THERE has been a slightly odd mood around the build-up to tonight's Scotland-England game at Wembley, and those who have been around the camps over the past couple of days cannot fail to have picked up on it.

Frankly, it has felt a bit uncool to be Scottish and seem too enthusiastic or eager about this friendly. There is a mild flush of embarrassment about the notion that this might be a big deal for Scotland while the English yawn and shrug their shoulders.

There has been cross-pollination of the countries' media this week: Scottish journalists at England press conferences and English writers showing up at the SFA events. It has served as a revealing barometer of the moods. Roy Hogdson and his players have barely uttered a word about Scotland or Scottish football unless specifically asked to do so by a Scottish journalist. Their own media has been concerned not with the game, but with whether Wayne Rooney is about to leave Manchester United.

At the Scotland camp, the management and players have openly acknowledged how our game has fallen on hard times since the last England game 14 years ago. They have delicately handled questions about whether "this match means more to us than it does to them". In fact, the significance attached to the fixture is bound to vary when a small country which no longer qualifies for tournaments takes on a much bigger rival which still has pretensions to be world or European champions. But, even so, Scotland don't want to come across as being obsessed with an old flame who's no longer interested.

The idea of Scotland looking overawed - or even impressed - by Wembley had occurred to manager Gordon Strachan and was a contributory factor in his decision not to take the players to England's stadium for a training session last night. "You don't want to do the thing like holidaymakers turning up and getting pictures taken," he said.

It all made for an interesting sub-plot to his press conference yesterday, which had begun with the harmless fun of him picking up a piece of paper on which the Scottish press pack had scribbled its idea of his probable starting XI. Predictably, he looked at it with raised eyebrows, amused by our clueless stabbing-in-the-dark, before getting on with the business of taking questions about how he felt going into the most high profile of the handful of games he has had as Scotland manager so far.

"Once you get on the bus it's like, 'Right, this is good, I'm ready for this now'. The nervousness comes before that, when you're going to bed the night before, then when you wake up in the morning. In goes away a bit when you get on to the training field and then the bus when you think, 'Yeah, we can win this game'.

"I don't know if going 14 years without this game has taken away the edge. We'll have to see how it goes and how passionate everybody is. I think we all look at our game and think it is down a level from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Financially, we are dead, there is no doubt about that. But I'd like to think when I pick the team tomorrow people will think, 'He is a good player and he is a good player . . .' I know we have enough to put out a good side and have a good competitive game. I don't think anybody feels sorry for us. We have Andy Murray anyway, so we're fine."

In terms of the football itself, there are two ways to look at this fixture arriving immediately after the much-improved performance, and deliciously unexpected result, Scotland delivered in Croatia 10 weeks ago. Either it is the perfect opportunity to provide further momentum with another good display against superior opposition, or it is an accident of timing which could result in a dispiriting setback to steal away the hope of progress after Zagreb.

Scotland rode their luck in that 1-0 World Cup qualifying win, but Strachan was entitled to draw pleasure from the improved passing and ball retention, and from the composure of the performance even under inevitable Croatian pressure.

The word he used repeatedly yesterday was discipline, and he will be desperate to see it again tonight. More than 20,000 visiting fans are expected inside Wembley tonight, and if Scotland are to avoid defeat, they must not pander to the Tartan Army's inevitable demands for aggression. "I have seen players get carried away at previous Scotland-England matches. Because they went crashing into tackles, the crowd all cheered, but I always thought 'wait a minute, we are now defending a free-kick because you have gone crashing into a tackle'."

Comparing Scotland-England to an Old Firm game, he went on: "I always felt the first team that lost its temper in an Old Firm match generally lost it. You had players on either side who, just to keep the fans happy, would go careering into tackles and kick somebody in the air. The crowd would clap as they got sent off. I always thought, 'Well done, we are down to 10 men and you are getting clapped like a hero, you are no hero at all'."

England's recent form has been ordinary, while Scotland are short on goals. A draw, perhaps goalless, is not beyond Strachan's team.

For what it's worth, the probable team written down for him by the journalists was Allan McGregor; Alan Hutton, Russell Martin, Grant Hanley, Steven Whittaker; Scott Brown, James McArthur; Robert Snodgrass, James Morrison, Shaun Maloney; Kenny Miller.

For some unfathomable reason this reminded Strachan of his time as a Dundee player, when the manager was regularly approached at training and told the team he should pick by a patient of a nearby psychiatric hospital.