Andy’s Sting In The Tale (09/10/26) "Slip Sliding Away"
OK, we’ve had better weeks.
But we’ve also had worse.
Our nearest neighbours, England, looked quite amazing while humbling Croatia in front of a closed doors capacity crowd of stunned silenced kids.
England were superb in taking apart the highly ranked mainstay of the old Yugoslavia.
An amazing football statement to the world and Luca M summed it up later, “I feel ASHAMED after that match. Losing like this and ruining the reputation we’ve built over the years is UNACCEPTABLE”.
Later that same night we (43 in the rankings), were given a stark wake up call at home by a lesser Balkan nation, Slovenia, who rank below us at 52 but looked so much better than we did on and off the ball.
Hampden wasn’t full, seemed detached and never really came alive even after Ryan’s cheeky side heeler had given us a lead we didn’t deserve.
The performance, result and matters arising from certainly gave our chattering, media-gossip-spreaders and ‘football news inventors’ plenty of meaningless and cheap chaff to fill their allocated times and column inches.
Nobody is calling for the manager to resign.
Yet.
But resign he will and statistically it will be sooner rather than later.
If he turns us around starting in November, he’ll soon enough escape for a top club site.
If circumstances continue to conspire, as I suspect they will, he’ll be blamed for the relative decline and find a way forward for himself.
That’s football.
One thing that is a Scottish truism in October 2026, is 3rd Pot for the upcoming Euro draws isn’t good enough.
And that’s where we’re heading.
But our fast approaching relative failure is not because of anything our new manager has brought to the party.
In the cold light of ‘Scottish Managers Analysis’ our game has failed all the managers we’ve had for the last 40 years.
Why, Andy?
Our constant and growing failure to work on, protect, and invest in whatever ‘blend’ of football pyramidical infrastructure is right for our small nation.
As a time when there is more money coming into our game than ever before the stark reality is it gets constantly gobbled up by ‘consumption’ by those who really run the game.
A ‘Seed corn is for losers’ mentality.
Instead a Vivien Nicholson, ‘Spend, Spend, Spend’ approach to everything.
Self-interest especially at the top is totally understandable because football is all about cash flows and survival plans.
Nobody has ever considered what to do when self-interest becomes an increasingly toxic ivy choking the future of our game.
Moribundity is its predictable harvest whether we have a good or bad, new or old, foreign or home-grown manager.
So no surprises to me why we are where we are.
And those who run our game are trying, (sometimes very), but they are neither on top of the problem nor doing the double digging needed to start fashioning a solution.
Not totally rudderless because our game in many ways is well run, but just with the wheel locked in ‘managing a decline mode’.
Tick-box solutions from the centre like the B teams and Conference League Fiasco of a few years back demonstrated how difficult it is to first identify the right strategies for us and then start to get them working.
And the recent excellent work by Craig Mulholland could be a positive start but just watch our top clubs find reasons to prevaricate, debate, confuse and reject, without blame bouncing back on them.
Andy’s Sting in the Tale
1. Lise Klaveness and an Iwo Jima Moment?
2. How to Best Skelp City’s Bum?
3. Record SPFL Income
4. Big Game in Czechia
1. Lise Like a Dog With a Bone
The Norwegian FA this week continued the Uefa war of attrition by concentrating specifically on the conduct of Infantino.
“To establish the facts”, about Jahnnie’s behaviours and actions in office.
She/ They are putting ‘stuff’ into the records and public domain and like Gulliver being tied down string by string by the Lilliputians are raising the standard for a campaign that other nations may or may not follow.
Like the USA soldiers raising the US Flag on Iwo Jima.
An Idea from Andy
Klaveness for Interim Fifa President?
Let’s elect Lise as interim Fifa President for an agreed term of restructuring and then have token Presidents coming on a rotation going forward.
Put the power back to a long term balanced programme of actions rather than the maverick power-mad man there today.
2. Some Parallels to Our 2012 Car Crash
We had our own quite spectacular disaster in the build-up, during and after our particular post-Murray 2012 carnage.
