George Peat "Embarrassed And Extremely Disappointed"

Unfortunately, it wasn't the Scotland performance that Mr Peat was referring to:

"I was embarrassed and extremely disappointed by the disgraceful behaviour of some of our supporters during the Liechtenstein national anthem at Hampden Park.

"The Scotland fans have worked hard to earn their reputation throughout the world as fun-loving and respectful followers of football.

"Those who chose to boo our opponents' anthem only served to tarnish that reputation.

"I apologise unreservedly to our visitors for the crass reaction to their anthem, just as I did in private to the Liechtenstein delegation.

"It must not be forgotten that all nations must abide by Fifa's Fair Play policy and the behaviour does nothing to help Scotland's image."

Yes, George Peat is apparently pretty annoyed that the Scotland fans, or sections of them, were booing the Liechtenstein national anthem at Hampden last.

The pain of agreeing with For Peat’s Sake. But booing an anthem because it’s got the same tune as God Save The Queen? That seems pretty mindless.

Still, I was “embarrassed and extremely disappointed by the disgraceful” performance of the national team last night.

For some time I have been “embarrassed and extremely disappointed by the disgraceful” mess George Peat has made of his tenure at the SFA. I could almost accept his ineptitude if he covered for it in some way with honest endeavour. He doesn’t.

He’s a sham who continues to damage the game by remaining in his post and through his own “crass reaction” to any criticism.

This attack on the fans might be justified but it's being used to distract from the myriad of issue that last night's performance raised.

Here’s Moira Gordon’s take on it during today’s Scotsman live chat:

“George Peat is not a man I will ever be singing the praises of as he has been one of those who have sat on their backsides doing very little but having anarchic self-preservation committee and sub-committee meetings while Scottish football fell into ruin around them. But I do agree with the idea that we should be grown up and respectful enough to not to boo our way through the opposition's national anthem. I just wish he had reacted this quickly to things that are wrong with our game as he has to this.”

Quite. George and his cronies aren’t blameless in what we saw last night. The fans were maybe just joining the SFA in doing “nothing to help Scotland’s image.”

* Incidentally, these are the fairly innocuous words to the Liechtenstein anthem:

High above the young Rhine

Lies Liechtenstein, resting

On Alpine heights.

This beloved homeland,

This dear fatherland

Was chosen for us by

God's wise hand.


Long live Liechtenstein,

Blossoming on the young Rhine,

Happy and faithful!

Long live the Prince of the Land,

Long live our fatherland,

United by brotherly bonds and free!

Scotland v Liechtenstein: Party Time

Phew, what relief.

Glory from the jaws of national humiliation.

When the news came through that Lithuania were beating the Czechs there was a beam of optimism cast on Scotland's qualifying campaign.

And then we huffed and puffed through the first half against Liechtenstein. Bad, of course, but not miserably bad.

Certainly not as bad as it was about to get.

One minute it took of the second half. Mario Frick put Liechtenstein ahead. We're talking about qualifying for Euro 2012. But we're losing to a team ranked 141st in the world. A team that have managed only five wins and eight draws in 81 qualifying matches.

A country with about 11000 fewer inhabitants than Ayr. A country with fewer residents than there were fans in Hampden tonight.

Kenny Miller and Stephen McManus, seven minutes into injury time, made everything OK.

Radio Scotland's resident pundits are using words like “delighted” and “ecstatic.”

Craig Levein will accept no “negativity.” Callers are telling Jim Traynor that “a win is a win” and “performance is secondary.”

Everything's fine, nothing to see here. Scotland sit atop the qualifying group, we've stolen a march on the Czechs. Bring on Spain.

I detect a lot of bollocks in that reading of events.

Just as we need to learn that football games can't be won on passion alone we need to realise, quickly, that tonight's events can't be judged on the emotion of that last minute winner.

Maybe, on the night, we answered the most immediate question by escaping from the biggest humiliation of them all. But we left a list of unanswered questions that need to be addressed.

And, if league tables don't lie, I fear there is a whiff of dishonesty about the current look of Group I.

What evidence is there to suggest that we can push on from here? Our last three perfomances - tonight, on Friday against Lithuania and against Sweden - have veered between mediocre and abysmal.

We can dominate possession but struggle to score – where will the goals come from in what is likely to be a defensive approach against the Czechs?

What fear are Lithuania going to have coming to Hampden? Are they not going to look at Liechtenstein's performance and back themselves to pull something off?

