With the national team seemingly already having lost the momentum generated from the highly exciting if eventually unsuccessful Euro 2008 qualifying campaign in which home and away defeats of the French led us int oa final winner takes all game against the Italians, is it too early to re-consider the manager's position?
Early results suggest that George Burley has undone much of the good work achieved first by Walter Smith and carried on by Alex McLeish since the Berti Vogts debacle.
In the 6 games Burley has taken charge of, 3 friendlies and 3 of our 8 South Africa World Cup qualifying games, we have managed just one solitary victory in Iceland, leaving us with just 4 points from our opening 3 qualifying fixtures.
The management and the players will not admit it, and you would not expect them too, but realistically now we are fighting for second place. Topping this group ahead of the Dutch will prove beyond us and now even securing second place will prove a struggle. With ourselves, Norway, Iceland and Macedonia all taking points off each other it is looking increasingly likely that second place from our group will provide the unlucky runners up who do not make the play offs, with 8 of 9 runner's up in the group being drawn against each other.
As it appears that our exile from intenrational tournaments will extend beyond the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, it has to be asked, after just 3 competitive games is it too early to look at appointing Burley's successor? I am not normally one for these sort of knee-jerk reactions. I advocate giving a manager time to prove themselves. However, when things are clearly not working out, how far do you let one man drag the team down before you say enough is enough and remove the negative influence from the squad?
Too my mind there are 3 main reasons why Burley has shown he is not the man for the job:
1. First and foremost, results. Football is a results based business at the end of the day. Winning is all that matters. In the matches that really matter Burley has not achieved the required results. After the amazing run in our last qualification section in which we nearly qualified ahead of either of the World Cup Finalists from 2006, the entire country had real belief we could reach South Africa if we got a kinder draw. Drawing Holland after their impressive performances at the Euro's put a bit of a dampner on that, but 2nd place should have been a minimum target. The disappointing defeat to Macedonia was an early setback, only drawing at home to Norway has given us a real mountain to climb.
2. Burley has not helped himself with some baffling team selections. As I have stated on here before, the negative low risk management of playing over-the-hill mediocre players ahead of younger, fitter and ultimately better players is of great annoyance to me. Picking Alexander ahead of Broadfoot for the Macedonia game is a prime example of this. I am not saying we would not have lost had Kirk played in that game, but playing your best XI gives you a greater chance of achieving a poistive result.
The biggest story in Scottish football at the momment, Boyd's retirement from international football under Burley, is also down to poor team selections. Up against the giant Norway defence Burley fielded just McFadden upfront supported by two small wide players. McFadden has not performed for Scotland in recent games and has also recently been dropped by Alex McLeish at Birmingham. Whislt the decision to field small, fast wide player in support of McFadden to strecth the Norwegians and get at them down the flanks might have worked, McFadden is not the kind of player who would be effective spear heading that formation. Boyd, Fletcher or Iwelumo might have been.
With Miler out, the choice of formation and tactics and McFadden's loss of form, Boyd would have been ideal for a starting berth. To not throw him on when needing a goal to keep our qualifying campaign on track, and instead play the inexperienced Iwelumo and Fletcher, who boast far inferior goalscoring records is baffling in the extreme.
3. Poor man-management, an inability to manage top class player and deal with the media. These points are all related and included as the one. Burley's previous successes with Ipswich, Hearts and Southampton were born out of fostering a good team spirit with no real genuine high profile stars. Burley has no real experience of managing top class professionals who come with high profile media attention and big egos.
It is clear that the squad spirit and togetherness fostered under Smith and McLeish, that in part aided us in gaining results we had no right to expect, is no longer there. This is evidenced by comments emanating from the camp and the retirements of McCulloch and then Boyd.
Burley has made a few faux pas in the media in regards to dealing with his players. To call up Broadfoot, who helped get his tenure as Scotland manager back on track, and then describe him as having "limited ability" was frankly incredulous. How the manager of our national team could make such a naive and frankly idiotic statement left me dumbfounded. Whether the statement is true or not, and even if it was meant as a compliment, it was a ridiculously poor choice of words.
This has further been compounded by his choice of words since he caused boyd to retire from the international scene. When explaining why he left Boyd on the bench and instead turned to Iwelumo and Fletcher, he stated boyd had not proven himself at club level. Boyd has a goalscoring record at all levels of the game that cannot be matched by many. He has been our top scorer for the past few seasons, playing at the biggest club in Scotland. He even had a phenomenal record at Killie, topping the goalscoring charts at both clubs and being the SPL's top scorer 2 seasons ago. He has scored in cup finals under extreme pressure to turn the game for Rangers and has scored in Europe. Iwelumo is a journey man who has only demostrated a decent strike rate recently in the Championship. Fletcher is relatively inexperience in first team football and struggled to find the net at the beginning of the season. Indeed he was in very poor form (one u21 international aside) at the start of this year. I think it is clear who has and hasn't established themselves at club level.
If Burley had said he did not pick him because he had not been featuring in the Rangers starting line up recently it would be slightly easier to swallow. Although Boyd had started 5 of the opening 8 league games scoring four times in all competitions. Iwelumo on the other hand had been suspended for his club's 3 fixtures heading into the internationals. If Burley had meant that he hadn't been featuring as much recently it still would not wash with me.
If further highlights Burley's incompetence. either he is uncomfortable in front of the camera and cannot get out precisely what he means, or he is a fool who makes statements that do not stand upto scrutiny.
He lacks the required acumen and vocabulary to deal with the media effectively, often leaving himself looking a bit ridiculous. He cannot handle big name players from big clubs and he is ruining the cohesion and togtherness that is vital to a national squad from small countries who rely on team work, players fighting for each other and the manager to achieve results that should be beyond our collective talents.
The list of potential candidates to succeed McLeish was frankly underwhelming. The inexpereince McGhee, the ultimately unssuccesful Burns, the abrasive and Souness and Burley. For me Burley looked like the correct choice. McGhee had not proven himself for long enough or worked at a high enough level. Burns teams play pretty football but do not do what matters and that is win. Souness has not really been succesful since leaving Rangers and has a knack of aggravating players that would be detrimental to one of our key strengths, squad spirit and harmony.
Prior to Romanov's meddling Burley had Hearts sitting pretty atop the SPL pile. He achieved impressive results with Ipswich and Southampton and was the obvious choice. Hindsight can be a real killer though.
I see parallel's in the current national situation with Rangers ill-fated PLG-era. Much like Burley, everyone lauded the capture of PLG. Quickly though, it became apparent he was out of his comfort zone and was the wrong man for the job. The question was how long did you give him to prove himself before it became apparent he was not upto the job. If you don't give someone long enough to implement their ideas you might never now how succesful they might have been. Look at Sir Alex at Man Utd who was close to relegation and the sack early on. How glad they must be that they gave him time.
However, with Rangers turn around in fortunes under Smith, it is clear Murray was right to oust PLG as soon as possible. If we allow Burley to continue blundering from mistake to mistake, poor performance to poor performance, poor result to poor result, we will only go further backwards. It is time now to make the change, stop the rot and hope the new manager can achieve the results to secure second place in this qualification group.
We currently sit second on 4 points. But with a double header against Holland up next we could be sitting on just 4 points after 5 games, behind Norway, Macedonia or Iceland and struggling to reach South Africa. We need the SFA to act now if we are to have a fighting chance of making the play offs.
