Andy Robinson, Scotland's head coach, has been engaged in a charm offensive in the past week, undertaking a busy round of meetings with players, officials and media.

He has needed to.

The harsh fact is that he is in the course of compiling the sort of competitive record that must raise serious questions with one win at the very end of two Six Nations Championship bids that were over before they started, followed by becoming the first Scotland coach to fail to take his team to the knockout stages of a World Cup.

So far, he has done well to avoid the opprobrium heaped upon some of his predecessors and, in particular, the man from whom he took over, Frank Hadden, who won three matches in his first Six Nations Championship before guiding Scotland to the quarter-finals of the 2007 World Cup.

Having now put his case to the Scottish Rugby board, Robinson says that the deep depression he felt after the tournament has been replaced by a sense of great excitement.

There is good reason for that, too, with the form of Edinburgh and Glasgow Warriors resulting in both going into their Heineken Cup double-headers over the next weekend well placed to challenge for quarter-final places. A widening pool of players can only be a good thing, albeit expectations are also inevitably raised.

Robinson claims he is not feeling any pressure but is realistic about his record and its implications.

That being the case, his reason for going public with the details of at least some of his review has been to address the issues raised. The most fundamental of those is the belief that, while he is a good, perhaps even great, coach who seems to improve all players who come under his charge and get the best out of them, he is not as good a manager or a selector.

When, then, he said he was looking to recruit additional help for his management group, it seemed natural to think that was the area in which he would seek support. That is not, however, what he believes is needed.

The new man, he says, will be a member of his coaching team, which inevitably invited the speculation that he was looking for someone with the know-how to get the international team scoring tries, yet Robinson said that would not necessarily be the case, either.

They say the best form of defence is attack but, when it comes to this area, his approach to what is happening with Scotland's attack is to go vigorously on the defensive.

Gregor Townsend is, he reckons, an excellent coach but simply lacks experience in a job he has now occupied for three years since first being appointed by Hadden.

Clearly, he has great faith in those around him, but as he went through video evidence which showed the quality of Scotland's attacking shape, he admitted that somehow or another key messages have not got through, leading to the failure to turn opportunities into scores.

That is at least in part down to the Scottish rugby development system, which means players arrive at elite level without their skills having been honed in a sufficiently pressurised environment and Robinson acknowledges as much.

However, any changes effected at that level are unlikely to make much impact during his time as Scotland coach and he has to make the very best of what is available to him right now. To that end, it is, in management terms, rather curious that the head coach has so far pretty much stuck by the coaching team he inherited in spite of having three failed campaigns to his credit.

He insists that the responsibility and accountability for these failures are his and that is very much as it should be.

Such is the goodwill he has accrued since arriving in Scotland, first with Edinburgh but also in generating some outstanding international results away from the major campaigns, notably beating South Africa and Australia, as well as a Test series in Argentina, that he was always going to be given an opportunity to turn things around.

However, in the wake of the World Cup he has had that chance to weigh things up and to make what changes he considers necessary. The outcome of that, in terms of personnel, seems limited to the introduction of this new man who, he says, will be someone with considerable international experience.

From the moment that appointment is made all ambiguity will be gone and we will know for certain that we are judging Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, on the management decisions he alone has made.

He may not yet be feeling it but, being realistic, the pressure is now well and truly on.