Discredited Vogts is on borrowed time

GLENN GIBBONS AT HAMPDEN PARK

AS A consequence of Scotland’s potentially crippling defeat by Norway, Berti Vogts now carries all the authority and credibility of an ousted president who continues in office through that fallow period between the lost election and the inauguration of his successor.

The German will be in charge of the squad who fly to Moldova today for the next World Cup assignment on Wednesday, but his own departure date from the management of the national team has surely been significantly advanced as a result of having dropped five points in the first two matches of the qualifying campaign, both at Hampden Park.

This assessment of Vogts’s present status and probable future should not be mistaken for speculation, or even wishful thinking. It is, in fact, the unavoidable corollary to the comments of the SFA’s chief executive himself, David Taylor, en route to Valencia last month for the friendly with Spain that immediately preceded the dismal scoreless draw with Slovenia on World Cup opening night.

"We have ten matches in the qualifying group and Berti will lead us through them," said Taylor. "But, obviously, all managers are judged by their results. That is something no-one can escape and we will obviously be monitoring the situation as we go through the campaign. That is something any responsible board would do.

"But, at the moment, with regard to Berti, the position is quite clear. He will be taking us into the qualifying campaign. He is contracted for two tournaments and he has gone through one. Things have to be kept in perspective, where results in friendlies are concerned. These matches are used to prepare us for the competitive games in qualifying for the major tournaments."

Taylor’s confirmation that the manager’s performance would be scrutinised on a match-by-match basis is enough to infer that his board, already in conflict over the desirability of retaining Vogts, are by now shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

That neither the chief executive nor the association president, John McBeth, would respond to questions about the manager’s position immediately after the match was both understandable and unsurprising. They were never likely to wander into that kind of quicksand at that time. Their non-commitment, however, does not indicate a willingness to support Vogts through the remainder of the qualifying schedule.

It is highly improbable, too, that dismissal would be instant, satisfying the voracious appetite of the hack pack for breaking news. With the fourth World Cup match, away to Italy, not due until 26 March, it had always seemed certain that Vogts would be allowed at least to complete the Moldova exercise, allowing his employers a full six months in which to deal with his prospects.

Any actuarial analysis of Vogts’s management of Scotland would reveal the German as an extremely bad risk. The conclusion would not necessarily derive merely from what he has done or failed to do, but from the misfortunes that he tends to attract.

Risk assessors at insurance companies will put a heavy "loading" on anyone they regard as accident-prone. This is the person who may be involved in a series of mishaps, none of which is his fault. It is simply that they are consistently blighted and are, strictly on the basis of statistical probability, forced to pay the penalty.

Vogts, for example, did little wrong in preparing, selecting and deploying his players for the latest set-back against Norway. It may have been legitimate to query the inclusion of Richard Hughes, the Portsmouth midfielder who had not only been omitted from the original squad, but who had played only one match for his club.

But the alternative would have been to drop James McFadden into midfield and pick Paul Dickov’s front-line partner from Steven Thompson, Kenny Miller and Stevie Crawford. It is Vogts’s contention that McFadden is more likely to damage opponents in forward areas and it would be churlish to argue with that view.

McFadden, before his ordering-off for handling the ball on the goal line that gave Norway the penalty-kick from which Steffen Iversen scored the only goal, and Darren Fletcher both confirmed the suspicion that they would be damagingly short of match practice and sharpness as a result of regular nonselection for their club sides.

But, even allowing for this unsurprising rustiness, both of these young players still have much to prove. It is obvious that they possess fundamental skills - McFadden at his best is a particularly pleasing kind of old-fashioned talent - but they remain considerably short of exerting a telling influence on the outcome of matches.

Vogts, however, is not exactly over-burdened with alternatives and nobody could reasonably quibble with the manager’s XI to face the Norwegians. If Craig Gordon, the young Hearts goalkeeper, was guilty of a deadly hesitation in leaving his line to intercept the Magne Hoseth corner-kick from which the visitors won their penalty-kick, it is impossible to argue that his alternative, David Marshall of Celtic, would have done anything different.

That Age Hareide’s Norway team were not appreciably superior to the Scots, but still achieved victory, merely confirms the impression that Vogts, in addition to other, more obvious flaws, lacks that indefinable knack of bringing an unsatisfactory performance to a satisfactory conclusion.

In the context of promise for the future, however, the German’s most disturbing imperfection is his overall judgment. To have said in the immediate aftermath of this defeat that he was proud of his players because they had been so impressive was little short of scandalous.

In other managers, this kind of grotesque appraisal could be interpreted as a deliberate attempt at raising the spirits of a squad who face another crucial match in Chisinau just four days later. But Vogts made the same observation so often and so insistently in similar, adverse circumstances that it is impossible to escape the conviction that he believes it.

Considering the standards (including his own) to which he was accustomed as a player with Germany and as manager of the national side who won Euro 96, his remarks are staggering, not simply for their nonsensical content, but for the even more disconcerting impression that Vogts expects the rest of us to agree.

"Hey, don’t criticise my boys," he said. "They played very well, very organised, they were unlucky." This misfortune - a fantasy that is all his own - extended to the Scots having scored a goal through Hughes which both the Belgian referee, Paul Allaerts, and his standside linesman refused to acknowledge on the intolerable basis that the ball had not crossed the line before the strategically-positioned Iversen made his clearance.

Television replays were, at best, inconclusive. A personal view is that Iversen, his feet planted about six inches behind the line, moved his right foot forward to make contact with the ball, making the notion of a legitimate goal an impossibility. In his animated protest to the referee - which saw him ordered to the stand - Vogts made the ludicrous gesture of the hyperbolic angler describing the one that got away, his hands spread, suggesting the ball was three feet over the line.

This was the demented reaction of a man sensing the walls closing in. Considering the Scots’ future programme, encompassing visits to Italy, Norway, Slovenia and Belarus, what happens in Moldova on Wednesday already seems to be almost an irrelevance. Unless, of course, the double-header turns into a double whammy. In which case, Berti will probably be asked to hand in the keys to his office on the way home.

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Scotland: Gordon, Gary Caldwell, Naysmith, Anderson, Webster, Ferguson, Fletcher, Holt (Thompson 80), Dickov (Miller 75), McFadden, Hughes (Pearson 63).
Subs Not Used: Marshall, Stevie Crawford, Murray, Stephen Caldwell.

Sent Off: McFadden (54).

Booked: Dickov, Gary Caldwell.

Norway: Myhre, Bergdolmo, Hagen, Lundekvam, Riise, Sorensen (Andresen 74), Solli, Hoseth (Pedersen 58), Larsen, Carew, Iversen (Frode Johnsen 89).
Subs Not Used: Gashi, Soma, Rushfeldt, Espen Johnsen.

Booked: Sorensen.

Att: 48,882.

Ref: Paul Allaerts (Belgium).