Sebastien

A back three that has looked impressive was hassled to distraction, calm replaced with confusion. Scotland’s go-to leaders did not lead.

Robertson said his team was out-fought, which was a telling comment. Fight is the easiest part to get right, the thing that requires no talent.

On Saturday in Skopje, everything was easy for Scotland because North Macedonia were no good. They scored two and could have scored five and six.

Was there a sense of them believing in their own hype? Hard to imagine given that it was only North Macedonia they’d beaten, but there was a lack of edge about Scotland on Tuesday that begs that question.

Or can it all be laid at the door of the system? Slovenia did their work on that. Ripped it to pieces, in truth.

Pocognoli needs time, of course he does. He needs his most potent attacking midfielder, Scott McTominay, at the heart of things and needs more training sessions to drill his message into his players.

November is his next chance, away to Switzerland and home to North Macedonia. No real margin for error now. They had a big chance to make it a healthy seven points from four games and they blew it.

The head coach will need to nurse his wounds after this. He will have learned a lot about his players and has much thinking to do.

The honeymoon period is over. The reaction of the Hampden crowd at the end told you that the first marital row has now occurred.

What should be a little more straightforward is giving Kieron Bowie another start.

The Sassuolo striker was sacrificed just over 10 minutes into his first Scotland start to make space for Welsh in defence.

His partnership with Oli McBurnie showed promising signs in the 20 minutes or so they were together in Slovenia, but there was little time to build on that cameo against the Swiss. Surely he and the Hull City striker will get another chance?

If there were any concerns McBurnie wasn’t up for the fight – five years on from his last international involvement – they have been quashed in these past two games.

His work-rate as a largely solo striker – hauling his team up and holding the ball in – was commendable. If only Bowie was still on the field for the flurry of flick-ons he won in the first half.

Pocognoli has inherited one of the overriding problems Clarke wrestled with during his spell – scoring goals. That’s four games now without one, and the Scots are just 25 minutes away from setting a new – unwanted – record for failing to score.

In 1970-71, they went 447 minutes without finding the back of the net – it’s been 422 minutes of football since McGinn’s deflected strike against Haiti in Boston.

If there’s ever a time, boys…