IT must be the most unexpected positive review since Mary Todd wrote glowingly about the play she and her husband Abraham Lincoln attended the night of his assassination.

Over the past two years of Gordon Strachan’s tenure as manager of the Scotland national team, only three competitive wins have been recorded, two over Gibraltar and one in Malta. There was a dismal fourth place finish in European Championship (non) qualification and the current fifth spot which his side squats in after four games.

In this current World Cup campaign, Strachan has presided over successive 3-0 away defeats and a draw at home to Lithuania courtesy of a last-minute goal. According to the manager that was not a must-win game. Oh yes it was.

Read more: Steven Thompson: The SFA have backed Gordon Strachan - I felt a fresh start was needed

After Wembley last Friday when a good-ish performance still resulted in a straightforward England victory, the Scottish Football Association carried out a review, their own word, and it seems there is nothing to see here.

Not only that, but it soon transpired that all eight members of the SFA committee agreed that with 18 points still available and four games at home looming, that everything was to play for and our World Cup dream remained alive.

The mind boggles what the review’s outcome would have been if we had managed to beat the giants of Lithuania! Maybe they would have given the manager a five-year extension to his contract.

Read more: Steven Thompson: The SFA have backed Gordon Strachan - I felt a fresh start was needed

Strachan should have walked after failing to reach even the play-offs for the Euros when three teams in our group qualified including a bog-standard Irish side that just so happened to be led by a far better manager.

In retrospect it started to go wrong the moment he had to change his formation when Gibraltar scored a famous equaliser at Hampden. That odd day messed with the manager’s head.

Strachan then seemed unsure of his team and formation. Away to Ireland, who to their credit managed a priceless big win over Germany, Craig Forsyth got preferred to Andy Robertson and was a shambling wreck. Matt Ritchie lasted until half-time, on an afternoon when it was obvious the team was wrong.

And then came Georgia and not one shot on goal. A new low even for us.

Strachan was ready to quit until the lap of dishonour after the final match. This time those pesky Gibraltarians were taught a real lesson, and his mind was changed by the response from the thousands of Scotland supporters who had booked their tickets well in advance thinking this would be the day when their team at last got to a major championship.

Because life’s big decisions should always be taken on the advice of some Fife lads who had been on the San Miguel for a solid two days.

Scotland should have finished at least third in that campaign. That they did not was a disgrace. Too often players in-form, Leigh Griffiths springs immediately to mind, were ignored in favour of players who quite frankly are not even close to being good enough for international football.

Scotland should not be second last behind Lithuania, Slovenia and Slovakia in this seeming already doomed World Cup campaign. These are decent international teams, no more, and yet they seem better organised, can at least defend and are street-wise.

There is an argument, and many football people have made it, that changing the manager is a waste of time given the players he can choose from. That Jock Stein himself couldn’t make a defender out of Grant Hanley.

However, surely the strongest argument of all regards the fact, and that’s what it is, that Strachan doesn’t know his best team, has a habit of being loyal to the nice lads who will never cause any bother and has yet to come up with a solution to his defence’s inability to deal with a cross ball.

When you take all of that into account, it does make you wonder why just one member of the SFA committee didn’t raise a hand and suggest that this sub-mediocrity was not good enough and therefore they should see who else is out there.

So Strachan stays and while nothing has changed in terms of personnel, we can’t go on this way. The outlook from the manager has to be different. He has to change, although at 59 is that even possible?

First of all, the Scotland supporters could do with seeing their team beat Slovenia in the next game in March and then it’s England in June. Both matches are in Glasgow, before Lithuania away, Malta and Slovakia at home, then the campaign ends with a trip to Slovenia, who are no mugs.

Read more: Steven Thompson: The SFA have backed Gordon Strachan - I felt a fresh start was needed

He has to throw caution to the wind, start playing those performing well at their clubs and if that means dropping the angelic Darren Fletcher then so be it. Oliver Burke is the future so he starts. So, too, does Griffiths because given a run he will score goals.

Strachan’s tiresome bad jokey personality has to be binned; the put-downs and sarcasm discredits his post. He could do with adding to his backroom team, someone with a genuine standing within the game. Why not ask his old manager at Aberdeen to address the troops?

Arithmetically, Strachan has a chance to prove most of us all wrong. But that’s now two years of bad results, poor performances and some muddled thinking, and yet he still gets a 100 per cent from his bosses.

To be fair, who wouldn’t want to stay in such a cushy number?