Alex McLeish’s Scotland tenure comes under a massive spotlight tomorrow with the SFA equally in the firing line.
The former Rangers (IL) boss is believed to be facing a tax bill of around £2m from his Ibrox days but Albania at Hampden tomorrow night will provide a more immediate challenge of his evasive skills.
After five years out of management in the UK McLeish touted himself endlessly before landing the SFA gig which is believed to pay around £500,000 a year.
A couple of seasons on that money coupled with increased fees as a pundit might allow the Scotland boss to strike a deal with HMRC but it appears that the strain is getting through to the London-based manager.
I’m not well up on this but is this right: our governing body have put a man in charge who could be made to repay tax bills he racked up through cheating the Scottish game and if he does need to he’ll pay it from wages he’s earned by scottish football fans paying into our game?
— ?jai? (@coybigjai) September 7, 2018
Faced with the dilemma of having two outstanding left-backs to pick from McLeish decided to play Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney both out of position, one as a wing-back and the other as a central defender.
Under the former Rangers (IL) boss caps have been handed out to Ryan Jack, Jason Cummings and Jamie Murphy.
On the opposite side of the park Ryan Fraser has helped Bournemouth to an impressive start in the EPL as a winger. What did McLeish do? Convert him into a defender to cope with the team ranked number two in the FIFA rankings with attacking options from every area of the park.
With just over 20,000 fans paying into Hampden to watch Belgium a Monday night match with Albania won’t test the traffic in the southside of Glasgow.
One more slip from McLeish, taking his record to five defeats in six matches will see criticism multiply.
Whether new chief executive Ian Maxwell has the guts to make a big decision is highly doubtful, since coming to power in May the SFA has tumbled along in the same manner as it did under Stewart Regan where honest mistakes are entirely predictable.
Albania awaits and the end of the McLeish experiment, after that Tierney, Leigh Griffiths and co can return to real football under their highly professional club manager.