I'm like any Scottish football fan - I feel an excited fever coming on just at the thought of a Scotland-England fixture.

But with this friendly approaching on August 14 at Wembley, and Gordon Strachan's insistence that he would like to see the match restored annually, I can't help treading warily.

I view this looming game as a Scotland fan, not as a journalist or any other type of observer. And my head tells me that, in these days of an alarming gulf between the quality of Scottish and English football, any regular restoration of the Auld Enemy clash would result in repeated Scottish clubbings.

On first glance, what a prospect this match is in three weeks' time. It is a fixture written on the heart of every Scotland fan aged 25 or more, given its backdrop of rivalry, drama and one-upmanship down the decades. The Scots, very naturally, drool at the thought of beating their mighty neighbour.

It seems amazing that Scotland have not faced England at football in 14 years - or even more so that we actually won the last time we met.

I was at Wembley for that European Championship play-off second leg in November 1999 when Don Hutchison's goal and David Seaman's desperate palming away of Christian Dailly's header meant that, despite Scotland winning 1-0, we fell short yet again.

It was a memorable night for Scotland, a heroic effort by Craig Brown's team, given England's better players. But, since then, the gulf in quality between the two countries has considerably widened.

Scotland's record against England in the pair's last 11 tussles reads: Won 2, Drawn 2, Lost 7. For very obvious reasons, this fixture did not become a happy hunting ground for the Scots, and restoring it every year might not be the shrewdest thing to do.

The paltriness of Scotland's current firepower is summed up in the choice of strikers listed by Gordon Strachan for this forthcoming match.

It involves one player, Leigh Griffiths, who now plays in the third tier of English football; another, Kenny Miller, who is 33 and out to grass in Canada; a third, Jordan Rhodes, playing in the English second tier with Blackburn Rovers; and maybe mercifully, Steven Naismith of Everton.

These guys are all decent enough, and they graft their hearts out for their country. But the very quoting of their names and clubs captures what the Scotland team is all about these days.

It is a far cry from those days of the 1970s when, notwithstanding time-honoured Scottish calamities even back then, we had an international team which regularly quickened the pulse and excited every school kid in the land.

In those days - and I write recalling my childhood experience - a Scotland versus England fixture was the ultimate. And, looking back, I can see now why adult Scottish men all around me were right up for it.

In players like Sandy Jardine, Kenny Dalglish, Billy Bremner, Joe Jordan, Alan Hansen, Graeme Souness, Archie Gemmill, Gordon Strachan and scores of others, Scotland had players over many years who could eyeball the Three Lions of an English shirt without fear. On the contrary, Scotland often felt superior.

Take this as a mere snapshot: in the old Home Internationals, Scotland played England four times between 1974 and 1977, and won three of them.

We are, however, Scotland. The one in that sequence which we lost was the 5-1 doing at Wembley in 1975, when a gallus Scotland team of long hair and long sideburns - embodied in Tottenham's Alfie Conn - got a terrible come-uppance. Nonetheless, these were great days.

As Scotland today attempts to clamber back to semi-respectability in the international game, I remain to be convinced that a return to an annual game against England is for the best. The Tartan Army would be into it, yes, of course…but mainly for the off-piste, not for the game itself.

I hope that Strachan and his team can prove me wrong in three weeks' time. "It is an occasion when we have to win," the Scotland manager says boldly.

Here's hoping for a minor miracle.