WALTER SMITH insists Scotland boss Gordon Strachan should remain in charge of the national side and be given the chance to clinch second spot in Group F.

Strachan’s position at Hampden has come under scrutiny in recent days following the defeat to England at Wembley as our World Cup dreams suffered another setback.

Scotland have taken just four points from their first four qualifiers and are below Slovenia, Slovakia and Lithuania in the standings.

But former national boss Smith believes Strachan is still the best man for the job ahead of the next qualifier at Hampden in March.

He said: “That’s international management for you; that’s what you do. You don’t get to be hands-on and that’s one of the real frustrations when you get the job.

“You have a bad result and then you don’t play again for three months. That’s not normal in club management but it’s what you sign up for as an international boss.

“That’s where Scotland are right now and Gordon’s target is to get us back playing as well as we were before.

“I still think that Gordon is the best man to handle things until the end of the campaign. He is the person who’ll have the best idea how to transform our fortunes.

“Any new manager coming in would want to experiment and, four games in, I don’t think that would be the best thing. Gordon is the best man to carry it on.

“I don’t think it makes any sense to change the manager. We had some terrific performances in the Euro 2016 qualifiers and, while we haven’t reached that level again yet, Gordon remains the natural choice to fix that.

“With the national team, you don’t get a regular view of how your players are doing as a unit – they just come to you every few months and then they play.

“It might [take] Gordon a little bit of time to work out how he changes things but I don’t see any point in bringing someone else in instead of him.”

After missing out on a spot at the European Championships this summer, Strachan had targeted a solid start to the new qualification campaign as Scotland set out on the road to Russia.

The draw at home to Lithuania and defeat to Slovakia piled on the pressure and Friday’s 3-0 loss to the Auld Enemy has seen the spotlight shine on boss Strachan.

The Scots will play four of their final six qualifiers on home soil and Smith hopes Strachan’s side can still finish best of the rest in Group F.

He said: “It’s not been an easy time for the national team. When you look at the section, England are the favourites after taking 10 points from four games.

“The hope was that Scotland would have been up there in second place but we find ourselves four points off that at the moment and that means we’re under pressure to pick up points in the remainder of the campaign.

“I think there’s still a possibility that they can finish second in the group, even though they haven’t played as well in this campaign as they did at the start of the last one.

“But if they can recapture that form of two years ago then there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be the runners-up.

“That’s the task in hand, to turn things round. Looking at it realistically, we were never going to finish above England but the opportunity is still there to be second, even though that wouldn’t guarantee a play-off.”