Here’s a cheery statistic to usher in the festive season. As a nation, Scotland has suffered the biggest coefficient drop at club level of any other country in Europe. By all accounts, we seem to be tumbling quicker than Santa down a greasy lum.

If there’s one thing we do well in this neck of the woods, though, then it’s a crisis. The Scottish game is a bit like an extremely downbeat advent calendar. Each day you open a door but instead of being greeted by a cheery nativity scene or a bit of white chocolate that’s supposed to resemble a manger, you get blue prints, task forces, think tanks, disgruntlement, disagreements, EBTs, failed qualifying bids and the kind of bleak outlooks that make the bleakest midwinter look like a shimmering paradise.

“How do we save Scottish football?” was the fairly straightforward, panic stricken question Stuart McCall was asked during a chin wag at the fourth round draw of the William Hill Scottish Cup at Hampden. “Good question,” said McCall as he began scratching his head like Stan Laurel gazing at Scotland’s new pink strip.

We are always looking for a scapegoat, whether it’s the weather or the facilities or the myriad distractions of the modern world, but, like many sports, a lot of it can come down to those good old fashioned values of discipline, drive and what’s between the lugs.

“For me, you can improve technically and physically but mentally?” said McCall. “You can’t give people desire. You have got to want it, you have to be hungry for it, it is has to mean something to you. You can’t be given everything too young.”

In these molly-coddled times of hand-holding and an overwhelming sense of ‘my wee Jimmy can do no wrong’, McCall’s point is pertinent. “Why are we not producing leaders? Why are we not bringing through kids for whom football is the be-all and end-all?," he said. "People will say that there are too many distractions like Play Station but they have them all over the world and we can’t hide behind that excuse. Like Gordon (Strachan) I played until I was 40 and you need to have a burning desire to be able to do that. I don’t know. Sometimes I think my Missus mollycoddles my lad who is 19 over in America on a scholarship. What chance do I have of getting him to toughen up? My sister hates me telling this story but I used to go to games and I had burst my shinpads. My mum didn’t have a lot so I played with a maths book and an English book down my socks in a school game. I went to give my homework in the next day and I got a telling off. I didn’t mind because we won 2-1 and I didn’t get a broken leg because someone smashed me on my maths book.”

In an era when school sports day rewards folk for finishing last in the egg and spoon race because you’re not allowed to have winners and losers, McCall could be forgiven for shaking his head.

“When did we start saying the result doesn’t matter?,” he added. “If you are losing 6-0 you have to take it. People are like, ‘ahhhh’ in sympathy. But next time he will be better because if you are a young kid in a team losing 6-0 week in and week out, you think, ‘you know what, I want to be in the team winning 6-0.’ You think you want to get better. So you say, ‘I’ll go and train a bit more, I will go and play a bit more football, I will make football mean everything to me’. It has to come from within. How do you get that spirit back? Will it ever come back? I don’t know.”

And on that note, it’s time to open another door on the advent calendar of woe.