Levein The Past Behind

Wonderful experience as it will be to see Scotland play Brazil at the Emirates, there are other subtexts within the national side that are masked somewhat by the occasion. The game itself will be the culmination – the final big lobotomy – of a therapeutic process that has been ongoing since Scotland failed to attack from a 4-6-0 in the Czech Republic and almost failed to win against Liechtenstein at Hampden, preceded, lest we forget, by a failure to convince in Lithuania in the very first game of the Euro 2012 qualifiers.

Czech Mate For Levein

Partisan Alert: Fresh from banging his head against a wall for 48 hours, Rob has finally found the words to mouth off about Scotland's lack of ambition in Prague.

Another qualifier Scotland aimed to get something from; another chastening experience. When the final whistle blew in Prague on Friday night, the only man being sent homeward tae think again was Craig Levein.

Hopefully, his first act was to sack whoever provided him with the video of the Czechs against the Netherlands in 2004, given that he had obviously watched that team rather than its current incarnation. You can imagine him turning to Peter Houston: ‘That Nedved is some player isn’t he? And Poborsky’s quick. AND WHO IS THAT GIANT? Jan Koller? Jesus Christ. With him and Milan Baros they could score at ANY MOMENT’. There’s only one thing for it, he must have concluded. We MUST play without a striker. Otherwise we’re going to get thumped by a team who WEREN’T EVEN AT THE LAST WORLD CUP.