Taking into account the scheduling of the EMC Autumn Tests and the condition of Andy Robinson's injury-ravaged squad, it might be just as well that some of us do not count friendlies when it comes to assessing the performance of a coach.

Yet, setting the forthcoming sequence apart, Scotland's head coach would doubtless prefer that we did so, because almost every decent performance produced on his watch has been away from the heat of true competition.

Robinson will surely acquire national hero status should he become Scotland's first coach to mastermind a win over New Zealand's All Blacks.

If ending the world champions' 17-match unbeaten run seems about as likely as achieving the SRU's stated target of winning the 2015 World Cup, even victory a week later over South Africa's Springboks would be pretty special, since no other Scotland coach has beaten them twice.

Yet the man responsible for the national team's worst season of all time in 2011/12 can only improve on his competitive record; it bears favourable comparison only with that of the hapless Matt Williams among the national team's five previous professional head coaches.

At the end of this season, we will be able to draw an exact comparison with Frank Hadden, who was sacked to make way for Robinson four seasons ago after coaching Scotland at four Six Nations Championships and one World Cup. Hadden had a modest 36% success rate in those competitions, but it compares favourably with Robinson's 23.7% success rate thus far. The only way Robinson will have a superior competitive record after four years in charge will be if Scotland win a grand slam this season.

Looking back, it is extraordinary the way that commentators in this country assumed automatic improvement when Robinson, a failure as England's head coach, was brought to Scottish rugby as a replacement for the much-maligned Hadden.

In many ways, it is a measure of the loss of self-belief in the Scottish rugby community that also means there is not a Scot among the hierarchy of SRU chairman, chief executive and head of performance who call the shots.

On the coaching side, men who were products of Scottish clubs and schools rugby have been replaced by men who were not, in Englishmen Robinson, Neil Back and Phil Greening, Australian Scott Johnson, Australian/Scot Matt Taylor, Irishman Michael Bradley and the former rugby league player Billy McGinty.

Gregor Townsend could count as homegrown, but he was parachuted into the Scotland set-up with no meaningful coaching experience, then into the Glasgow set-up after three ineffective years as Scotland's attack coach, which seems to be reflected in Glasgow's Heineken Cup points accrual this season.

The wage bill has been transformed by all of that, but what about the teams' fortunes?

Robinson's coronation came after he guided Edinburgh to 18 wins and two draws in 32 Magners League and Heineken Cup matches, compared with Glasgow's 17 wins and one draw to 18 defeats in those same two seasons.

Yet it is Heineken Cup rugby that we are always told is closest to Test rugby and, in those two seasons, Glasgow had a superior record. Indeed, in his most recent Heineken Cup campaign in 2008/09, Robinson's Edinburgh finished bottom of their pool, an indignity Glasgow did not suffer once in five seasons under Sean Lineen.

Meanwhile, for all last season's Heineken Cup heroics, Michael Bradley has now had charge of Edinburgh for five fewer matches than Rob Moffat had before he was summarily sacked in January last year. Moffat's overall success rate was above 39.5%. Bradley's stands at below 38.2% at present.

In Townsend's case, we will, not unreasonably, be told it is too early to come to any conclusions but, when the SRU appointed him, the circumstances were so bizarre that he could not be allowed the same amount of time as a coach who was replacing a failed predecessor or a successful one who had gone of his own volition.

Also, by comparison with their Heineken Cup campaign last season – they were in contention right up to the final pool match – Glasgow have accrued fewer points from their six RaboDirect Pro12 games than they did in the corresponding fixtures last year.

Little wonder, then, that the individual accorded most credit/blame, for the Glasgow coup, the director of performance Graham Lowe, has got himself a new job about as far from Scottish rugby as is possible, moving to another sport in another country, in another hemisphere by joining an Australian Rules football set-up.

It is against that background, allied to the huge increase in resources, that we must assess the worst start to a Heineken Cup by Scottish sides since 2004/05, the days when the dodgy old committee were in charge.

Looking back, it seems that a demoralised Scottish rugby community has lost its nerve and is no longer willing to make the demands of its personnel or ask the questions of them that it should.

The spending continues, with Glasgow making yet another big-money signing in recruiting Sean Maitland from Canterbury Crusaders this week, but just how much money has to go out of this sport before we properly examine what sign there is of an improved return on the vast expenditure?