And how are our clubs producing players that seem incapable of mastering simple skills? How can a national team with any pretensions contain so many players who too often seem incapable of weighting a pass correctly? Or defenders who struggle to contain the attacking threat of a team like Liechtenstein, a team that may well have been surprised to discover they even had an attacking threat.

It strikes me that there is a reading of that table that suggests we're as firmly in the race to finish fourth as much as we are involved in the fight for second.

There is the idea, already swilling around and about to be spread by the manager and players, that the late winner tonight will somehow provide a spark for some momentum, convince us of our destiny.

And people will argue that we're unlikely to be as bad again.

Our footballing history should shatter that illusion. We can be as bad again and we probably will be as bad again.

It can never be stressed enough just how bad this performance was, how close we came to what I described earlier as an “unthinkable” result.

I'm at a loss to know where we go from here. No point sacking the manager.

The problems go much deeper than the job that Craig Levein is being asked to do. He might be the figurehead as national manager. But on accepting the job he inherited the structural problems that have been undermining Scottish football for decades.

Our clubs and our triumvirate of ineffectual governing bodies must take their share of the blame. So to, maybe, must us fans who have put up with game being ruined in this country for too long.

And now it has come to this. We're backslapping and cheering a performance defined by our ability to “never give up” against a team that are pretty much the definition of minnows.

Something needs to change. That will take time.

The immediate future is a qualifying campaign that, remarkably, does still offer a flicker of hope. Only a flicker though.

We avoided a humiliation tonight. But we didn't spare our embarrassment, people will be looking at this result around Europe and wondering how much further Scotland can fall.

Stephen McManus brought relief after 97 abject minutes. And relief is fine. But it shouldn't let this Scotland team, or any of the organisations that have sat back and let this happen, off the hook.

And it certainly shouldn't usher in a new age of optimism.

Elsewhere:

Dismal, dismal, dismal stuff. (Left Back In The Changing Room)

Liechtenstein looked sharp in attack, and in spells as likely to notch a second goal as their – apparently – more illustrious opponents were. That changed with McManus's goal, but Scotland were still embarrassed. (The Guardian)

Scotland v Liechtenstein

I have a friend who struggles a bit with some of the things in modern life that the rest of us take for granted.

Tonight I will be showing him, for maybe the tenth time, how to upload pictures to a popular social networking site.

The prospect doesn’t fill me with joy.

Yet I feel it’s preferable to going to the pub to watch the Scotland v Liechtenstein this evening. When somebody else’s holiday snaps win out over the national team there’s summat not right.

Craig Levein has come out fighting over accusations of negativity after Friday’s bore drawn with Lithuania. And he’s right. The shape of that team was classic Levein, he’s approaching the job as he was always going to approach it. There’s not much he can do now if our expectations don’t match his views on how best to coax the best from limited resources.

I can accept all that but I do feel that he should changed things earlier on Friday. The changes when they came coincided with an increasing desperation in the Scottish ranks. An earlier change to personnel or formation might have been more effective. But, hindsight and all that. What’s done is done.

Different look to the side tonight though:

Allan McGregor, Alan Hutton, David Weir, Stephen McManus, Lee Wallace, Scott Brown, Darren Fletcher, Lee McCulloch, James McFadden, Kenny Miller, Kris Boyd.

A 4-4-2. The noticeable names are, of course, McFadden and Boyd. There to offer the spark of creativity and goals that we somehow couldn’t summon up in Lithuania.

Anything but a win tonight is unthinkable. It will mean Euro 2012 is over for us. It will also mean we can’t beat Liechtenstein at home. Like I say, unthinkable.

It’s difficult to judge games like this. A scrappy 1-0 is, essentially, job done. But punters and pundits expect more and there’s a danger of viewing anything short of a 4 or 5 goal triumph as a failure.

But a look at the team suggests we should be OK. Hutton and Wallace are likely to be underemployed defensively so will be free to bomb up and down the flanks. McFadden should be more creative than Barry Robson and Steven Naismith were on Friday. If we make chances Boyd will be looking to convert them. It would also be nice to see a more effective attacking contribution from the midfield hub of Scott Brown and Darran Fletcher.

I’m not going to join the anti-Fletcher ranks. Nor will I jump on the “Scotty Brown? He’s A Bit Crap” bandwagon. But we might be entitled to see them offer a bit more against lowly opposition at home.

Respect the opponents, of course. They’ll be doughty customers with a game plan that they know inside out. But whatever pretensions we have left as a footballing nation probably wouldn’t survive the shame of failure tonight

A home win. And I think we might get 3 or 4. (Apologies if I've just jinxed us!)