h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok all you virtual supporters with Craig Brown more or less heaving one last ditch prayer heavenwards hoping for a big win over Latvia at home by 6 goals less the number that Belgium beat Croatia by away, just to get into a playoff berth.

So i'm carrying out a vox pop of interested researchers as to who h2g2 thinks should replace him.

Is it only six goals extra they had to get? I thought it was seven. Well that's alright then!

Maybe Sven has shown the way forward and Scotland need a foreign manager with some skill and talent, rather than just a random bloke with a tracksuit - which seems to be the usual selection process?

Aunty.

I don't mind too much who they get as long as they don't poach Jim Jefferies from Bradford! He's Scottish, did great things in the Scottish domestic game with Hearts, and now he seems to have got the Bantams' act together. We need him!

That's great you two. But any suggestions as to who. I'm trying to get an article together ready for next weeks post and any actual suggestions might be helful.

In that case, DD, you mind find this story useful: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/football/world_cup_2002/newsid_1528000/1528281.stm

However, Brown has insisted that he's not going to resign!

That should have read 'you might find...', of course!

He may not resign but opinion up here is that he has to go.

Well, my suggestion about a foreign manager, although facetious, was serious too.

Here's why. When you watched England play a couple of seasons back (or lets face it, anytime since the sixties) they never really looked like a TEAM. What they do look like is eleven blokes who are really good at football, but don't gel in any way at all. Witness last Euro Cup where we briefly played in a 1-9 formation.

But - other European national sides (Portugal springs easily to mind, but all of them more or less) look like a team. Their eleven brilliant players might not be as good as ours (a matter of opinion) but they can do revolutionary stuff like hold a formation, pass to free players, risk a goal, give a goal to someone else, score penalties. In fact all those things that make up a winning side.

Now, here's the rub. I have absolutley no idea and few theories about how foreign international managers achieve this. But they do. And British ones don't. And Sven does. So I think we want more of them, and let's face it, in the nicest possible way, it isn't going to get any worse for Scotland, is it? (Sorry, and I'm not a massive Ingerlaand fan at all, in fact I usually support Scotland, but let's face it...)

And I don't know which foreign managers are available or could be interested. But I bet someone does.

There are a couple of things about Sven though: he religiously attends all games, even in the lower divisions (EVERYONE GETS WATCHED), his players know he does (OPINIONS ARE RESPECTED, NOT BASED ON PREJUDICE, AND NO-ONE IS INDISPENSIBLE), he makes them practice penalties (I could talk about this for hours), he commands respect. His methods work.

Hope that helps and it's not too late

Aunty.