MURDER MYSTERY

Stress levels are about to go off the charts because no one - even Clarke - has clue what to expect from Scotland on our day of destiny

- KEITH JACKSON

HOW'S the old ticker holding up then?

Because, as if Saturday night's upside-down and back-to-front thrill ride in Athens wasn't quite enough of a stress test, in a little more than 24 hours we're about to strap ourselves in and go through it all over again.

And the most anxiety-inducing part of the whole damn thing is none of us - not even manager Steve Clarke himself - have the slightest idea of what Scotland we're supposed to expect.

It could be a disaster is about to be unleashed on us by a Denmark team that also can no longer take anything for granted, following potentially catastrophic, albeit comedic, slip-up at home to Belarus.

They really ought to have had Group C completed and entirely done and dusted.

Instead, they head to Glasgow with recriminations flying and confidence levels dangerously dented.

They should be applying for their US visas already given theyd such an open goal and the chance to book accommodation and training facilities while waving Clarke and his players off into the playoffs.

But they blew it. When they should have Donald Trumped us, they may have Donald Ducked their own campaign.

‘And none of us, absolutely not a single Scot, saw that one coming at the weekend.

When Belarus are saving your bacon maybe theres some sort of weird juju going on here after all. Maybe our fate has already been determined by the powers above even Hampden’s sixth floor.

‘And that's the terrifying bit. Because theres also no reliable or logical metric left with which we can predict the performance level of our own team. Not from one half of football to the next, never mind one game to another.

For half an hour on Saturday, for example. Clarke must have felt the flames of fury lighting up deep inside his own gut.

What he was watching was a picture of confusion and self-doubt that defied belief let alone explanation.