Wales v Scotland: On a mission

Rarely in his footballing life would Craig Levein have persuaded PG Wodehouse that he was wrong about Scotsmen and rays of sunshine.

There's nothing wrong with that.

A thrawn prickliness might even be a good thing in a job where expectation so often finds an enemy in reality.

Yet what might have been a positive has grown into more and more of an encumbrance the longer Levein has been the manager of Scotland.

He seems to have retreated into himself. And, given how uncomfortable he looks most of the time, found little solace in that solitude.

It might be that he cuts a very different figure when he's alone with his squad.

But in public he too often looks distrusting, suspicious or, more worryingly, lost.

International managers can take time to grow into the job. A period of adjustment is often required.

Yet Levein spends too much time looking almost diminished by the job, clinging ever more grimly to the concept of progress as qualifying results point to nothing of the kind.

Like many managers who find themselves fighting for their jobs he's also developed a reverse Midas touch.

There will be no rapprochement with Steven Fletcher? And so Fletcher will start the season on fire.

Jordan Rhodes isn't quite ready for international football? No sooner said than Rhodes will bag a couple of goals.

There are eight or nine players ahead of Kris Commons? Time for Commons to become a stand-out performer for Celtic.

It makes the manager look like the sort of chap you wouldn't stand next to in a casino.

And it makes the volte-face on Fletcher look like the last throw of the dice, a desperate man chasing his losses.

That might all seem a bit harsh. We're just two games into this qualifying campaign. But Levein has never built the momentum required to have a reservoir of goodwill.

Two opening draws at home might not kill a qualifying campaign or end a manager's career.

They certainly rip away the margin of error though.

Levein wouldn't have to go if Scotland don't beat Wales tonight. But there would be little point in carrying on. Mission impossible would have become mission miraculous. And Scottish football is all out of miracles.

The overwhelming impression taken from the festivals of boredom against Macedonia and Serbia was of a team that didn't quite know how it was supposed to be playing. And probably didn't have the belief to do much anyway.

Levein has to change that against Wales.

The return of Darren Fletcher and Scott Brown should galvanise. Form, if not the manager's conviction, should also guarantee the inclusion of Steven Fletcher from the start.

Not playing Fletcher up front would be to give Wales an unnecessary boost.

And Scotland should avoid doing that. If the beleaguered Craig Levein is currently out beleaguered by anyone it might just be Wales manager Chris Coleman.

Four games, four defeats and an absolute tanking from Serbia last time out.

Levein could just produce a picture of the unsmiling Coleman visage whenever he's asked how bad a start Scotland had.

Which is encouraging. But it makes the prospect of not beating Wales even worse. And Scotland are often at their most masochistic in games that should be won.

Wales are not without threats of their own, the thought of Gareth Bale isolating Alan Hutton is keeping me awake at night, but Coleman seems to have brought only disarray to the job.

"It's not a must win game" repeats Levein - a party line not being toed by every player - but it is. For both teams and probably for both managers.

Can Scotland do it?

Yes. They can. Although I've got a horrible feeling this one is far more up for grabs than we'd like it to be.

The odds agree. 13/8 for either team to win, 9/4 the draw.

Gareth Bale, Steve Morison, Steven Fletcher and Kenny Miller all 6/1 as first goalscorer.

Tight.

But let us leave the negativity at door of the manager's press conference.

The power of positive thought tells me that Fletcher will start up front and Shaun Maloney (10/1 first goalscorer) will be there to support him.

Scotland to win and Maloney to score is available at 8/1.

A score prediction?

Scotland to win 2-0 at 11/1.

That's your mission Mr Levein.

I hope you've chosen to accept it.

All odds from Ladbrokes #gameon

Always remembering www.gambleaware.co.uk

2014: Salmond, Levein, Fletcher and Scotland's destiny

1000 days. Or thereabouts.

After a rather dull game of Westminster-Holyrood constitutional ping pong, Alex Salmond has named his (rough) date.

The destiny of a nation, as dictated by the constitutional will of the Scottish people, will be decided in the autumn of 2014.

What a year to pick. The 700th anniversary of Bannockburn, the year of Glasgow's Commonwealth Games, the year of Scotland's Ryder Cup, the second running of the Homecoming celebration.

The perfect stage for a yes vote on independence.

Maybe. As Severin Carrell has pointed out on The Guardian website, Bannockburn might not be a massive crowd pleaser.

The Commonwealth Games is rather second rate these days and carries the risk, as a trip back to the 1986 hosting of the event in Edinburgh would show, of throwing up costly organisational chaos.

The Ryder Cup is a fine tournament but it could be that this is golfing jamboree in the home of golf that will have very little Scottish involvement where it really matters.

And I'm still not quite sure what the last Homecoming event was all about.

No, these aren't guaranteeing ways of securing the feelgood factor that will send us on our way to nationhood.

It needs something else, something bigger.

It needs football.

Scotland at the 2014 World Cup in Rio: carnival time from Pilton to São Paulo.

But Alex Salmond needs Craig Levein to get him there.

And Craig Levein might well need Steven Fletcher to get him there.

Time for the First Minister to stop goading Gideon, dissing Dave and to get on with the job of marriage counsellor to the stubborn national manager and his recalcitrant striker.

What better backdrop could Salmond have than a resurgent Scotland, - led by a benevolent Levein, inspired by the prodigal Fletcher and celebrating a spirit of inclusion with the English-born Jordan Rhodes - cutting a dash in Rio?

Start banging heids together Eck.

And, if you really want to win the vote, you might look at scheduling the referendum some time between the days of blind optimism engendered by our second group game and the inevitably humbling failure of our third group game.