My pal was one of the many who lost his prize debentures and the stark reality that the future of our game was put in doubt by the collapse of our well supported blue club saw a series of different outcomes being fashioned not in a planned way, but as needed and much more randomly.
Turnbull Hutton’s Push-back nearly led to a revolt.
But the club were allowed to start anew and history shows after a while, took the fans with them, even during the quite outrageous carpetbagging in plain sight years of abuse.
Man City are a different kettle of fish.
Owned by a rich gulf state they won’t go bust, but that very ownership has made it a political powder keg for our Prime Minister because UAE have spending clout he needs.
As with Rangers there is discussion of what happens to all things, including titles won during the ‘cheating years’.
There are talks of a huge £1 Billion fine going into ‘football’, grass roots upwards.
There are also the usual twisted friendships and petty vendettas to negotiate.
And finally a guaranteed appeal conveyor-belt just starting that won’t just stop.
Lawyers like fees too.
But it’s even more complex because the Premier League is a constantly changing member-based grouping of just 20 clubs.
Everyone knows, it would be easier if the deal is done in the PL rather than through the courts.
The sheer scale is scary and all that is certain is a fast consensus and set of appeasements is better than a series of wars of attrition.
Fascinating.
3. The Boys Done Good, But
This week the SPFL announced that it had distributed a record £50 Million to members in the last year and their chairman said that was well ahead of ambitious targets.
Yes it’s peanuts compared to the revenues down south but it’s real pound notes and makes a difference.
And yes, I also feel angry that we draw too much from the easy ‘Gambling-Well’.
I also don’t like the way that the SPFL see their responsibilities as just their 42 members because regular readers will know I think we should be integrating grass roots into all our structures, and pay outs because they are grass roots foundations for all clubs.
I’d say the vast majority of the funds, welcome as they are, will simply go into player wages, i.e. immediate consumption, because ‘foreign mercenaries’ are collectively sucking the life out of our kid’s game.
The SPFL monies fund things like performance based prize money, parachute payments, Scottish Women’s Premier League, Premier Sports Cup and KDM evolution.
4. Good Luck
The CFIG Arena in Pardubice tonight sees a tough away fixture as the first play off to reach the World Cup.
But if we prevail there is a tough round two against probably Sweden so not an easy task.
It’s live on Alba tonight and the second leg is in Paisley on the 14th.
Erin’s on the bench.
Sting is:
A wee blog by a lifetime fan who tries to see the wood from the trees.
I want to see our kids game getting real priority status, and not just at the elite end.
Feel free to disagree with anything I say because that is healthy and I reserve the right to change my mind.
The Scottish Football Union
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Collective fan’s voices have never been more needed.
We don’t throw mud at the tents of the high heid yins because that doesn’t work but we don’t give them an easy time and they listen.
They to a man know kids football is under-planned under-resourced and much more vital than the support it is given.
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Andy’s Album of the Week
Paul Simon: Still Crazy After All These Years
I first heard this album as a passenger in a pink Simca driven by my then football coach Sandy between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, after a match in Edinburgh with a beer-stop in Scone at an upmarket-ish motel type place with water beds.
I liked the sound and feel, great for quieter occasions too.
Bought.
I hear you thinking.
How could I be a Prog-Rock afficionado but play Paul Simon, Carole King, Dylan and even James Taylor?
Because I couldn’t even pigeon-hole myself.
Paul Simon actually does a lot of pigeon-holing on this album and the title track is sad and uplifting.
This, his 4th album, got great reviews like in the NME where Bob Worlfenden said, “Blood on the tracks aside, Still Crazy is the best album you’ll hear all year”.
Agreed Bob, but why did they hold over ‘Slip Slidin Away’?
Anyway dig out your copy and play it, and if that means a trip from Edinburgh to Aberdeen in a Pink Simca with the cassette blaring, apart from 20 mins at the Bein Inn in Scone, then so be it.
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