System failures should force Levein back to the drawing board

Michael Grant
Chief football writer

CRAIG Levein is a cautious and conservative manager who now faces the trauma of working without a safety net.

Opening with a damaging home draw amounted to a wearingly familiar start to another sequence of qualifying matches, and now Scotland must navigate a route to the World Cup with a reduced margin for error. The team and the manager are already up against it. From now on, every time we hear "Scotland nil" in a full-time result it's going to sound like a nail in a coffin. Every "Scotland nil" makes Craig Levein worse and Steven Fletcher better.

If a seminar is ever held on the attractions of playing 4-1-4-1 Levein would be the man at the lectern. He can talk until the cows come home about the merits of that system and its appropriateness for the group of players at his disposal. His growing army of critics call him stubborn or arrogant on this and other points, his allies say single-minded or strong-willed. Either way, he is resolutely fixed on one out-and-out striker being supported from midfield. The question must be asked: if this really is the way to get the best out of this squad, why is it yielding so little in competitive matches? Only three of the nine qualifiers under him have been won. There's not been a "wow" performance in any of them.

It didn't need the Hampden scoreboards to vividly display the trouble Scotland have finding the net. The squad statistics confirm this as a set of players who, even if some score regularly at club level, fail to do so for their country. Kenny Miller is an exception with 16 in 61 appearances, but on Saturday he simply looked like a forward whose best days were behind him. He's now 32 and playing his club football in Canada. He ran himself into the ground, of course, but it wasn't nearly enough. His touch was off and there was no sense of menace in his play. There are turning points and crossroads in every Scotland career and this team is crying out to be refreshed and revitalised up front.

At least Miller has the memory of plenty of scoring performances. He is the only Scot who does. No-one else in this week's squad has scored more than twice. Levein said this after the Serbia match: "I think 4-1-4-1 is the best formation. What for me is more important than two strikers is having guys on the pitch who can score goals. Look at the flat four behind Kenny: Steven Naismith's a goalscorer, Charlie Adam is a creative player, James Morrison is a creative player and a goalscorer, and Robert Snodgrass is a creative player and a goalscorer."

Yet between the four of them, these supposed creators and finishers, they have scored four goals in 64 appearances. Naismith has two in 17, Morrison one in 22, Snodgrass one in seven and Adam none at all in 18.

As the play meandered along in the second half and restless supporters chanted for Jordan Rhodes to come off the bench – they did so in the 65th, 67th, 74th and 80th minutes, and the change was made in the 81st – it was increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that Levein remains locked into a way of playing and a loyalty to key players which will be the ruin of him. For a guy who won't be messed around by anybody, and who can be pretty imposing, he is oddly unwilling to ever criticise his Scotland players either individually or collectively.

Rhodes isn't the panacea, and isn't especially suited to playing on his own up front, but he is clearly an impressive finisher whose career is on an upward trajectory. He can't be treated as "a kid" forever. He's 22, not 17. He'll be 24 at the time of the World Cup finals and he's enough of a man for Blackburn Rovers to spend £8m on him. If not now, when? If Levein is wary of unfair expectation being placed on him against Macedonia that would be the case only because the old guard, and especially Miller, could not provide the match-winning goal so badly required against Serbia.

If Levein cannot bring himself to "risk" Rhodes against Macedonia tomorrow night, then Jamie Mackie should start. He actually did more when the pair of them belatedly got a run, looking not only quicker than Miller but more direct and threatening. Scotland could play with two up front but that would clash with Levein's instincts. Only at home to Liechtenstein in the last campaign has he started any of his 21 games with two forwards and he found that such an harrowing experience he later said he'd done so "against his better judgment". The next game was in Prague; the less said about that the better.

Saturday was just so disappointing. Paul Dixon had a fine debut at left-back, Gary Caldwell was solid as the midfield anchor and Allan McGregor saved the day by blocking Dusan Tadic's effort, Serbia's best of the day, in stoppage time. The defence was okay. Scotland created only two real chances: Caldwell put Naismith through but he dinked a shot over the goalkeeper and wide, and James Forrest forced a save with a decent shot in the dying seconds.

Overall it was a scruffy, laboured performance, undermined by poor passing and decision-making, and it got exactly the result it deserved. The front five were all poor. Levein may think the world of his players but unless they create more chances, and take some of them, the World Cup and his management will be finished.

Taken from the Herald