Silent Steve Clarke would be voted out if he was up for election this week

IF Steve Clarke was up for re-election this Thursday, chances are he’d be swept out of office on a landslide of public disapproval.

We’re like that, us voters. Not big on the benefit of the doubt, on context and perspective, on understanding how gossamer-thin the margins are between success and failure.

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We just go, “If they’re doing things that make me happy, keep them. If they’re doing things that make me angry, bin them.”

Which is why, a week on from watching our national team limp out of the Euros, we’re still angry enough that if the right candidate was put up to take us into our next campaign, we’d more than likely give them a shot at it.

But here’s the thing.

Clarke wasn’t voted in. He has a contract, bosses who are in no hurry to empty him and — most crucially — no one as qualified as him is battering on the door to take his place.

So it’s easy to sit there, as many have over the last week, spouting about how they always knew he was a dud and how everything we did in Germany was bloody hopeless and how countries half our size are twice as good as us and yaddah-yadda.

What I’m not hearing or reading, however, is a plan to make us better.

You know, apart from the oldest one in the book, the one that says we need to rip it all up and start again.

Coaching, facilities, youth academies, the pyramid system, the decimal system. You name it, people see us fail and decide everything’s an absolute, that we must be rubbish from top to bottom and the only way forward is to go back to the drawing board.

Well, call me Mr Cynical, but that’s why the likes of Aberdeen and Hibs have been caught in twin cycles of despair for a generation. Because they’re always either optimistic as hell about the latest new appointment or they’re marching on the main stand brandishing flaming torches.

Right now, our national team doesn’t need that kind of knee-jerk reaction. Right now, what it needs is leadership.

And that’s where I — for all that he still gets my vote as gaffer — can’t begin to defend Clarke.

The fact that he kept himself at barge-pole distance from the media throughout our stay in Germany — one conversation in 14 days outwith official Uefa press conferences — was unhelpful.

The fact that he stormed off into the Stuttgart night after a needless rant at a referee’s part in our downfall rather than taking personal responsibility did him no favours.

The fact that he’s neither been seen nor heard from since and that the SFA seem to have done nothing to coax him into breaking cover?

Well, you can’t help but feel he’s made himself a sitting duck for any stick that comes his way.

It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t care about criticism, that he says he doesn’t read the papers. What matters is that the lack of any kind of post-elimination debrief is a terrible look for everyone connected with the team — gaffer, Blazers, coaches, players — and a slap in the face to the unprecedented numbers who followed us in Germany with such distinction.

But hey, I covered Clarke’s behaviour after the Hungary defeat in my last column. Now, as the politicians say, it’s time to move on. Question is, where to?

For me, the answer comes down to a conversation that, if it hasn’t yet taken place, needs to happen imminently.

It starts with the SFA asking themselves: Do we want Steve Clarke to continue in the job?

If it’s agreed they do, then there are two more massive questions they need to put to him.

Firstly, does he believe he can take the national team further than he already has? Which, don’t forget, is two tournaments further than any of his six predecessors.

And, if he believes he can, then how does he plan to do it?
Because one thing’s for sure. The way he’s tried to do it at successive Euros doesn’t work.

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His attitude’s been way too cautious. His team selections for the opening matches of both groups have backfired. His 3-4-2-1 system only clicks when Kieran Tierney, John McGinn and Scott McTominay are all fully fit and on top form.

We can’t go into the Nations League and then the next World Cup qualifiers doing the same things while hoping it all turns out differently this time. That’s the definition of insanity.

No, if Steve Clarke is to carry on — and, I repeat, he gets my vote — he has to come back fighting from this latest setback, with a new way of thinking and of operating. And he needs to do it now.

No one’s saying he’s going to turn overnight into Ange Postecoglou. He’s never going to attack and be damned.

But watching that horrible, hideous Hungary game, it was obvious from the first kick that we don’t know how to get through a packed defence, that we were stick-ons to pass ourselves into submission and be rope-a-doped.

Sure, he’ll argue one that kick could have changed everything, that if Grant Hanley buries our first shot on target in stoppage time then no one mentions his negativity, because everyone’s getting blootered for a fortnight.

He’d be right, too. Those are the margins we’re talking about.

We dreamed of making the knockout stages for the first time ever and no one would have cared how we did it.

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Trouble is, we didn’t make it.

Trouble is, the manager then went into hiding.

Trouble is, the perception of who and what and where Scotland are can change very quickly once enough noise gets generated. There’s no margin at all between being our best squad in a generation and a gang who peaked with two wins over Spain and Norway.

That’s what Steve Clarke has to address before it’s too late.

Why? Because, before Germany, he had enough credit in the bank that his grumpy Ayrshireman schtick was quite endearing.

Now, though, that credit is running out fast. And the deeper he digs himself into a trench to avoid the issue, the sooner he’ll be in a debit he might not get the chance to repay.

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