Reputations of McCoist and Lennon on the line

AS ALLY McCoist and Neil Lennon strive to be as successful in management as they were on the playing field, they will be desperate to avoid an almost unimaginable entry being added to their CVs this week.

For it could be on their respective watches at the helm of Rangers and Celtic that Scotland are overtaken by the might of Cyprus in the Uefa co- efficient ranking table.

That is the latest humiliation waiting to be heaped on Scottish football this Thursday night if McCoist and Lennon cannot overcome poor first leg results and guide the Old Firm into the group stage of the Europa League.

As days of reckoning go, it is perhaps about as bleak as they come. It would be grim enough for all of Scotland’s participants in European club competition to be eliminated before the end of August for the first time.

But being superceded in the crucial Uefa standings by a tiny island nation with a population of just 800,000 would brutally expose the full extent of Scotland’s decline on the continental stage.

As it stands, Scotland sit in 16th place in the provisional rankings which will determine the access list for the Champions League and Europa League in 2013-14. Any hope of securing a top-15 berth, which grants two Champions League entrants, has already all but gone.

Instead, it’s a case of trying to hold off Cyprus who are currently just .017 of a co-efficient point behind Scotland in 17th place. Like Scotland, the Cypriots have three clubs still competing in Europe this week but they collectively managed to achieve better first leg results than Rangers, Celtic and Hearts.

APOEL Nicosia trail 1-0 from the first leg of their Champions League play-off against Wisla Krakow and harbour high hopes of overturning that deficit on home soil to reach the group stage of the elite tournament, an achievement which earns four bonus co-efficient points which alone would be enough for Cyprus to climb above Scotland.

In the Europa League, both Omonia Nicosia, 2-1 first leg winners at home to Salzburg, and AEK Larnaca, goalless after the first leg away to Rosenborg, are in decent shape to reach the group stage.

With Hearts out of the equation after their 5-0 home drubbing by Tottenham, it is down to the Old Firm to somehow keep the tattered Scottish flag flying beyond this week in Europe.

For McCoist and Lennon, it is a week when their credibility as managers of the clubs they love will come under intense scrutiny. Even this early in his Ibrox tenure, McCoist can barely afford to contemplate back-to-back first hurdle exits from the Champions League and Europa League. The loss to Malmo in the elite tournament was damaging enough, both financially and in terms of Rangers’ stature. To slip out of the secondary competition against Slovenian opposition just three weeks later would represent a major black mark against McCoist.

He has expressed his confidence Rangers will repair the damage done in their 2-1 first leg defeat in Maribor last Thursday night but the Scottish champions’ wretched recent record in Europe, with just one win from their last 24 European games, does little to back up their manager’s undimmed positivity.

Lennon has sought to be equally upbeat about Celtic’s prospects of progress after their toothless 0-0 draw at home to Sion. Yet how many of their supporters will travel to Switzerland with genuine optimism on the back of Celtic’s dismal run of just one win from their last 29 away games in Europe, losing 22 of them?

While reclaiming the SPL title remains the prime objective for Lennon in his second full season as manager, falling in Europe again at the first attempt, following last year’s rapid exits against Braga and Utrecht, would be a blight on his reputation.