An Forward Tho We Canna See We Guess and Fear

That's me, making the time-honoured reaction of a Scottish journalist in times of crisis, fire-in a quote from Burns. But, when you look at Scottish football in Europe, maybe the Allan McShagger of the late 18th century had a point.

We might be, looked at from that sophisticated hot-spot of the West End of London be a small, far-awy country, of which we know little, but from elsewhere in European football, we are all that and more. After another depressing night of European defeat, we are now, more than ever, down among the bottom feeders of the beautiful game on this continent.

When I first picked up a telephone and asked to be put through to copy - decades before the lap top became a basic tool of the journalism game - we looked patronisingly down on Scandinavian football; if Rangers were taken to a third game by Sparta Rotterdam, it was because of a poor display by Rangers, not because the Dutch were just as good.

Ditto, when Scotland lost to the Dutch, or the Swedes, the Portugese, the Turks, the Norwegians, the Southern Irish, the Swiss or the Belgians - bad day at the office, selectorial incompetence, tiredness after a long season were the reasons - not because, basically we were gash.

It's not as if this week's upsets were a shock, we've been having bad nights and bad weeks in Europe for at least a decade and nothing is ever done about it.

Our game lang syne went to the dogs - will somebody please make this fact known to the SFA and get something done about it.

I listened to the second half of the Celtic game and the final minutes of the Motherwell match on the radio on Thursday night. It was like hearing a loop tape, the same old excuses, well-rehearsed wailing, but there again, any programme such as Sportsound, which attempts to portray Chick Young as a serious journalist, is doing its listeners a dis-service.

Question: Why does BBC Scotland insist on sending Murdo MacLeod to cover Celtic matches - is it mandatory that they have an apologist reading from the club's authorised version at every game?

I think I'll stick to Scottish rugby - they might not be any good, but they're trying and have no false vision about our place in that game's firmament.