IT is hard to figure out if the ageing process has taken much of a physical toll on Gordon Strachan.

The hair, once flame red, has gone through the softening familiar to many older gingers and is now a sort of dirty blonde. His face is heavily lined but then some creasing was evident before the end of a playing career which continued until 1997, when he was 40. He is a little thicker around the middle these days, but less so than most other 57-year-old Scotsmen.

Any changes Strachan has undergone are more noticeable to himself than to the rest of us, including the natural mellowing and flattening of the temperament which comes with age and experience. When the Scotland squad is together he looks at players not just from a manager's perspective but from a father and grandfather's. Being in a Scotland squad may seem like an unsurpassable privilege for younger players but for older ones, especially who may spend days on end with the group without actually laying their studs on the grass, the appeal is tempered by the knowledge that precious time with their children is being lost. Strachan is sensitive to that.

Since taking over Scotland it has troubled him that he might take a player away from home for, say, ten days - away from his wife and kids - only to not give him a minute of playing time to show for it. In the future he may "refine" (his word) his squads in order to reduce the potential for that. Where possible, and without jeopardising the prospects in any given fixture, he is prepared to rely on fewer senior players and more younger ones who do not have families. It is an unusual priority for a manager to show but Strachan remembered the frustration of sometimes being torn from his wife, Lesley, and sons Craig and Gavin during his own playing days only to be an unused Scotland player. "I've been left out myself," he said. "I know how hard it is."

Next month is the second anniversary of his appointment. Moving from club to international management usually means a sudden gear change, although 15 months of unemployment between Middlesbrough's payroll and the SFA might be regarded by some as an adequate period of acclimatisation to the slower pace of his current job. He revelled in being a training ground coach who immersed himself in the day-to-day routine of club management. He has adapted well to the international scene. He has shown the intelligence to treat players differently because he has less power over them than he would as their club manager. They have had to be handled differently.

"I can be more demanding with players at a club side, by a million miles," he said. "When players come along to Scotland duty I have to send them back literally in the same mental state that they arrived in. As a club manager I can demand that they do things, 'this is it'. Here you have to ask them to do it. I've definitely had to refine. Maybe I'm getting older, maybe that anger to fight everybody isn't there anymore. But it worked at a certain stage of my life and I'm sure it would work again. But for this group of lads it's different. You don't know them as well as if you had been working with them for two years [at a club]. I was telling people about some of the stuff Fergie used to do to us at Aberdeen and they're going 'that can't be true' and I'm saying 'I'm telling you!'. But it didn't scar me. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Had he mellowed? "I would imagine I have, but if you stuck me back in club management it might be different. I can't b****** players the way I could at a club. They're not there for the money because they don't get paid. They do it for nothing. Nobody has ever asked me about a bonus since I got here. So it is unfair - if they're coming along for nothing, spending all that time - for me to then get into them."

The relationship with the media, as it is with players, is different for international managers. He had four years in charge of Celtic and as Scotland manager he sees reporters differently. "As a Rangers or Celtic manager you do feel that some are with you and some are against you. You can ask the Rangers manager and he might say 'they all support Celtic'. That's the mentality you can get in. You need to get out before you go nuts. You get this paranoia thing that everybody hates you. With Scotland I actually feel that generally everybody wants us to do well."

The next 12 months are the biggest he will face in the remainder of his managerial career. He will either take Scotland to a first tournament since 1998 or extend the inglorious sequence of failure. A new Performance Director may be appointed to replace Mark Wotte and there is also a vacancy for an under-21 manager to follow Billy Stark (the SFA is toying with tinkering with its coaching structure and not having a different manager for every national age group team below Strachan). But all pales into insignificance compared to reaching Euro 2016.

"Where do I want to be a year from now? Automatic qualification. I would like to be sitting here feeling even better than we do right now and that means we will have achieved something. It's great to have people tapping you on the shoulder in the street saying 'that was great, I enjoyed that last night'. That gives you a wee buzz. Although after a game I'm normally out of the country within an hour. I just want to get home."

His "home" is the Midlands, the sanctuary to which he heads as soon as he can after a Scotland game. That much is certain. The imponderable is where the Scotland manager will take this country over the next 12 months.