With Scotland looking pretty likely to finish bottom of their WC qualifying group, I was trying to figure out if we would be the "best" team, or at least the highest ranked, to have suffered that rather embarrassing fate in the modern era.

 

By modern era I suppose I mean the last 20 years or so, the time since UEFA was flooded with new participants after the break up of the former communist countries, along with the admission of numerous other mickey mouse states. Prior to the early 90's, qualifying groups were much smaller and consisted almost entirely of credible teams, with the only easy games being against Luxembourg and Malta.

 

A look back through UEFA's WC and Euro qualifying tournaments reveals that the only nations with any real footballing pedigree to have finished bottom were Bulgaria and Wales. 

 

I would say that Bulgaria finishing bottom is actually a much greater demise than Scotland, given that they have achieved far more in recent decades and were World Cup semi-finalists in the 1990's.  What is interesting to note is how quickly they have turned things around - from finishing bottom just 2 years ago, they are currently 2nd in their group, ahead of Czech R and Denmark. I just can't imagine that we would bounce back like that.

 

 

 

We're fortunate that UEFA are the only region that don't have a pre-qualifying section! All the other confederations weed out the weaker teams before their competition 'proper'. In Europe, we get all the teams going straight into the group stages meaning results like, Ukraine 9-0 San Marino.

 

Having 54 members (with Gibraltar now included) it would be feasible to eliminate 9 nations before the groups. That would leave 9 groups of 5 teams.

9 home-and-away play-offs would achieve this, consisting of the 18 bottom ranked sides being split into 2 pots of 9. And there are times when Scotland would be involved!

 

We were unlucky to get Wales as our pot 6 'minnow' in this campaign - the Faroe Islands were in the pot above Wales. The mind boggles to think that the world's most expensive ever player plays for a team seeded most recently behindthe Faroe Islands!!

Playing the way we have recently, we are improving quite a bit. From bottom to second may be asking a lot, but we will not be as poor in the table for the next campaign, even though we will be 5th or even 6th in the seedings. However even 4 points in the next few games could change everything, but it could also be 0 points.

Hate to say it but Strachan has changed the outlook, not because I dont want Scotland to be successful, more than I cant stand the man.

I understand that Scotland are to be placed in pot 4 for the Euro 2016 qualifying draw regardless of the outcome of the rest of this campaign.

Since Gordon Strachan took over at least Scotland have been playing with a bit of passion and commitment and another good result tonight which they would never have got under Levine

Has anyone noticed that Wales have lost all 6 of their games that weren't against Scotland?!

 

And if we'd held onto our leads and won instead of lost both those games, our home game against Croatia could have been the 2nd place decider.

And has anyone noticed that you spend far too much time at your computer and not enough stacking shelves

And one of Watford's Finest Italian Imports scored on his debut!

http://youtu.be/LLkxVDeHGl4