STEWART REGAN, the SFA chief executive, will take direction from national team boss Gordon Strachan and other senior Scottish coaching figures such as Andy Roxburgh to help identify Mark Wotte's successor as performance director.

Speaking at the SFA's annual convention, Regan insisted the association were keen to make an appointment to this key role "as soon as possible" but distanced himself from the idea that the new occupant of the office must be Scottish.

It is already a month-and-a-half since the Dutchman, Under-21 boss Billy Stark and chief scout Mick Oliver left the association in a mini-purge of the performance department.

"Gordon has already been in discussions with myself," said Regan, who did something similar with Craig Levein in the appointment of Wotte. "It is important we take stock of what we need going forward. The performance strategy is in place and that is not going to change. As for the people that drive it, they will come and go.

"We will recruit a new performance director, Gordon will help me with that, as will other individuals across the world of football, Andy Roxburgh being one.

"That performance director will then have an input into how we manage the coaching set up, whether we continue to have individual coaches for individual teams or whether we rotate coaches across teams.

"But we will review that once we have identified our performance director.

"If it is a Scot then great, absolutely fantastic, but I don't think we would be hung up on that."

Regan, meanwhile, said there was no urgency about extending the contract of national team boss Gordon Strachan, and hinted that those discussions were unlikely to take place until Scotland's Euro 2016 qualification fate is known.

Strachan's existing deal runs until the end of the current qualifying campaign, and both he and his paymasters are thought to be relaxed about the situation, regardless of the fact that Walter Smith and Alex McLeish are two Scotland bosses in recent memory who have been enticed back to club football.

"We all think Gordon is doing a great job, but he is focused on the job so we haven't got into that," said Regan.

"It is a matter for further down the line. Gordon knows where he stands as far as his contract is concerned.

"We have got an agreement for this campaign and when the time is right we will discuss it with our board and decide what we do next."