Hmmm. Interesting.

England, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania and Malta.

It’s tricky. Not as tricky as Group A though; or G. And it might have been better to be in Group B.

The England games will take care of themselves, I suppose, but we’ve come unstuck against Lithuania before.

We’ll just have to make the best of it.

Euro 2012, Hampden Park, 6/9/11

Well; a win, but again from the highlights this is one that could have had a different outcome. Lithuania had some chances too.

Scotland should have had it won early, and not just with the penalty that Darren Fletcher didn’t score. Barry Bannan impressed in midfield, though.

So as usual we’re not to be put out of our uncertainty till the last.

We ought to beat Liechtenstein. (We ought to.)

Can’t see it against Spain, though. Can you?

Hampden Park, 12/10/10

Well this was much brighter. Two good goals and coming from behind to equalise. Against the World Champions* too. It just shows the benefits of having a go sometimes. Mind you I only watched the highlights show at 11.05.

The timidity of the (lack of) ambition in evidence against Lithuania and in the Czech Rep was shown up by this performance. We are capable of creating chances and of scoring them – even against the best. Okay it was at home and with a fierce vocal backing. But Spain are a much greater force than the two teams from whom we filched merely one point and who now have four and three respectively in our mini tournament to decide the upper lower (or lower upper if you prefer) placings in the group. Spain will win it overall, Liechtenstein will be bottom.

It’s all left us with too much to do.

*The official World Champions. Japan (!) are now the unofficial World Champions. That title has changed hands twice now since the World Cup.

Hampden Park, 7/9/10.

On the highlights (there were highlights?) Liechtenstein looked like a team. They were comfortable in possession, passing the ball, running in support, and in Mario Frick they had a very good player in their ranks – who took his goal superbly but ought to have been closed down to prevent it happening. Every time they got the ball I thought – they’re going to score, they’re going to score – and eventually they did.

Scotland looked nothing like a team, disjointed, unable to make the simplest pass or run, scared of possession: but got out of jail.

There is no point dreaming of qualification – notwithstanding the fact that Lithuania won in the Czech Rep last night (we won’t) – and even if by some miracle we do qualify what’s the use? We’d only get humped in every game in the finals; or the play-offs.

Even the chance to become unofficial world champions has now been taken away after Spain were demolished by Argentina yesterday.

Dariaus Ir Gireno Stadium, Kaunas, 3/9/10.

This was so frustrating. I expected Lithuania to be much better than they were. Given that we were so dominant in the first half while playing an essentially defensive formation why not change to something more attacking at half-time? (That was also the perfect time to replace Scott Brown who had become a liability.)

As it was McFadden wasn’t brought on till 25 minutes to go which didn’t give him enough time to be effective. Not that the ball was delivered to him often enough anyway.

And Kris Boyd wasn’t brought on at all: whatever you think of him he’s more of a natural goalscorer than anything we had on show in the starting line-up.

We’ll probably struggle against Liechtenstein on Tuesday night too.

Spain, now, we just might beat when they come round. We’re perverse that way.

Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Spain.

The last two in this list mean we’ve virtually no chance of qualifying.

Barring a miracle.