AS A wise man once said: “It’s not goodbye, just bonjour.” This flimsy use of French may still be a bit of a sore point given there will be little use for it next summer, but it has a particular relevance in the wake of a gesture that many perceived to be of great significance on Sunday evening. The wave that met the thousands in Faro last week which was seen by many as a fond farewell from Gordon Strachan has since turned into a hand of Gord that will continue to hold a firm grip of the national team for yet another crusade.

The news that the 58-year-old has extended his contract with the Scottish Football Association will no doubt have come as a relief to the vast majority of Scottish football fans keen for a prompt puff of white smoke from Hampden, even if the eventual outcome was far from unexpected. It is perhaps a sign of the job Strachan has done with this group of players that there was such a hunger for him to stay, even in the darkest of clutches of disappointment that were accentuated even further by a larger-than-normal dollop of false hope.

Critical voices of the Scotland team have certainly become louder in the wake of last week’s heart-wrenching 2-2 draw with Poland at Hampden, a result which on its own summed up just what our wee country’s team is all about. Hope, dejection, relief, exhilaration, nervousness and downright scunnered is probably an accurate timeline of emotions last Thursday night. Those who have sought in recent days to articulate the downfalls of the Scotland team after failing to qualify are, of course, right to point to the odd beneficial own goal that helped us along the way, or even the fact there was probably not one full 90-minute performance to be truly satisfied with, with perhaps Sunday night’s 6-0 win in Portugal being the exception.

However, pointing out the Scottish national team makes the occasional mistake after failing to qualify for a tournament is like saying an X Factor contestant hits the odd bum note following a public phone-in vote goes belly up. The fact is, Strachan has radicalised the national team set-up in so many ways that it would have been a disaster if he was not to finish what he has started. Against Poland and Republic of Ireland, the Scots garnered six points from 12 and remained unbeaten. One only wonders what this statistic would have been under the previous regime... michty me. We can debate the merits of formations, team selections, tactics, systems – this was a campaign that ultimately crashed and burned in Tbilisi.

The team that returned from Georgia last month – eventually – admittedly did so without the momentum that had carried them there. However, all the good work up until that point should not be dashed or indeed forgotten about. Nor, too, should the spirit that managed to somehow survive what was a devastating 2-0 defeat. Flawed as both showings were at points, the performance and efficiency of Strachan’s team against World Champions Germany and Poland spoke of a collective forged together as a cohesive unit that easily could have got more than the one point that was eventually garnered from both games. Unlucky or not.

In the days since Sunday’s gesture as Strachan wandered round the Estadio Algarve, requests for him to stay have far outshouted the voices who have tentatively whispered that there might be a better alternative to lead Scotland into a World Cup qualifying group with England and, well, other teams. The simple answer is there isn’t one.

The progress Scotland has made under Strachan may have not delivered something tangible in the form of a trip to France next summer, but it does not mean we haven’t travelled a far distance already since his appointment in January 2013. We should be excited that the man who has brought us this far is still the one who will hopefully take us even further.