Even if the Czechs do us a huge favour by slipping up, qualification remains a mammoth task

FIRST the good news. Unlike in some previous qualifying tournaments, this time the group runners-up with the worst record do not get eliminated.

No matter if Scotland stumble over the finishing line on the lowest points total of all second-placed teams, they will still make the play-offs. The best runners-up go straight through to the Euro 2012 finals in Poland and Ukraine; the other eight fight it out for the remaining places.

Now the bad news. Even though Craig Levein was technically correct – and professionally obliged – to say that Scotland can still make it into second place, the odds are stacked against them. It is not yet impossible for them to qualify from Group I. Just highly implausible.

The Czech Republic, who have two games to play, are on ten points. Scotland, with three matches remaining, are on five. Even if Scotland win all three – tomorrow against Lithuania, then away to Liechtenstein and Spain next month – they will still need the Czechs to drop more than two points from their remaining two games. If both teams end up on 14 points – which will happen if the Czechs get a win and a draw, and Scotland win those three remaining matches – second place will be decided on the teams’ head-to-head record. The Czechs won in Prague and drew in Glasgow, and would therefore go through.

So we need the Czechs to lose either at home to Spain on 7 October or against Lithuania in Kaunas four days later. Or, perhaps more conceivably, to draw both. They would then end up with 12 or 13 points, putting paid to their hopes of the play-offs if Scotland get those three wins.

That’s the arithmetic of it, anyway. No longer in charge of our own destiny, we are reliant on Michal Bilek’s team slipping up. They have done so before in this campaign, having gone down by a single goal at home to the Lithuanians almost exactly a year ago. And they have already lost to Spain too – 2-1 in Granada back in March. But on Saturday they looked like a team who had put those reverses behind them, and who had reacquired the knack of getting a result when it is needed most. In any case, let’s be honest. Even if the Czechs do slip up, what are the chances of Scotland reaching a points total that would be good enough to finish ahead of them? Levein’s team, remember, have just five points from five matches – a tally made up of Saturday’s result, the goalless draw in Lithuania which kicked off the competition, and just one solitary win, the 2-1 result against Liechtenstein secured by Stephen McManus’s goal in the seventh minute of injury time.

If we can only scrape one win from five matches, and that an extremely fortunate and last-gasp win, what are our chances of winning three in a row? If we can’t beat the Czechs at home, what are our prospects when it comes to beating Lithuania, who got the better of them away?

If it takes us 97 minutes to prevail over Liechtenstein at Hampden, will we run out of time before breaking them down away? And even if all those things come good for Levein, who would envy him the task of going to the World Cup winners and coming home with three points?

That game in Alicante kicks off at the same time as the Lithuania-Czech encounter, making it more probable that Scotland will have to play for a win. It should all be academic by then for Spain, who can win the group at home to Liechtenstein tomorrow. But can we expect them to be indifferent about their result with Scotland? That, too, seems highly implausible.