COVERING Scottish football brings a requirement to deliver more post-mortems than Quincy.

Obituaries come around more quickly these days. Scotland's football team spares its citizens the stress of extending qualification hopes to the final round of fixtures. Failure is delivered early now, barely midway through. Alternative summer plans can be made nice and early.

You can pick any way you like to illustrate this erosion of this country's reputation and pride in international football. It is a well-trodden path and, as usual, endless statistics are doing the rounds to twist the knife. Earliest ever this, longest ever without that, it goes on and on. Being the first European country officially eliminated from the World Cup was an imaginative new form of self-torture – allowing some almost gleeful comparisons to Andorra, San Marino and our other fellow plankton – but the figures and statistics are trifles. They have lost the ability to shock because any "outrage" is based on a perception and self-image of Scottish football that has crumbled along with results. Four straight qualifying defeats for the first time in history? A shrug of the shoulders. What else would you expect given that previous teams were always richer than this one?

Scotland's deterioration can be traced without any great detective work: they used to regularly qualify for tournaments, then they failed via play-offs, then they finished lower down their qualification groups and now they are planted at the very bottom of them. This downhill slalom spans eight consecutive failures to reach any tournament since the 1998 World Cup finals. It will take a huge effort to stop the sequence at eight.

Gordon Strachan has been left holding the baby when it comes to the latest ignominy. This is an odd hiatus, footballing purgatory, when failure and elimination on the field is not accompanied by the usual bloodthirst for the manager's head. We've just been through all that. Craig Levein had to be replaced, as had George Burley before him, because neither was getting players to perform at their best. Strachan has not done so yet either and there has been no discernable lift in the two competitive displays since his arrival.

That is not the worry, though. Strachan's track record entitles him to the several months he must be allowed before any meaningful judgment is made. Where the real cause for concern rests is the suspicion that Scotland are condemned to failure even if the manager does deliver the alchemy of getting these players to perform as well as they can. Five usual or probable starters were missing from the team which lost in Serbia: Darren Fletcher, Scott Brown, James Morrison, Steven Fletcher and Allan McGregor. Robert Snodgrass, Kris Commons, Phil Bardsley, Charlie Mulgrew and James Forrest have something to offer, too. But each of those has played in poor, unimpressive, beaten Scotland teams. Even when everyone is available the options have never been more barren.

Strachan has multiple problems: building a central defence, replacing or improving the full-backs, finding a midfield system which protects an average defence while creating more chances, trying to get more height into the team and getting goals out of Steven Fletcher and Jordan Rhodes. It would take something faintly miraculous for all of these to be addressed and for Scotland to qualify for Euro 2016. The expansion of that event from 16 to 24 finalists initially had us jauntily proclaiming it would be "harder to fail than to qualify", but it has all gone quiet on that front. Scotland will be in a group in which three or even four other countries – according to the seedings – will be expected to finish above them. The old canard about Scotland being at their best when they're written off is not supported by recent on-field evidence.

Around 10,000 empty seats at home to Wales and the quiet, morose following in Serbia suggested a support at the end of its tether, scunnered by wave after wave of letdowns. The numbers and exuberance will return whenever results improve, though. If anything it's astonishing 40,000 still turned out to back them on a foul night against the Welsh. The greater cause for anxiety– yet again – is the lack of players emerging to rescue and transform an unimpressive squad. Scotland have not qualified for an under-21 tournament since 1996 and of the current crop just one, Islam Feruz, has shown the potential to be something special.

The SFA would have supporters believe there is now a more focused, co-ordinated approach to youth development. More coaching, more time with the ball. Many of the most talented children are channelled through regional performance schools. Mark Wotte, the national performance director, has said he expects the Scotland squad to contain six or seven former performance school pupils by 2020. Wotte, remember, has been described as the most significant appointment made by the SFA in decades.

It doesn't sit easily with supporters who already face at least 18 years between tournaments to be told they must wait for many more years yet. After Serbia they don't have the usual releases. They can't say "sack the manager" because it's already been done. They can't howl at the SFA to "dae something" because Stewart Regan can argue it's already been done.

Patience is described as one of the seven heavenly virtues. But even the saints could run out of it if made to wait for Scotland to come good again in football.