SCOTLAND'S SHAME

THE timing of the Daily Mail's splash revealing there are 30,000 Scots off work suffering from depression could not have been better.

That's just about the number who sat and suffered at Hampden through the worst Scottish performance on home soil in a competive match for over half a century.

And that's not just my view, but also the firm opinion of two even more senior and experienced sports writers - proud Scots both.

However, what is even worse than how badly the Scots played is the attitude being ingrained in a small sect of the younger generation of hacks, perhaps in no small way due to the drip feed of comments from manager Craig Levein.

One of them, even before the match, and reflecting on what had happened in Lithuania, insisted that we just didn't have the players and weren't good enough.

Which sounded suspiciously like the defeatist mantra Bertri Vogts used to preach after another of his blunders had seen the Scots humiliated.

It is also at complete odds with reality.

Walter Smith instilled an immediate improvement in the national side when he took over, and in one match, against a nation comparable in lowly status to Liechtenstein, The Faroes, sent out a team which won 6-0.

Of that side, five started under Levein against Liechtenstein, Davie Weir, Darren Fletcher, James McFadden, Kris Boyd and Kenny Miller. And, when you consider Paul Hartley, who played against the Faroes, was in Levein's squad, while Allan McGregor in place of Craig Gordon hardly weakens the side, it is interesting.

Scotland were five ahead by half time in that match, with all the first half scorers, Fletcher, Faddy, Boyd and Miller, in action this week.

What followed that extremely impressive performance and confidence boosting trashing of the minnows, was a midweek trip to Lithuania and a 2-1 win for Smith's team.

Fast forward a couple of years to September 2008, a mere two years ago, and the venue is Paris, where Alex McLeish masterminded a team containing no fewer than SEVEN of the same starters against Liechtenstein. The result a 1-0 win over the French and what, for me, was Scotland's greatest ever single triumph.

Therefore, if Smith could do it with so many of the same players against the Faroese and then in Lithuania, and McLeish could manage it against the more formidable French forces in Paris, with even more of the men at Levein's disposal, the question is, why can't the current Scotland manager?

During Levein's reign we have seen an inept first half in a friendly against the Czech Republic almost ignored by the critics after a second half goal gave the Scots a win, followed by a serious seeeing to by Sweden in another friendly, a poor, plodding and unimaginative goalless draw in Lithuania - where Smith won - and then the apology of the show against Lichtenstein.

After that Swedish flop I called attention to the danger of Levein's remarks that the game had been no more than a pre season friendly and didn't matter. It did, as all international results go towards FIFA ratings which, in turn, are part of the calculations when nations are seeded for the draw for qualifying campaigns.

After the snore draw in Kaunus, Levein seemed to be upset at even mild critical comment and, according to Scotland's biggest selling national daily newspaper, had a bit of a pop at the Tartan Army.

Then last night he commented , he had said about Lithuania, that he set out the team to play in a certain way, but changed that for Liechtenstein, against his better judgement. He went on to ponder there was  maybe a lesson for him there, adding that he took a risk.

A RISK?

With a back four, plus Lee McCulloch patrolling no more than between five and ten yards in front of the defence as added insurance.

Against Liechtenstien? At Hampden? Where such giants as Spain, Holland, Germany and Italy have all either been seen off or given the fright of their lives, and where Walter Smith's Scots beat France.

Given what he said we must therefore believe that had Levein not gone against his better judgement, and instead stuck with the way he set out his team in Lithuania, Scotland would have faced Lichtenstein, with Scott Brown joining McCulloch protecting a four man rearguard in a five strong midfield, with a lone striker.

Against Lichtenstein, a nation with a population smaller than the crowd at Hampden, and who included an office worker and a student in their team of odds and sods.

Now I know there are many out there who really do not give a hoot about the Scotland team. Rangers supporters, turned off by the Tartan Army's hatred of all things red, white and blue, and Celtic fanatics who feel more at home backing the Republic of Ireland.

Both sides of the Old Firm divide are wrong. If you are Scottish, then the Scottish team is the national side you should be supporting.

I've got no problems with Rangers followers who see themselves as stoutly British, and therefore also wish well to the English team, or with any Bhoys who feel they have an Irish background and therefore take an interest in the Republic.

But first and foremost all Scots should, at international level, support Scotland. It matters. And it is why, everything that has happened since Craig Levein took over my nation's national team makes me  feel like joining those 30,000 who are too depressed to work.
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......AND THERE'S MORE

Where LeggoLand goes first, others soon follow.

For it would seem a whole host of columnists on some of the nation's daily and Sunday newspapers are having their agendas set by what they appear to have read here.

For instance... today, and after almost a week of silence in the national press about Judge Andrew Blake's sin of ommision regarding the 1996 IRA bomb which devasted Manchester, there was finally a reference to it in The Herald.

It only took 48 hours from the time I called attention to how ludicrous Judge Andrew Blake's rant was, before  a national Scottish newspaper also pointed it out.

And last Sunday in the Sunday Mail not one, but TWO columnists on the sports pages, followed in my footsteps by attacking Dermond Desmond's latest bleating about the Old Firm joining the English Premiership.

The next day, in The Herald, the always highly readable Michael Grant made it the subject of his column, even going so far as to point out - as I did - how seemingly pathetic it is for the Irishman who owns a Scottish club, to discuss its business only in England.

That's not all. Cast your mind back to what I commented about the late Jimmy Reid and how crazy it was for anyone to claim his speech to students at Glasgow University was the best since the Gettysburg Address. I added that almost any of Winston Churchill's great speeches were better.

It took just a couple of days for an old pal and sparring partner, Michael Kelly, in his column in the Scotsman, to attempt, as I did, to dispel the Reid myth.

One time Celtic director and former Lord Provost of Glasgow, Kelly, even got close enough to my thinking, to invoke Churchill's name, mentioning his Iron Curtain masterpiece.

Now, either a lot of the nation's opinion formers are reading LeggoLand and following in the trail I am blazing, or amazingly we all seem to agree.

In which case some advice to the man from the Herald, those two Sunday Mail columnists, and the two Michaels, Grant and Kelly. See a doctor. Or maybe I should.