More seriously, if you've got any views at all on how football could be affected by the independence debate I'd be delighted to hear them

Craig Levein: Here To Stay

That was that then.

A blessing, perhaps, that our agony wasn't prolonged. As Spain attempted to pass Scotland to death in Alicante, Czech Republic had already gone ahead in Lithuania.

When David Silva scored Spain's opener inside six minutes the game was up.

Not the agony of past failures when Scotland have teased us into believing before tripping over their own inadequacies at the final hurdle.

Our Euro 2012 hopes suffered a slow puncture and deflated over the course of the campaign.

Immediately, predictably, there were calls for the end of the Levein era. There have been similar calls since about the tenth minute of our opening draw in Lithuania.

The grass is always greener. Even if you don't have any idea who'd be prepared to mow the lawn for you.

The prosecution claims a damning charge sheet. It includes the lack of ambition so fully realised in inglorious technicolor during the horrors of the 4-6-0 formation in Prague and compounded by the stubborn refusal to shift from his 4-1-4-1 formation.

And where were our knights in shining armour in Spain? When he turned to his bench did Levein not regret the absence of Steven Fletcher, Ross McCormack and Garry O'Connor? For a variety of reasons they weren't there - although their international credentials as game changers against the world's best remain unproven.

Hindsight shows that our opening 0-0 draw in Lithuania set the tone for Scotland's failure. We had the best of that game and couldn't capitalise.

Does the blame for that lie with Levein? Or did he see a team uncomfortable in itself, struggling for confidence? If it's the latter then his ultra-conservatism away to the Czechs - as misguided as it was - is easier to understand.

Liechtenstein at Hampden was an agonising embarrassment. But one we survived.

Against Spain at Hampden Scotland came back from 2-0 to draw level. And they did that using Levein's favoured formation. There was the proof that it can offer an attacking threat. We should have seen more of that against Lithuania and, crucially, against the Czechs at home.

Was that the manager's fault? Or was it - as it seemed to this observer at the time - players still not entirely confident disappearing into their collective shell when the chance was there to seize the game?

Your answers will depend on your view of Levein. There are plenty who will continue to be vociferous in their dislike of him.

And if he's guilty of a defensiveness on the pitch he's equally guilty of a prickly defensiveness off it.

The beard, that cap in the dugout in Liechtenstein, even the extra padding around the midriff, seem to be the physical manifestation of the barrier he has raised to guard against malign influences.

It can come across as an unfortunate mix of the dull and the chippy. But we can't kid ourselves that there are not members of the fourth estate who would glory in his demise. They tend to provide fewer answers than they do brickbats.

And the public image is at odds with the loyalty he seems to have inspired in most of the players at his disposal.

This is all probably a verbose waste of time. Levein is going nowhere. He's expressed a desire to stay on and he won't be sacked.

One of the positives of his tenure has been the shifting of attitudes at the SFA. George Peat is gone and little lamented. Levein has been building relationships with chief executive Stewart Regan and new performance director Mark Wotte.

That triumvirate is likely to place a premium on stability. Starting over with a new national coach won't appeal to the SFA. You can like that or you can lump it.

I'm teetering towards liking it.

This has been a strange campaign, made all the uglier by poor performances and mistakes from the manager.

But it's not been without moments of optimism. Scotland remain limited. They will appear limited for a long time. There's been both a lack of stability and lack of a strategy at the SFA. Spain's mesmerising superiority last night is just one result of negligence on the part of the guardian's of our game.

It will take time to put that right and Levein, if he really has learned from this campaign, can play his part.

The idea that he is scared of his own shadow is not borne out by a willingness to introduce new players.

Craig Mackail-Smith, Phil Bardsley and Barry Bannan from last night's starting XI have arrived. Charlie Adam has been reintroduced, David Goodwillie displayed a precocious confidence in scoring Scotland's penalty against Spain. There are others and there will be more.

That's a more ambitious selection policy than many of his predecessors have attempted and Levein seems to have pulled it off while keeping - largely - the morale and interest of the players intact. It's also given him good reason to claim this as a campaign spent in transition.

The team will continue to evolve but he seems now to have created his own nucleus. I suspect Steven Fletcher will soon return, others will take the step up and more still will fall by the wayside.

The majesty of Spain aside this was a poor group. That makes our failure to reach the play-offs - in itself no guarantee of progression - more galling.

It hasn't killed us though. And, with some green shoots appearing, it could yet have made us - and our manager - stronger.

The pain, of course, comes from the confirmation that another major championship will carry on without Scotland.

I was 18 when we opened the 1998 World Cup. That was the sixth time in my lifetime that Scotland had appeared at a majors final.

Those appearances brought their own excitement and their own exquisite agonies.

Too many people have yet to properly experience what that feels like. If this latest exit didn't carry the same trauma as others, the longing and wistful thoughts of what might have been will return next summer.

If nothing else Craig Levein knows exactly what we want from his next qualifying campaign.

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Just. Scotland 2:1 Iceland

We got there. And no more.

To borrow a phrase: At the end of the day the result was what mattered. And we got it.

Not without a scare. Not without a period of domination in the first half that we failed miserably to convert into a lead. And not without a period in the second half when a poor Icelandic side took the momentum.

But we won and we should, if nothing else, have put second place and all that back into our own hands.

McCormack again gets pass marks. Hutton showed what we've been missing. Gordon proved that George Burley's "no first team, no Scotland game" mantra is misguided. Fletcher did well up front.

Gary Teale and Gavin Rae coming on? Strange. At least they inspired Captain Barry to drag himself away from the sulks for a warm down. They might also prove that the manager will drag us to second place through luck and not much else. That debate must remain unsolved until September.

None of that, of course, is enough. Yet. Let's be optimistic. A play-off place might well be within reach.