STEWART REGAN, the Scottish Football Association chief executive, says board members did not discuss sacking Gordon Strachan in the wake of this month's defeat to Slovakia.
Scotland's hopes of reaching the next World Cup are hanging by a thread after taking just four points from their first three qualifiers.
Strachan must hope his team can somehow claim a victory at Wembley when they face England next month or the Scots can all but wave goodbye to a place at Russia 2018.
That remains a tall order but SFA chief Regan says dismissing the former Celtic manager is not an option the governing body have looked at yet.
During an interview with BBC Scotland, he was asked if there had been board-level discussion on whether Strachan should be allowed to continue as Scotland manager.
He replied: "Not at all. Gordon's under contract. It's all about the next game. There are still 21 points to play for. We're only three games in to the campaign. If we win at Wembley, we're right back in the mix and I think it's a little bit disrespectful to be talking about a manager's contract so early in a campaign."
Strachan found himself under pressure to step down from the post following that damaging 3-0 defeat to Slovakia in Trnava. But after talks with Regan the national team manager decided to stay on for the trip to London on November 11.
The Tartan Army remain unconvinced that Strachan can end the country's long wait to reach a major finals but Regan reckons the fans can still be won over.
"Football is that kind of game – It's all about performances," he said. "You see that week in, week out. If teams perform, they have support. If they don't, they have criticism. Scotland and Gordon are no different. He knows the fans crave success. We need to get a result against England and get our campaign back on track.
"We're only one point off the play-off place, we're three points off the top and, if Gordon goes down to Wembley and gets a result, the fans will be 100 per cent behind him, I'm confident of that. No manager is going to go into a game believing he's going to get beaten. No team wants to prepare for one of the biggest games in the campaign with a negative mindset, so Gordon and the squad will be going into that game believing we can get a result. It happened in 1999. There's no reason why it can't happen again.
"[Gordon and I] had a discussion [after the Slovakia match] – not about whether he'd continue, Gordon's under contract. We had a discussion about the performance – not just about Slovakia but about the first three games.
"Nobody was more disappointed than Gordon. He felt we should have been in a better place after three games. Results have gone our way, in many ways, in other games. As we've seen with the performances of Slovenia and Lithuania, anyone can take points off anyone else in this group. It's up to us now to go and get a result and get our campaign back on the rails."
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