We wrote the original version of this feature a month and four days ago, pleading for Craig Levein to be sacked as Scotland manager before it was too late. Now it’s too late. It’s later than it’s ever been. Sometimes it sucks to be right.
Just the facts.
RECORD IN COMPETITIVE MATCHES
Berti Vogts P13 W5 D4 L4
George Burley P8 W3 D1 L4
Craig Levein P10 W3 D4 L3
PERCENTAGE OF GAMES WON
Berti Vogts 38.5
George Burley 37.5
Craig Levein 30
PERCENTAGE OF POINTS WON
Berti Vogts 48.8
George Burley 42
Craig Levein 43.3
Berti Vogts was building a young team from scratch after the veteran side of Craig Brown disintegrated, and still got us to the [EDIT: Euro 2004] playoffs. He was sacked after 13 competitive games. George Burley was being constantly undermined from within by his own players, from above by the SFA and from outside by the media. He was sacked after just eight competitive games.
Craig Levein has more players from the top divisions in England and Scotland at his disposal than any Scotland manager of the last decade. He has now led the team through 10 competitive games, and won significantly fewer of them (against worse opposition) than either Vogts or Burley. He has comprehensively lost the faith of the Scotland support. If we are to maintain even the slightest hope of qualification for World Cup 2014, his time is up. He must go, and he must go now.
We’ve never in our entire lives wanted Scotland to do anything other than win a football match. Tonight, that might change. The dismal but all-too-predictable performance against Serbia on Saturday was another soul-crushing 90 minutes under Craig Levein. His tactic of playing every game looking for a 1-0 win on the counter-attack, despite having a defence almost totally incapable of keeping a clean sheet, was thrown into sharp relief last night as Andy Murray – once a notoriously passive and defensive tennis player who regularly failed at the last (or second-to-last) hurdle – finally completed his transformation into an attacking powerhouse capable of going toe-to-toe with the likes of the brutally talented Novak Djokovic and winning.
From Levein’s pronouncements since the feeble 0-0 draw with Djokovic’s Serbian countrymen at the weekend, the Scotland coach shows no signs of learning the lesson of Murray’s magnificent victory, and seems perversely determined to stick to a losing formula as much out of sheer stubborn petulance as anything else.
Starting the qualifying group with two home points from six would leave Scotland with a mountain to climb, but with eight games to come it wouldn’t be a completely insurmountable one. The catch, however, is that it WOULD by any sane analysis be an impossible task with Levein as manager.
If he plays this defensively at home – and incredibly, it’s by no means inconceivable that he’ll once again line up in a few hours in 4-1-4-1 formation with Kenny Miller alone up front – it’s safe to say our chances of securing the away wins we’d need to stand a chance would be nil. And more to the point, even four points from six are unlikely to be enough with the best teams in the group still to come, if we keep playing this way.
Scotland fans who don’t want the next two years to be over before they’ve begun now face a gruesome reality. Victory over Macedonia would secure Levein’s position for the forseeable future, which would almost certainly doom the qualification attempt to failure. Two more dropped points, on the other hand, might just be enough to see him sacked. The national side currently has a more talented group of players available than at any time in the last decade, and is stronger in attack than in defence for perhaps the first time in 20 years. A more positive manager might well still be able to save the campaign, even from such an inauspicious start.
But tonight’s game is the last point at which that will be true. The next round of matches sees us away to Wales and Belgium, and if Levein is allowed to oversee the dropping of any more points there then the situation will be utterly irretrievable. In this blog’s view, Scotland’s only hope of qualifying for World Cup 2014 is to draw tonight. (A defeat would be a catastrophe too far for any manager to recover.)
So do we pray for victory over 90 minutes no matter what, or take the long-term view? This blog, for more than just footballing reasons, finds itself – albeit uncomfortably, reluctantly and painfully – in the latter camp. What do you think? The poll’s at the top of the grey column just to the right of these words.
