At last, Scotland are glorious without the failure

 To be honest, I was ready to just pack it in.

When Luka Jovic's header flew into the net, it felt like one heartbreak, one Glorious Failure too many. I just could not do it anymore.

As Jovic celebrated, my mind was already racing ahead. The heads would be gone. We'd get creamed in extra time. If somehow we didn't, we'd screw up the penalties. I just couldn't be having with the agony of supporting Scotland any more. My wife is Northern Irish - perhaps I could just bring up my boys to support them instead, and they might get the joy of qualifying for something occasionally? Heck, I've got a mate from Gibraltar - they might lose all the time but I bet they don't care about it.

You'd like to think that had we lost I would have got over the misery and been ready to do it all again for the 2022 World Cup qualifiers. Thankfully, we'll never know...

For the first 89 minutes in Belgrade Scotland produced their best team performance in over a decade. It was clear from the early stages that Steve Clarke had got his tactics spot on and from front to back the starting eleven were tremendous. 

At one end of the pitch Lyndon Dykes, the Australian who was playing for Queen Of The South eighteen months ago and who looks more like one of the 'pre-cogs' from Minority Report than a centre forward, gave a marvellous throwback performance of shoulder barges, deft flick-ons and runs into the channels that will still have the Serb defenders looking over their shoulders this morning.

At the other end a back three consisting of Kieran Tierney (a natural left-back), Declan Gallagher (of Motherwell) and Scott McTominay (a natural midfielder) looked every bit the equal of the great Boyd-Calderwood-Hendry trinity of the mid-nineties. Any pre-match doubts I had about Gallagher's merits have well and truly evaporated; it was nice of him to let Aleksandar Mitrovic out of his pocket for long enough to take a penalty in the shootout.

Between defence and attack there was Callum McGregor, so often underwhelming at international level but here playing more like the Celtic version from the last few years than the one of the last few months, demanding the ball at every opportunity and directing play,. Ahead of him was the whirling dervish that is John McGinn, covering every blade of grass, bouncing off opponents with that magnificent arse of his.

And the rest were great too. At half-time some moron suggested Scotland would benefit more from having a natural striker on the pitch than Ryan Christie.

What an idiot that Narey's Toepoker is https://t.co/bkTdLFXCoS

— Narey's Toepoker (@Nareystoepoker) November 12, 2020

The fact we played so well - so much better than the Serbs - made it worse. It's glorious failure if you're the plucky underdogs that have been unluckily thwarted, not when you're the better team by miles. 

Even in despair I couldn't bring myself to turn off the TV. Loyalty? Masochism? A tiny grain of hope? Make up your own mind as to the reason. The extra time purgatory was only exacerbated by Clarke's substitutions which were made with the intention of protecting our lead and beefing us up on defending set pieces (that went well...) but left the team dreadfully unbalanced and unthreatening. Oli McBurnie, who had replaced the spent Dykes, was utterly awful, the ball bouncing off him repeatedly as if his whole body was just one big shin. Another sub, Callum Paterson, started up front and ended up going out to the right flank, which suddenly looked more vulnerable than when only Stephen O'Donnell had been protecting it.

Yet with Scotland against the ropes with wobbly knees and eyes out of focus, Serbia failed to land the knockout blow. Only once was David Marshall seriously threatened, the veteran keeper pulling off a wonderful fingertip save from Nemanja Gudelj. At the interval in extra-time not only captain Andy Robertson but also McGregor, Marshall and Ryan Jack could be seen trying to lift their comrades. Scotland had bent, but they were not broken.

But penalties would surely be our undoing, right? In Christie, McGinn and Dykes we had substituted three potential takers. For every Scotland player who stepped forward and grabbed the ball, I convinced myself it was their destiny to miss. Leigh Griffiths was brought on as a sub just to take a penalty, which seemed to make him a hostage to fortune. McGregor's performance, his best ever in a Scotland shirt, seemed too good to be true. McTominay was the man who should have been marking Jovic for the goal and who seemed to be setting himself up to be the goat of the game. McBurnie, so often a disappointment, had the pressure of knowing that if he missed he would be derided forever. And was it not too much to ask for Kenny McLean, hero against Israel, to reprise his role of iceman once more?

