GORDON STRACHAN will decide over the next 48 hours whether he wants to fight for his future as Scotland manager.
The 59-year-old is considering his options after seeing his side slump to fifth in their World Cup qualifying group off the back of a 3-0 Wembley defeat to England.
However, even if he decides he wants to stay in the job, there are no assurances he will do so.
His future is set to be thrashed out in meetings with SFA chiefs.
And Strachan will have to explain to his employers, starting with chief executive Stewart Regan, exactly how he proposes to turn the campaign around.
They have noted growing dissent among members of the Tartan Army and view the run of results which has seen Scotland pick up just four points from four games as unsustainable.
Having been supportive in the past, Strachan’s paymasters are likely to stress that good performances alone are not enough and that results have to improve, too.
“It’s very hard for me to talk of this,” said Strachan.
“My job as a coach is to look after the players and make them better.
“I am 59 years old. It might be different if I was 35.
“I want to get those players to a tournament. That’s all I want.
“It’s all-consuming and when something is all-consuming, it’s very hard to bring something else into it.
“When I look at them after a result like that and tap them on the head, you feel like a dad whose kid has been bullied at school or something like that. It’s not right and that’s the way I am feeling with these lads just now.
“I’m not feeling as bad as I have done, strangely. I’ve seen a lot of things, even the Slovakia game.
“But out there, they were brave, they didn’t sit in, they were up against them, they took a chance, they made chances.
“There were some terrific performances.
“I remember losing 2-0 at Wembley (in 1983) and we were sneaking out the door, literally, because it was woeful, inept, no shots at goal.
“This time was different.”
Different yet, from a supporter’s perspective, all too familiar.
England weren’t obviously better in open play on Friday but a team that concedes cheap goals with the regularity Scotland do is always going to struggle and, for all it was heartening to see several decent chances created, they weren’t put away.
“The first one, you can’t really prepare for when you get a deflection like that. There’s a point where you have to hold your hands up and say ‘OK,’” argued Strachan.
“Anything they came up with, we dealt with it.
“The shot and deflection and then it coming back in quick is disorientating, and then what you get is world-class players going and putting headers in the back of the net, where we’ve had headers that go over the bar.
“You feel the world’s against you at that point.
“It’s easy for me sitting there. Imagine being out there when that’s happening and having to go again.”
The key question remains, will the manager himself choose to stick or twist?
“What I’ve got to do now is go and see my family, make sure they are all right, because they feel for me,” said Strachan.
“Then there will be a debrief with the people I work with and that will happen whenever we want a chat.
“All the speculation about my future? I don’t see all those things.
“I have an understanding of what’s going on. I am not daft.
“I have never seen Sky telly this week or a paper.
“It’s like being in a crash, you don’t look at the crash. The reality is all-consuming.”
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