As he dished out a cocktail of excuses and cliches after losing 2-1 to Israel Alex McLeish revealed just how mixed up he is.
Players and managers can sometimes get a name mixed up but with the slow motion delivery of the Scotland boss everything is measured.
After five years out of management in the UK the pressure is on McLeish to justify the faith shown in him by Alan McRae with serious doubts around outside the SFA bubble about his appointment.
Among the excuses that McLeish had to trot out he had to involve Charlie Mulgrew and John Souttar.
The Blackburn defender revealed a half time muscle injury while the Hearts man picked up his second yellow card 16 minutes into the second half.
Aberdeen’s Scott McKenna replaced Mulgrew at the start of the second half but as he contemplated replacing Souttar McLeish thought that he still had McKenna on the bench.
In his general media conference after the match the Scotland boss said: “I thought the red card was very soft. Referee about 60 yards away, he’s not up with play. Maybe he has something in his ear. Maybe John will look and think he should have played it a bit quicker.
“We were ready to take John Souttar off there. It was really ill timing for us because we had McKenna ready to go on. It was just about getting the play stopped. Unfortunately the play stopped for them and a red card for John.”
Six minutes after Souttar was sent off McLeish sent on James Forrest to replace to replace Johnny Russell.
The Celtic winger was standing around for six minutes stripped and ready to get on, reading through pages of instructions from assistant manager James McFadden.
Last night’s result leaves all three teams in the group with three points, on Sunday Israel host Albania while Scotland play a friendly against Portugal.