Scotland loses three goals; Gretna, three divisions

A couple of pieces of news today. The first (and foremost) is that George Burley led Scotland for only the second time today, against Euro 2008 qualifiers the Czech Republic, and went down 3-1. The scoreline isn’t to my mind representative of the game, but the Czechs definitely deserved the win. The Scottish finishing just wasn’t good enough, but there were some real upsides to the game, especially in terms of some of the young players in their first Scotland cap. My full match report is up at World Cup Blog.

In club news, relegated side Gretna, the worst team in the SPL in quite some time, took a rather incredible triple relegation this week, going all the way from the SPL in 2008 to Division Three (the fourth tier) in 2009. After being relegated once on the merits of their terrible football season, the additional two levels came after administrator David Elliot admitted that he could not guarantee the club would survive to the end of next season. The move will open up spots in Division Two (to be taken by Stranraer) and Division One (to be taken by Airdrie United). If they don’t manage to keep what’s left of their heads above water, a spot will also open up in the league itself, and a non-league outfit could take advantage. The final death of Gretna, which has been close so many times now, could come as early as this week, if a group of investors don’t come through and save the club. Another seemingly hard bottom slips away for the Black and Whites, revealing there’s even further left to fall.

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