Scotland’s World Cup campaign could be inhabited by early autumn’s warm glow over the next few days or it could be as dreich and damp as a derelict house.
With Lithuania at Hampden and Slovakia away as the teasers before the England game at Wembley in November, the prospect of our campaign getting off to a flier with full points is surely realistic.
The 5-1 win v Malta last month will hopefully be the shot in the arm a success starved nation has been praying for, and full points in these two matches should not be an unrealisable aim.
Gordon Strachan understandably doesn’t want to burden himself or the players with predictions of must win games, but arguably they are both games from which maximum points can be gathered.
Strachan is no gambler when it comes to selecting his squads and he will stand or fall on his selections of the men he trusts.
That is how it should be.
We are all armchair experts without knowing the full stories behind squad tactics or the choosing of certain players, but that is why we have a manager in the first place.
‘In Gord we trust’ might not accurately capture the mood of the nation with regard to the manager’s popularity rating at the moment, but we have to accept that he is the man charged with leading the mission. He is in command of the search for the Holy Grail.
It is so long since we qualified for a final of any tournament that a generation has grown up thinking we have been banned from them.
His squad does not excite the imagination or set the pulses racing, but in criticising certain picks, the acid test is, has he left anyone out who is demonstrably superior to those included?
I see no Ronaldo or Messi missing from his squad, no one who immediately leaps to the front of my mind demanding to be named.
Scotland does not so much expect, as fervently hope, that this time things will be different.
I have said previously that Strachan was a great player in charge of average players.
That is no insult to the men who give their best in the navy blue, it’s a simple recognition of the fact that not a man in the team compares to him as a player.
His job in moulding the side into one which plays to its capabilities and strengths is one, which if completed successfully, will earn the gratitude of a nation desperate to see the national side strut its stuff on the biggest stages.
The prospect of missing out again fills football fans’ hearts with dread. And worse, the dangers of fans switching off from the Scotland squad are acute.
Already there are signs that younger fans have lost interest in the domestic game opting for the glamour of the English Premier League or La Liga.
To lose out again and lose a generation of fans could be a deadly blow for international football here and one which would surely seal the fate of both the manager and those in charge at the SFA.
