GORDON Strachan is sitting behind a desk in a car showroom in Glasgow, temporarily morphing into the persona of a used car salesman. Fortunately there is nothing shoddy or second-hand about the merchandise he is here to flog. His Scotland squad are a smoothly functioning football machine these days, and the 22-man squad he has named for next month's critical double header against Georgia and Germany has required only the merest tinkering beneath the bonnet.

As ever though, some members of his squad have more miles on the clock than others. The headline items are as follows. While Grant Hanley returns to bolster the backline after injury, and Barry Bannan drops out of a congested midfield area due to it, Stuart Armstrong, two years on from his initial invitation, is also back, on the strength of an energetic start to the campaign with Celtic.

Pushing for a start too, among a six-strong Parkhead contingent, are James Forrest and Leigh Griffiths. Strachan said he was "tempted" to start the latter in Tbilisi and no wonder, given that the 25-year-old has seven goals already this season, including two in the heat of a Champions League play-off tie against Malmo. By contrast, even Strachan's most reliable striking options thus far in this campaign, Steven Fletcher and Steven Naismith, have found first-team football hard to come by. The form of Ross Barkley and Arouna Kone has limited Naismith to just 37 minutes of first team football at Everton, while Fletcher has started one of Sunderland's three matches to date.

Some international managers stick by hard and fast rules but Strachan is more pragmatic than that. He is guided less by stats and sports science and more by what his gut instincts tell him. The strange case of Alan Hutton, who performed superbly in a Scotland jersey despite months of inactivity at Aston Villa, is just one example. While we're on that subject, with Hutton out of favour again, Norwich's Steven Whittaker is currently making a huge case for his inclusion at right back instead.

"I'm kind of old-fashioned: I just use my eyes," said Strachan. "You tend to have a look at them in training and usually you sniff it from there, the body language and other things. It isn't heart rate monitors and I don't have a sports scientist or a sports psychologist to work this out. Basically, I look at them and ask myself: 'Are these guys ready? Are they up for it? Can their body take it?

"The likes of Alan [Hutton] and Steven Naismith have earned the right to be included," he added. "I like to think I'm quite loyal that way. But of course, the players also know that if I see someone else who's been outstanding that I would make that change. The way they play, train and go about things counts. The intensity of our training is so intense at times that we need to keep an eye on it. It's like school trials from away back when."

Strachan is wary of adding too much more to an already simmering Malmo v Celtic second leg stock, but he does fancy Ronny Deila's side to qualify, an outcome which would have huge fringe benefits for him and his players.

"I think they'll win," said Strachan. "I don't want to be like the Malmo coach and tell you what's going right in the world and what's going wrong. I just believe they have a good chance of doing it because they have good passers of the ball, Celtic, and good counter attacking players. It would be a boost for us all because it's a new journey, new games, a new focus. It can only benefit everybody."

Griffiths has five caps, and two starts, for his country - the most recent of those in a 2-0 defeat to Belgium at Hampden in September 2013, but he has made himself indispensable at club level and might be just the man to conjure up a piece of magic in Tbilisi. "That's where he has got to now, where people are discussing whether or not he should actually be left out so he's ready for a huge game," said Strachan. "He's a determined, gutsy wee fella."

Georgia, now under former Manchester City defender Kakhaber Tschadadze, have three points this campaign, all gleaned from a 3-0 win against minnows Gibraltar. There is a suspicion they could throw a spanner in the works, just as they did with a 2-0 defeat of Alex McLeish's Scotland back in 2007. They trailed by a solitary goal going into the 89th minute of their 4-0 reverse to Poland in June.

Strachan, Celtic manager back in 2007, is not for dwelling on the past. "The world's changed since 2007," he said. "We've had a banking crisis since then, all sorts of things have changed. I've got an Apple watch now. If people had said you'd have one of those in 2007 they'd have laughed at you."