Dead man walking, Craig Levein, has been punted as Scotland manager.

The only surprise was it took so long since the Belgium game.

However, as I said at the time, I doubt a change of manager will make much difference. I believe we would have ended up not bottom of our group (though not actually much higher.)

We are a small country on the periphery of Europe with no right to expect great things from our footballers. We are sadly at the moment in playing terms very impoverished. I can’t see a queue to take over forming.

To take one example Belgium has over twice as many people in its population as Scotland. They seem to have hit lucky with a set of good players all coming through at once. We can only wait for such riches.

FIFA World Cup Qualifier: Europe, Group A. King Baudouin Stadium, Brussels. 16/10/12.

So. No miracle in Belgium then.

Given the calibre of their players it was always unlikely.

Given the calibre of ours I doubt a change of manager will make much difference.

Bottom of the group is pretty poor stuff though.

FIFA World Cup Qualifier: Europe, Group A. Cardiff City Stadium, 12/10/12.

All I’ve seen of this are some brief highlights on the TV news.

It seems we had a perfectly good goal chalked off and Wales a dubious penalty, albeit I’ve read they might have had a better prior claim.

Still, Wales were due some comeback on us in a World Cup game.

It was all set up for this result what with them not yet having won under Chris Coleman.

We’re second bottom after three games and we’ve still to play the top two teams in the group. It should be a through-the-fingers viewing job on Tuesday night in Belgium.

That’s the sort of circumstance in which we just might scrape a 1-0 win.

Don’t bet on it, though.

This is the Waterloo War Memorial but it’s not in Belgium and not for the Napoleonic Wars.

Waterloo is a small suburb of Wishaw in Lanarkshire, we passed it on the way home from Culzean.

The Memorial is restrained with nice Celtic cross styling.

A bit further on/back is Newmains.

This War Memorial is for Cambusnethan Parish and is classically military in style. It is situated on a busy roundabout not far from an Asda store but the memorial itself is very imposing.

It is simply covered in names but I did notice some of them were given as from Waterloo. Four other districts from nearby are also represented here. The Scottish War Memorials site suggests this might be the main First World War Memorial for Wishaw (of which Newmains is sometimes administratively a part) and its surrounding villages.