We haven’t had any football-related posts in weeks, but this is an emergency. Many in the independence movement are hoping that 2014 will be the sort of year for them that 2012 has been for advocates of the UK. With the Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup taking place in Scotland and the World Cup in Rio, a lot of people are hoping for an upsurge in patriotism which might just carry the referendum vote over the line.
But more than two years out, one man might wreck it all before it even gets started.
After the huge fuss that was made in the media about Scottish and Welsh football players not singing “God Save The Queen” during their opening games at the Olympics, we were a bit surprised to find nobody mentioning the issue after their second matches. Even a Twitter enquiry unusually failed to produce a single person who knew if they had or not, and we eventually had to go and watch the recording of Great Britain vs the United Arab Emirates on iPlayer to find out.
As it turned out, the five Welsh players in the starting 11 had stayed resolutely silent while their English comrades on the field and in the technical area all strenuously implored God to intervene in the fate of the monarch. “Again the Welsh boys in the side chose not to sing the anthem, it’s not the national anthem of Wales of course”, said the BBC’s commentator Jonathan Pearce, having seemingly failed to notice that Wales was not one of the countries taking part in the competition.
We hope you’ll forgive us this last one, just for fun.
All the best odysseys begin in a hedge.
When we knocked up this image in Paintshop for a bit of fun a month ago, we had no idea it was going to turn out to be quite so prophetic. The final act of the Rangers saga is going to play out just like the three-way Mexican standoff at the end of Reservoir Dogs, with Sevco, the SFA and the SPL all shouting furiously, pointing guns at each other and daring the other to crack first.
Charles Green’s consortium is still, at time of writing, thought to be refusing to accept the SPL’s right to pursue the dual-contracts investigation against Rangers Football Club PLC (in liquidation) and apply its findings to Sevco Scotland Limited. By doing so, it is in effect holding the whole of Scottish football to ransom. If our game is to survive the next 48 hours with any integrity and meaning whatsoever, the SPL, having (with massive reluctance) come this far, must not blink.
Because any Doctor Who fan will tell you what happens if you blink now.
The headline above (and slight variants thereof) is a time-honoured response to reports of any event at which the reader’s interpretation of proceedings might differ significantly to that of the writer. Today’s press provides a striking example of the phenomenon.
We’ve noted before that it’s flattering to see the grown-up media pinching this blog’s stories. Sometimes it’s possible to put it down to innocent coincidence, such as the Guardian’s report today on the sweatshop conditions of workers producing London Olympic mascots – something Wings Over Scotland readers were reading about almost a month ago. At other times, though, the plagiarism is rather more obvious.
We’re really hoping that there’s going to be some proper Scottish-politics news when we get down to scouring the newspapers today. But in the meantime, just for a quick bit of Monday-morning fun and to offer up an entirely unnecessary hostage to fortune by sticking our heads on the chopping block purely for the thrill of it, we’re going to have a go at predicting the outcome of the imminent negotiations between Sevco Scotland Limited and the Scottish football authorities.
The clock is ticking, so it won’t be long until we find out if we’re right or wrong.
In the debate over whether the SPL buys the broadcast rights to SFL games featuring Rangers, we’ve just spotted a rather interesting quirk. Sevco Scotland Limited was accepted to the SFL as an Associate Member, and will not be eligible for full Member status for four years. Rule 19 of the SFL Constitution says:
“An Associate Member shall have no financial interest in the assets of the League and shall not be accorded any voting rights.”
We assume “the assets of the League” include its media rights. (Indeed, as far as we can see those would be pretty much the only assets jointly owned by the League.) Rule 19 would seem to suggest that if the SFL does want to sell “Rangers” games to the SPL – or indeed to anyone else – not only will the newco not be entitled to a vote on the matter, but it won’t be entitled to any of the money either.
We haven’t seen anyone else mention this. It seems quite significant.
(EDIT 23-7-12: See comments for SFL response.)
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
