose the vast space available in midfield from Lithuania deploying a 4-4-2 formation. Scotland were laboured to the point of instantly boring an expectant Hampden crowd.
In Slovakia, Strachan not only left both full-backs woefully exposed from the kick-off but named a team carrying not nearly enough speed to counterattack properly.
The hosts’ second goal saw Scotland picked off by the length of the pitch, not at pace but because the team had no ability to retain its shape. Even then, there was no apparent desire, let alone desperation, to keep the ball out of their own goal. In For more than a campaign now, Scotland have lost schoolboy-level goals to the point where it is legitimate to ask how and with whom their defence is drilled.
This all reflects on Strachan, as does his grasping in the dark for players to fit pre-determined systems. Selections lack consistency and logic. Leipzig’s Oliver Burke, raw but talented and brimming with confidence, went from starting pick to not within a squad of 23 within days.
Barrie McKay and Steven Naismith were not even required to board the plane to Slovakia despite being named in the original Scotland party for October’s double-header. Strachan had spent time at his media conference last Friday insisting how McKay, a winger, had excelled in training. Come Tuesday, when 3-0 down against a limited Slovak team, he was throwing on the essentially workmanlike midfielder John McGinn in place of a striker.
Willie Miller was a team-mate of Strachan in the all-conquering Aberdeen team of the 1980s and actually one pundit to call events of a year ago astutely. Scotland brushed Gibraltar aside 6-0 in conclusion to the failed Euro 2016 qualifying campaign as Strachan took to the field with his squad and posed for photos in front of a celebrating support. Miller, rightly, questioned the value in this jubilant image when another tournament was about to pass Scotland by. The party was offset by the missing out of a key one, in France during the summer.
The upshot was a sense that Strachan was doing Scotland a favour by agreeing a new deal and, in truth, there seemed little logic in dispensing with yet another manager. Nonetheless, it was reasonable to expect something even remotely resembling progress, which has been so painfully absent during these intervening months. As a generation continues without living knowledge of Scotland in a major championship, the team has never looked further away from rejoining international football’s top table.
Strachan has been handsomely rewarded for a part-time job on a full-time salary, showing little regard at all for Scottish football itself other than where a public relations or broadcasting opportunity arises. His wish to cure inherent football ills in the country coincidentally came at the end of that European Championship campaign, where Scotland finished behind the Republic of Ireland and lost horrendously in Georgia. As international manager, Strachan’s solitary task and route to positive influence is by winning matches, not pontificating about boys’ clubs.
Wider problems are well known and well stated. They should not, however, be deliberately confused with an underperforming and rudderless national team. As much as this is currently Strachan’s responsibility, his employers have a duty to actively seek a solution. There is one staring them in the face.
(Guardian service)
