"Whatever could have gone wrong tonight went wrong" - Craig Burley, the Scotland manager.
What?
Like having Burley as a manager?
Appointing Butcher as his assistant?
Being the representative of the entirely dysfunctional Scottish FA?
Leaving out players when the squad is wafer-thin anyway?
Failing to plan strategically once the match started to go pear-shaped?
What?
Those sort of things, Mr Burley?
Like Bradford And Bingley Building Society, the Scottish football team represents a rotten entity in a rotten framework.
Scottish football is a collective mess.
The Scottish Premier League (SPL) mimics the lack of strategy which is the fundamental feature of ScudamoreWorld south of the border.
The debacle relating to Setanta and the reselling of rights to BSkyB at just 60% of the price that the Murdochracy had offered just 12 months earlier sets the scene.
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The impacts and the trickle-down effect are evident with Aberdeen securing a 5-1 home reverse to a very moderate Czech outfit while Falkirk actually managed to lose to a team from Leichtenstein in the Europa Cup.
Liechtenstein???
Livingstone are refusing to play and Rangers are refusing to pay, as their transfer fund is entirely frozen in the fossilised Reality that is Sir Murray's property empire.
Meanwhile at the club that used to be worthy of support, aside from all the other shenanigans outlined in recent posts, Celtic have ended up with a sub-standard manager and, through the idiocy of John Colquhoun, overpaid in the process.
Colquhoun 'leaked' the news of Mowbray's appointment to his chums on the Guardian staff with the result that the newspaper, in the words of the rapidly deteriorating Daily Telegraph, "jumped the gun overnight and declared that Mowbray would be unveiled as the new manager... the leak revealed Celtic's hand and ensured that Peace [the West Brom chairperson] could up the ante."
But, and this is the crucial point, Mr Colquhoun gained #####################
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The SFA failed a nations' fans on several levels last night.
The timing of such a critical qualifying match while the majority of Scottish players were still out of season was bizarre, to say the least.
With the banning of your best player and your only stable goalkeeper, the SFA further undermined chances of qualification and undermined team spirit to boot.
As for the match, what planet do Burley and Butcher reside on?
Their reaction to the sending off of Gary Caldwell and falling behind to the resultant free kick was extremely self-harming.
An incorrect substitution.
An unbalanced formation.
A second goal on the interval.
The lack of strategic thinking relating to the bigger picture was also evident.
Group 9 is very tight.
Goal difference/goals scored are likely to be called into action at the conclusion of the group - now Scotland must beat both Macedonia and the Netherlands to qualify whereas, for example, if they had lost by 2-1 last night, it would have been very likely that the Scots could have reached the Play-Offs with a win and a draw.
Those four goals may come back to haunt Scotland.
The appalling officiating from Alain Hamer was merely the icing on a pretty ropey cake.
Our hierarchies enforce one very firm judicial hyperreality - that the buck stops as near to the bottom of the pyramid as feasible.
So, much the better to discipline a woman soldier for torture at Abu Ghraib than indicting Rumsfeld, for example.
If Scotland fail to reach November's Play-Offs, no doubt B&B will be jettisoned.
And Gordon Smith, the SFA's chief executive, who is ultimately responsible for the state of the national team and the national game, will retain his place in the Adhocracy that limps along in the shadow of the Murdochracy.
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