Yet they all held firm. Griffiths' penalty was the diciest of the lot but still went in off the goalkeeper's hand. McGregor dispatched his expertly. McTominay smashed it into the bottom corner like a man who had completely forgotten his role in the equalizer. McBurnie sent the goalkeeper the wrong way. McLean surely deserves a promotion from Mayor of Norwich to Duke of Edinburgh.

And then there was Marshall. Whenever he is mentioned I still mentally picture the 19 year old teenager who in 2004 single-handedly repelled Barcelona at the Camp Nou for Celtic. His subsequent career, though very decent, has never hit such heights again. Until now, sixteen years on. I never thought for a second that Aleksandar Mitrovic, an accomplished penalty taker, would miss. And yet he was the one who cracked. It wasn't a dreadful penalty but Marshall moved as if he had springs on his feet to make a terrific save to his left.

Of course, then there was that awful split-second where Marshall had to look to the referee, to confirm VAR wouldn't spoil this golden moment. But as the goalie said afterward, what's another four or five seconds when you've had to wait 22 years?

While all that was happening, I had somehow gone from pacing the living room anxiously to being on my knees, fists clenched, arms in the air, biting my lip partly to stop me from screaming out and waking my wife and small children and partly to stop me from crying. I was 14 the last time we qualified for something. It has been a hell of a long time. I am going to savour this all the way until June. Erect a statue of Steve Clarke, build another one of David Marshall, give Andy Robertson a knighthood. As far as I'm concerned, it's the least they deserve.

Something changed last night. You could already feel it in the build up that this country, from the younger generation who have never seen us at a tournament and think of the national team as one big joke, to the older, increasingly weary, cynical and apathetic Tartan Army veterans, were just about ready to let the national team back into their hearts. Man, we had to suffer for it. But this extraordinary, terrible, beautiful suffering has always been what supporting Scotland is about. Right now those 22 years all seem worth it. At last, Scotland are glorious without the failure.

We are back.

Lawrie Spence has whinged about Scottish football on Narey's Toepoker since September 2007. He has a life outside this blog. Honestly.

Ten In A Row is in jeopardy - must Celtic switch manager to save it?

The last time Celtic lost three consecutive home matches, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, Kylie Minogue was at number one with 'Tears On My Pillow' (no, I've never heard of it either) and Rangers were on their way to Two In A Row.

Admittedly in the subsequent thirty years there won't have been many times when Celtic played back-to-back-to-back games at Celtic Park against teams of the quality of Rangers, Milan and, um, Sparta Prague, but still.

How has it come to this?

Yes, Rangers have improved. We're yet to find out whether yet another post-New Year slump will derail their title push, but it would obviously be foolish for Celtic fans to pin their hopes on that. Steven Gerrard's side are playing with confidence and no little skill. It's worth remembering at this point that, for all the spending down Govan way, Rangers' budget is still way behind Celtic's. For them to be so superior at this point is quite startling...and the way they are going about it is also exposing Celtic's problems for all to see.

The bottom line is that Rangers have a plan, and Gerrard's squad has been built with it in mind. In contrast, if Celtic's grand strategy for 2020-21 was all about the switch to three-at-the-back, it made no sense to this blogger. Playing three central defenders in the Premiership against teams who sit back and soaked up pressure just unnecessarily robs the team of an attacking or creative player...even more so given Lennon's insistence on deploying Scott Brown at the base of midfield as well.  In Mohamed Elyounoussi, James Forrest and Mikey Johnston they have three wide players who don't obviously fit into that system, though the injuries to the latter two have made this less of an issue than it might have been. Ditto the more natural number tens like Ryan Christie and Tom Rogic.

