I’m willing to give Gordon Strachan one more game.
It’s only a few weeks until we play England so this wouldn’t be the best time to make a change.
But it really is win or bust for him at Wembley.
To be honest, I think a lot of people have already come to the conclusion that he should go.
Some of his decisions have been baffling to say the least.
I just can’t get my head round the fact that he didn’t start Leigh Griffiths in either the Lithuania or Slovakia games.
Football selections and formations are all about opinion but that was just crazy as far as I’m concerned.
Sparky was fit and, although Moussa Dembele has scored more for Celtic recently, you’d still describe him as a player in form.
Strachan’s stubbornness could be his downfall. He’s right and everybody else is wrong.
Central defence is another area he should be looking at. We’ve let some bad goals in.
The first goal was a shocker – and I certainly wouldn’t be criticising David Marshall for it.
Yes, Steven Fletcher was fouled but Slovakia were able to get all the way up the pitch without a tackle being made.
At international level that’s just not good enough. If that was a Scotland team I’d been playing we’d have been embarrassed by it.
Somebody should have been making a tactical foul near the half-way line when they broke on us.
That’s the sort of thing you need to do. Maybe this team is too nice. You just can’t see us keeping a clean-sheet just now.
We get used to bad times in Scotland but the start of this campaign has a worse feeling about it for two reasons.
The first is that we made such a positive start. You can say “it was only Malta” but nobody else has scored five against them. I’d have taken a 1-0 quite happily.
It was a chance to really build some momentum. The fixture list was a really good one – the group minnows first, a game we should win against a middle-ranking side at Hampden next, and then an away trip to one of our rivals. We could and should have been going to Wembley with confidence and nothing to lose.
The second reason is that there isn’t a great team in this group. Our top seeds are England, and they’ve got their own problems, while nobody will convince me that Lithuania, Slovenia and Slovakia should be better than us.
Strachan is very lucky that the group hasn’t got away from us already.
It probably will be too big a hill to climb if we don’t win against England though.
He has to get back to basics – pick the players in form and don’t be too clever.
I don’t have an axe to grind with him and I genuinely hope he’s able to stick two fingers up to us all after we beat England at Wembley. I’m hoping to travel there as a fan.
We need a win to keep our World Cup hopes alive and Strachan needs a win to keep his job.
