ACCORDING to St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright only a fool would rule out his team next week turning over a 2-1 first leg defeat by FK Trakai.

At the risk of angering Scottish football’s scariest man, only someone who has been in a deep coma for a number of years would bet bad money, never mind good, on the men from Perth going over to a scorching hot Lithuania and, on a plastic pitch, winning 2-0 at the very least.

So that’s one of our teams down and out of Europe at the very first fence. It’s not great, is it.

And then there is Rangers who at least won their home match, 1-0 over Progres Niederkorn of Luxembourg, But would it be any surprise if they were to slip up next Tuesday? Not unless you have several doctors standing over you and asking if they could write up your strange case in the Lancet.

But let’s just say Rangers do get through, and one goal would be enough you would imagine. They are set to play Limassol next. The Cypriot team would – and I’m sorry to say this – be favourites and rightly so.

Rangers perhaps should have scored more than once at Ibrox but Niederkorn showed flashes, and that’s all they were, which hinted they will fancy themselves on Tuesday. I know a lot has happened to that football club but who thought the day would come when a 1-0 home win over some part-timers from Luxembourg would be deemed a decent enough result.

Aberdeen, by a distance the Premiership’s second force for the last three seasons, look set for second qualifying round meeting with Bosnia’s NK Siroki Brijeg after they beat Ordabasy Shymkent of Kazakhstan 2-0.

Either way, that tie is a 50/50 at best. Aberdeen could get through but, again, you wouldn’t gamble the family estate on them being successful.

Ten years ago, the 2007/08 season saw Rangers reach the UEFA Cup Final, Celtic the last 16 of the Champions League and Aberdeen were in Europe after Christmas. It is not being typically dour Scots to suggest we are light-years away from that sort of ‘success.’

Every June and July is the same. The teams which finished from fourth to second, or perhaps a Scottish Cup winner from outwith the higher Premiership places, is drawn out the hat with an opponent we need to Google from a country which not so long ago we dismissed as minnows.

We are the minnows now.

Again and again we hear that the players aren’t up to speed yet, the new signings haven’t bedded in, it was too hot over there, there wasn’t enough time off, as some mob from Malta or Liechtenstein give one or our lot a bloody nose.

It’s going to happen a year from now. And the year after that. To fix it would mean introducing proper summer football (file that under the Atlantic League of things never going to happen) or…well or what.

Because as things stand, Scottish teams are going to get nowhere in the Europa League and things don’t look like changing.

The opposition by and large always seem to be ready for these early games. You never hear about them being “not up to speed” and, let’s be honest, on most occasions they simply look superior.

And even if the first round or two is negotiated, the play-off is filled with seeded well-known names, or not so well know ones who are bankrolled by the local Oligarch and, well, what happens then is less than a shock and fare more understandable.

I won’t catalogue all the failures in recent years because it would take too much time. These are not anomalies. This is now the norm.

Celtic are, of course, in a different sphere. They have the tools, or should do, to at least reach the Champions League play-offs and therefore the worst that could happen is the Europa League group stages.

However, their record over recent season is hardly perfect, bar some notable nights, and so they don’t escape criticism either.

But as for the rest, it does seem to be asking way too much for just one of them to get to the Europa League proper – qualifiers hardly count – and while they will all argue their case and highlight all the reasons why the odds are stacked against them; clubs from Israel, Cyprus, Albania, Azerbaijan, Romania and, erm Ireland are all regulars in the play-off round and every so often reach the group stage as well.

As big Tommy Wright admitted on Thursday night, the FC Trakai players were technically better than his St Johnstone teams.

It’s a sorry state of affairs.