The Shane Duffy factor has been thoroughly dissected elsewhere, but the bottom line is that this is not a player that fits what Celtic need in central defence - either in a back three or a back four - in the slightest. Duffy is not a bad player, but his weaknesses are woefully exposed and his qualities are rarely on show in this situation. It is a failure of recruitment. 

And it isn't the first one. Celtic have signed three left-backs in fifteen months. Greg Taylor and Boli Bolingoli cost £3million each and whilst Kieran Tierney's shoes were always going to be impossible to fill the bottom line is neither player can hold a torch to Rangers' Borna Barisic. Nor were they especially well suited to playing as a wing-back; ironically, as soon as Lennon signed a player tailor-made for the left wing-back role - Diego Laxalt - he reverted back to a back four which currently makes Laxalt look very uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, the list of players currently out on loan and with no future at the club includes Bolingoli, Vakoun Issouf Bayo, Jack Hendry and Maryan Shved. It's not clear who is leading transfer policy at Celtic, but it does seem that folk are not all on the same page.

As for the coach himself, it is increasingly tempting to wonder whether Lennon's first spell at Celtic Park was really all that. After all, his three league titles came when the closest opposition were a Rangers side on the brink of liquidation, Motherwell and Motherwell respectively; to be frank Celtic would have won those leagues with you, or me, or even Ronny Deila in charge. In continental competition, take away Tony Watt's goal against Barcelona - bear in mind that Celtic, with 11% possession, rather rode their luck that day - and results were not impressive; they finished rock bottom of their Champions League group in 2013-14 after nearly losing in the qualifiers to Shakhtar Karagandy, while they missed out on both the Champions League and Europa League groups in 2010-11 and only got into the Europa League groups the following year after Sion were disqualified.

His return in early 2019 as a stopgap made a fair bit of sense given Brendan Rodgers' sudden departure, but in truth the team's form for the rest of that season was hardly all that and they huffed and puffed their way past a pretty putrid Hearts side in the Scottish Cup Final. It was not a performance that justified offering Lennon the job permanently after the match, but it was the romantic option and perhaps the easy one too. It was probably cheaper also in terms of wages, but it could be argued that the European qualifying failures of this season and last have made appointing him very expensive indeed for the club.

The fact is that since Rodgers left Celtic have largely coasted, as if they feel they are untouchable. In fact, 'stagnated' may be a more appropriate term. On the pitch, there is very little sign of tactical imagination. The formation may have changed recently but in the final third the strategy seems the same; to rely for moments of individual brilliance to unlock defences. It's worth noting that both they and Rangers have endured their star player and talismanic striker suffering a collapse in form this season. Rangers have barely missed a beat despite Alfredo Morelos' struggles; Celtic simply do not look the same without a potent Odsonne Edouard.

Edouard isn't the only one out of sorts. After the Sparta game, Lennon didn't hold back. He accused the players of being 'lazy' of 'lack of application', 'lack of hunger' and suggested they weren't working hard enough in training and that there was a need for a 'culture change'. The obvious elephant in the room there is the question of who is responsible for working them in training. After all there is precious little evidence during matches that they have worked on anything particularly intricate tactically. Heck, back in August Kieran Devlin at The Athletic reported that a number of players employed their own fitness coaches because they were unsatisfied at what the club was offering.

There's still time to turn this around - two-thirds of the season in fact. And the Celtic squad has more than enough quality to do so. But it is fair to say we have reached the point where you'd be surprised if Neil Lennon was still in charge by the end of the season. And it's also fair to note that if you're going to change manager, an international break - like the one coming up next week - would seem like the least painful time to do it. Do they take the plunge and sack a manager for the first time since Tony Mowbray? The fate of their Ten In A Row dream may well depend on what decision they make.

Lawrie Spence has whinged about Scottish football on Narey's Toepoker since September 2007. He has a life outside this blog. Honestly.