Stuart Bathgate: Brazil bid will flounder if we don’t show adventure

THE football enthusiast Roger Waters wrote these lines, in the Pink Floyd song Time.

“And then one day you find

Ten games have got behind you.

No-one told you when to run

You’ve missed the starting gun.”

Well, what he actually wrote was ten years, but the message remains relevant after the start of another World Cup qualifying campaign in which Craig Levein’s Scotland preferred caution to urgency, safety to adventure. If they carry on like this, their hopes of reaching the final will be gone before they are aware of it.

Of course, nothing is decided after one match, and there are another 27 points to play for in Group A in addition to the one picked up at home to Serbia in Saturday’s goalless draw. But can you really foresee any radical change to the national team’s style of play over the course of the campaign? Or do you expect them to carry on as they have begun, picking up points here and there, no doubt, but lacking the conviction to carry off anything really inspiring?

Let’s face it. Already, after just one round of fixtures, the group table looks ominous. Belgium and Croatia clear on three points, the rest trailing behind.

It’s going to be a tight contest involving six teams, none of whom are either world-beaters or complete no-hopers. But the Belgians and Croatians have a bit more class than the rest, and certainly a sharper cutting edge,

If they are to be thrown off their stride, one of the other nations will have to try something unexpected, something unorthodox, something risky. And that applies not only to the games against Belgium and Croatia themselves, but equally to the other matches. Because if you do not get the better of your other opponents, the odd shock win against the two current leaders will be of little use in the long run.

When we advocate something risky we are not talking about throwing caution to the wind, or of treating every game as if it were do or die. There will be times when a draw is a good result, and at those times Scotland should settle for the point, not go gung-ho in the last ten minutes.

But in a group where a small improvement in performance could make a big difference to a nation’s final place, there are also times when something more venturesome needs to be attempted. Playing with two strikers, for example. Or giving an in-form goalscorer more than ten minutes on the pitch.

Levein, who again started with Kenny Miller on his own up front before replacing him with Jordan Rhodes in the 80th minute, insisted last week that selection is “not about two strikers meaning you get more goals”. He was proven right on Saturday, at least in the sense that Robert Snodgrass and Steven Naismith had scoring chances as well as Miller himself. In theory, you can start with any number of formations and as long as your players are gifted enough and fast enough, they could still score a barrel-load.

But Scotland’s players are not gifted enough, and pace was one thing which was conspicuously lacking against the Serbs. And if you are not converting any of the chances you create in a 4-1-4-1 formation, you should consider changing it, in order to create more chances and to get more players on who are more likely to score with them.

After the match on Saturday, Levein accepted that he “maybe” did not give enough time on the pitch to Rhodes and the other substitutes, Jamie Mackie and James Forrest. A determined competitor as a player, he has taken that quality into management, and does not readily accept criticism of his decisions. So that “maybe” was always going to be as close as he came to admitting any mistake.

But determination can become stubbornness, and that characteristic is too often self-defeating, becoming a refusal to learn. When the teams were announced before the match, there must have been hundreds of conversations around the stadium about when Rhodes would come off the bench. In the group I was in, it was suggested that 65 minutes would be the right time, giving him long enough to get a feel for the game, but that Levein would probably wait a little longer.

Some argued that Miller would stick out the 90, but we all agreed that if Rhodes were to come on he would need a decent amount of time. Otherwise, there would be no point in giving him a run-out.

Now Levein, as he has reminded us, knows more about football management than any of his critics who have never done the job themselves. So he must know how long it takes a player to fit into the pace of an international.

Yet still he gave Rhodes no more than a token outing. This tendency and others suggest that Levein’s strategy is suited to keeping Scotland’s hopes alive for as long as possible rather than to actually fulfilling them. In the process, the will to live will be slowly squeezed out of those many supporters who long for something more dramatic, more passionate.

A comatose patient is alive, and with careful nursing may be kept alive for some time. But something else is required if they are to burst back into fully conscious life.

When Walter Smith took over the national team after Berti Vogts, a period of caution was required, as Scotland needed to become harder to beat before they could progress to something more positive. Eight years on, we should have gone on to that something more positive by now.

At club level, Levein’s careful husbanding of resources was a relative success, ensuring that his teams were often the best of the rest behind the big two.

At international level, in a group which is all about coming first or second, there can be no satisfaction in finishing third. At present, however, it appears that such a position is the most Scotland can hope for.