The country needs to accept that George Burley-baiting will not end Scotland's championship drought
Gordon Strachan has been linked with the Scotland manager's job. Photograph: Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images
Misplaced arrogance: apparently the last emotion of a wounded football nation.
Time will tell if George Burley is to be jettisoned for Scotland's failure to secure a play-off berth for next summer's World Cup. By the time the 2012 European Championship comes around, it will be 14 years since the Tartan Army have descended on a major finals. What a ticket rush there will be if and when the Scots do ever return to international football's top table.
In the aftermath of a rousing second half against Macedonia – as one onlooker said, with more than an element of surprise, "We actually looked like a good team" – and an equally impressive display, albeit in a 1-0 defeat to Holland on Wednesday, Burley's future is on the line.
The feeling of inevitability surrounding the manager's departure has given way to a sense in some quarters that he may just be handed the start of Scotland's next qualifying campaign to redeem himself. But the basic fact that he has failed to meet his remit of taking Scotland to the play-offs cannot be ignored.
In the meantime, the usual calls for Burley, along with anyone who dons an SFA blazer, to be led away and shot at dawn for their part in this awful underachievement have begun. It is as predictable as it is unnecessary. If the Scottish Football Association has made a mistake in appointing Burley, so be it. Club boards all over the country opt for the wrong man year on year without being subject to the kind of vitriol Gordon Smith and his colleagues at Hampden have endured. Alas, even the great Sir David Murray appointed a ropey manager once.
Their genuine alternatives at the time of Burley's appointment, it is worth recalling, were an expensive Graeme Souness, who it could be argued continues to live on former glories, and Mark McGhee, then at Motherwell. If there is a legitimate criticism of the SFA it is that their narrow-minded attitude, the remnants of Berti Vogts's reign, discounted any non-Scot from the running.
Burley's two immediate predecessors, Walter Smith and Alex McLeish, were lauded for their approach. Scotland had become hard to beat – brutal to watch, mind – and genuine contenders again for major championships. Not that they ever qualified; disastrous matches against the likes of Belarus and Georgia saw to that.
When Burley was put in office, it was generally assumed he should be the man to feed from the "success" of Smith and McLeish. Second place from a World Cup group including Norway, Macedonia and Iceland should be a fait accompli, commentators said.
The root of this expectancy is unclear. Scotland's international team possibly has two genuinely top-class players in Darren Fletcher and Craig Gordon. Others, notably Scott Brown, Alan Hutton and James McFadden, have simply failed thus far to build on their unquestionable potential. There seems no international successor to David Weir, who has soldiered on to the age of 39.
In one of the more amusing affairs of recent times, Scotland's assistant manager, Terry Butcher, compared Brown's talents to those of Paul Gascoigne; great copy for newspapers but, in blunt terms, utter nonsense. This is the same Gascoigne, one presumes, who was one of the finest players of his generation and who would routinely swagger past four players before scoring or fire home 25-yard free-kicks. Brown scored with a head-flick against Macedonia, his first international goal, and was instantly hailed as a genius. We are still waiting for his first 25-yard pass.
And yet, supposedly, Scotland should be vastly superior to Norway, a country where training facilities were developed years ahead of these shores and whose international team looks virtually identical in talent to that which Burley has at his disposal. Would John Carew have shown the profligacy of Kenny Miller from six yards against the Dutch? Can a match between Molde and Tromso really be vastly inferior to one between Falkirk and Motherwell?
Scotland and Chris Iwelumo were berated for "that" miss when Norway visited Hampden. It should not be overlooked that only brilliance from Gordon meant the hosts were not already behind by that point. When Macedonia visited Hampden, for 45 minutes it was patently clear which team contained technically gifted players with game-awareness skills to match. Needless to say, that team was not wearing navy blue.
Scotland's flagship league, the SPL, is a tough one to play in. It is competitive in its own way as well but there are few individual players you would happily pay to watch. Declining standards have been highlighted by the struggles of Scottish teams in Europe this season, meaning few can hold out genuine hope for the Old Firm in their coming Champions and Europa League campaigns. The SPL is not the lowest of the low, far from it, but the product on offer renders it hard to contemplate why Scotland should regard themselves as regular entrants to major tournaments and, in turn, sack coaches who fail to meet this target.
It is cliched but true that the failings on the part of the SFA, the government and clubs themselves took place decades ago. An unwillingness to invest meaningfully in facilities for young football players has come home to roost, a point that resonated when made recently by Burley. Purpose-built training grounds for clubs? A futuristic concept where Scotland is concerned. Burley is merely the latest to suffer; he will not be the last.
If the former Ipswich Town man is to be shown the door, the possibility of Gordon Strachan's succeeding him is an appealing one. Not only did Strachan enjoy striking success with Celtic, he has made it privately clear in the past that he would only take on the international role if he could be allowed the scope to improve the root and branch structure of Scottish football. It is exactly that shake-up, one which might drastically improve the level of player produced north of the border, that is overdue.
In the meantime, careful consideration should be taken before routine shouts for the sacking of SFA officials and a manager are made. Both the resources at Scotland's disposal and lessons of the recent past, as harsh as they are to accept, suggest radical improvement in the near future is unlikely.