The strategy is starting to become a little less fuzzy. But Steve Clarke’s Scotland rebuild remains disconcertingly behind schedule.
Tomorrow night the national manager will send out his team to face Kazakhstan at a half empty Hampden Park and finally put this tortuous ordeal of a qualification campaign to sleep. And not a moment too soon either.
And yet he will then find himself completely out of time even though there are still four months until he leads the country into a Hail Mary shot at the play-offs for Euro 2020. The truth is, Clarke is getting there but nowhere near quickly enough for his own liking.
The signs in Cyprus on Saturday were mildly encouraging but nothing much more than that. For every reason to think better times might be around the next turn, there was another to remind us of exactly where Scotland really stands in the world order. And it’s just down the road from rock bottom.
There’s a reason we are kicking around in the dirt - it’s because that’s precisely where we deserve to be - and an iffy 2-1 win in Nicosia hardly paints a picture of a re-energised, re-branded Scotland side on the brink of doing something truly substantial on the big stage.
The truth of the matter is, Clarke could not have complained too loudly had his team been on the end of a defeat against the Cypriots who had one perfectly good goal disallowed and went on to squander another three or four very presentable chances.
Yes, Clarke is correct when he points to tomorrow’s homecoming as an opportunity to win three games on the bounce for the first time in two years. But when those three games are against San Marino, Cyprus and Kazakhstan is it really something he wants to crow about?
And that’s the problem the manager faces right now. He may be the only optimist left inside the building.
The more he tries to convince the rest of us, the less inclined we are to believe even though some evidence is starting to slowly stack up in his favour.
Put it this way, if he can’t make a half decent team out of the likes of Ryan Christie, James Forrest, John McGinn, Steven Naismith, Callum McGregor and Ryan Jack then he should hand back his tracksuit top on Wednesday morning and remove himself from harm’s way.
And yet there is no denying that, on Saturday, he saw this part of his plan begin to come together.
McGinn is now no longer a midfielder in the traditional sense. Clarke quite clearly wishes to deploy this buzz bomb of a player in such an advanced role that he is almost operating as a second striker. With a return of five goals in five games that seems like pretty sound logic on the manager’s behalf.
Christie too has played his way into Clarke’s team sheet for the play-offs. His goal at the weekend was a thing of beauty even if the Cypriots seemed criminally unaware of the dangers of allowing him to drift inside onto his magic wand of a left boot.
James Forrest on the left wing? That’s an experiment that Neil Lennon has long since given up on at Celtic but it could be that Clarke has a defined system in mind and that he was attempting to make any changes to that as minimal as possible.
That could mean Forrest was merely filling in for the all-too-often absent Ryan Fraser but there’s a couple of issues with that. The first is that Fraser has developed a bit of a habit for picking and choosing when he’s feeling fit enough to pull on a dark blue shirt. The second is that Forrest has already proven himself to be a match winner at this level and it would seem absurd not to want to have him in Scotland’s starting line-up.
There are certain players upon whom a manager can hang his hat and Forrest comes into that category along with Naismith who led Clarke’s attacking line on Saturday despite hardly having kicked a ball all season at Hearts.
Again, Clarke called this one spot on.
Naismith may still be playing his way back into full fitness and top form but, even so, - and although he’s knocking on a bit at the age 33 - he remains miles ahead of the other available options.
Lawrence Shankland will in time become a regular at this level but Naimsith’s ring craft and all round expertise of playing the position make him the outstanding candidate.
As for the two Ollies, McBurnie and Burke? Clarke appears to have a decent handle on their respective deficiencies and this view can only have been reinforced on Saturday when they came on from the bench and impacted negatively on the standard of Scotland’s performance.
Without Naismith winning free kicks and bringing his team mates into play, Scotland became disjointed and unable to get up the pitch.
So, yes, Clarke does seem to be getting there and making more good decisions than bad. But, despite all of this, Scotland remain a pretty uninspiring bunch.
In fact, given the fragilities in Clarke’s ever changing back four, they can be a fairly terrifying lot at times as was the case at the weekend when Scott McKenna and Declan Gallacher bumped into one another for the very first time.
There could be a decent partnership in there somewhere as both of these young central defenders share a lot of sought after attributes. But Clarke’s entire backline went about its business in such a sloppy manner it did feel as if these players had only just been introduced half an hour or so before kick-off.
That’s a huge concern given Clarke’s reputation for being so meticulously well drilled and defensively organised.
Whatever he’s been doing with these players it’s plainly not working and now there is no time left to fix it.
Given the need for experience and calm heads, the manager might soon have cause to regret throwing Charlie Mulgrew under a buss in Moscow after seeing him flattened already by the human tank that is Artem Dzyuba.
Yes, Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney will offer upgrades to both full-back positions. But until Scotland’s defence is operating as one cohesive, joined up unit, then chances will be given up as they were at the weekend. And better teams that Cyprus will not be so forgiving.
The most encouraging news of all then for Clarke right now is that there may not actually be anyone better than Cyprus waiting for Scotland. Not tomorrow at Hampden and not in the first play-off round at least where he’ll face the international also-rans of Bulgaria, Romania or Israel.
Scant comfort perhaps. But right now Clarke’s Scotland must take anything it can get.
