The SFA should be awarded a gallantry medal for bravery under fire.
With a great many fans wanting Gordon Strachan drummed out of the service as Scotland boss, the blazers went over the top in defence of their man.
Whether their action in giving him the vote of confidence is foolhardy will be revealed at the next home game at Hampden, where the stewards could outnumber the Tartan Army as our World Cup qualifying hopes sink into the mud.
Scotland could still qualify for the tournament in Russia, although finding intelligent life on Mars next week looks a better bet.
A major issue for those in charge is that they appear to have set no targets for the manager. Not an unusual situation in football, where the decision to remove a boss is almost always a subjective one.
It doesn’t appear that any form of objective reasoning was used in the rationale to stick with the national team boss. Rather, the SFA assured supporters that they were “convinced that he (Strachan) still has the hunger for this challenge and we have four home qualifiers to rejuvenate our campaign”.
Convincing folk of your hunger must by definition be a subjective test. An objective test would be to scan the opposition played, performances and results against them, the points amassed, and the potential for rapid and vast improvement.
That’s not a completely scientific approach, but it’s more precise than the guff they have served up for the gullible.
Strachan is well paid and rightly disinclined to voluntarily give that up.
In fairness and given that there is still an outside possibility of qualification, and presumably no inclusion of a target of qualification ‘or else’, contained within his contract, then maybe the SFA are being cannier than we think.
Indeed, a cynic might speculate that in an effort to save some compensation the board fully expect the campaign to be dead and buried shortly, and hope that the manager will then walk of his own volition.
One way or another, the fans will vote with their feet. The decision has been taken. Let’s hope it’s not one which hammers yet another nail into the coffin of the waning interests in the fortunes of the national team.
* If the Scotland rugby squad can cut out some basic errors and tighten up on discipline then the future may be bright.
A good crop of players are emerging and a very narrow defeat last week to Australia shows that we are not far away from being a very decent side.
Among the new boys, centre Huw Jones grabbed a couple of tries on his Murrayfield debut while flanker Hamish Watson in his first start acquitted himself admirably against a quality back row.
We’re not blessed with huge numbers of oval ball players to choose from but the depth of choice looks healthy.
Argentina are lively with the ball and present a serious test. However, if solid work has been done this week by Vern Cotter’s men on the training field on discipline, shape, and organisation, I fully expect a Scotland win to cheer the nation.
