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Former Scotland striker Charlie Nicholas insists Gordon Strachan’s time as national team manager is up – but concedes there are no outstanding candidates to replace him.
And the Celtic legend believes the country’s footballing woes run deeper after claiming that the Scottish FA is run by ‘amateurs’.
Strachan is facing growing pressure to step down from the post after Friday’s 3-0 defeat to England at Wembley left Scotland second bottom of World Cup qualifying Group F with only four points from as many games.
The 20-times-capped Nicholas insists Strachan should make way for a new face in the dugout.
Sky Sports pundit Nicholas said: “I think Gordon will admit that he’s not done too much to improve it recently, which means we have to look at someone else.
“He’s had four years to make it better and it’s not worked. He’s been making strange decisions on who he’s been picking and the team formation has not been exciting.
“When Gordon first came in we looked more of a threat going forward and all of a sudden now his defence is all over the place. Someone has got to come in eventually and make things better.
“Two years ago we beat the Republic of Ireland and everybody was upbeat, since then we’ve won three domestic games – we’ve beaten Gibraltar twice and Malta. I don’t think it’s good enough.
“It should have been done and dusted this week but it sounds as if he’s drifted off somewhere to get away from the pressures and the SFA committee will quite happily just sit and wait as if it’s no big deal. That’s hard.”
Sunderland manager David Moyes is reportedly open to the prospect of becoming Scotland manager should Strachan walk but ex-Arsenal forward Nicholas admits there there are no obvious candidates.
He added: “We’ve not a great list of managers waiting in the background to change it dramatically.
“Can we get anyone in that’s going to be better? We don’t know that, we could get a big name in and he might do well, he might not.
“Alex McLeish has had it before, there’s people like Joe Jordan who I’ve always liked to get to be involved in a higher level capacity and overview the whole situation.
“The hard part is identifying who the next guy will be, will it be foreign? We’ve had a bad experience with that.”
The lack of progress at senior team and Under-21 level has led to criticism of the entire Scottish FA and Nicholas also wants changes behind the scenes.
He added: “The higher core of the SFA is run by amateurs in my opinion.
“It’s a very negative feel we have just now, not just me but I think everyone feels that way.
“It’s gone on too long and it’s time to revisit this and modernise the whole set-up.
“Even watching the Under-21s becomes a bit painful, sadly it is very negative and we need a lift.”
