It might be a clash between ancient rivals on a historic battlefield, but don’t expect Gordon Strachan to be striding around the Hampden dressing room like Mel Gibson ahead of Scotland’s meeting with England tonight.

The national team manager reckons that the days of sending teams out to get stuck into the opposition are over, and he has called for his players to show cool heads tonight in the heat of the battle.

Strachan has witnessed first-hand how this fixture can bring out the worst in players, and he doesn’t want any of his men letting the side down by picking up a needless red card.

If they can play with their heads more than their hearts, he thinks that the Scots can get the better of their much-fancied opponents, and that they will really be able to play with freedom.

“I think pride is a word that is overused now,” Strachan said. “We’re not fighting in the streets anymore, it’s not Culloden and all the rest of it.

“It was good fun in those days because we never saw big games, and that game was huge. There were four or five games on the telly a year and this was one of them.

“It’s sort of dissipated into the background with the Champions League and all that, those games have more build-up now than this one I think.

“[I saw players] in games like this when they thought it was great if they went clattering into tackles and the crowd went ‘Yeah!’ Then they get a yellow card or a red card in a big game and you’re playing with 10 men while they’re clapping the crowd as they go off.

“Everybody is cheering them on and you’re thinking: ‘What a prat. You’ve just left me and my nine mates to get on with this.

“Those days are gone now as well though. That ‘get intae them’ theory of playing football is gone.

“I honestly think that I’ve got players that will play against England and they won’t go past that stage. They are well in control of their emotions, and I don’t think there is anybody out there I’ll have to worry about who gets too emotional about the game.

“I’ve played with people beside me in games who get too emotional, and they become a problem, running about and kicking people, losing discipline and giving free-kicks away, arguing with the referee and all that.

“I’ve seen it, I’ve been beside it, and that is the worst. I’ve seen people play to the crowd and flying into tackles, but not now.

“The crowd would be loving it and the player has just given a free-kick away in a really dangerous area. The other guys have to deal with his recklessness.”

So, with no rabble-rousing speech planned for his troops on the big day, what will Strachan be saying to his men before they go out in front of a packed Hampden Park?

“You never know what you’ll say, it could be something that comes to you in the half an hour or 15 minutes before the game,” he said. “I can’t remember what I said before the Slovenia game, I really can’t.

“You just sense what is going on. Is there something you can pick up on in the last hour before the game or has something happened during the day, or the other team has said something about you?

“I’ve never had a standard thing like saying you have to be a good team, but there’s things that come up you can sometimes use.

“On the other hand, you might think you don’t want to mess this up, and tell them just to get on with it. They’re all sitting there waiting for you to say something and you’re saying: ‘What are you waiting for? On you go.’"

Given Scotland’s underdog status going into the match, it has been suggested that it represents something of a free hit, with any points picked up a bonus for Strachan’s men.

That’s not the way he sees it though, with the performance of his team at Wembley, even as they went down to a three-nil defeat, giving him cause for optimism.

He said: “I genuinely believe we can win the game. I really do, and I’d be really disappointed if we didn’t get anything from the game.

“I take stuff from the last England game, where we would all agree that we were comfortable and doing a lot of things we had worked on.

“We get a couple of chances, we don’t take them, we could have been in the lead. If big Grant Hanley was playing regularly, he would have put that header in the back of the net, and then Cahill loops one in.

“That’s how close we were, so I take that. Then I take the training, and the enthusiasm of the training, and what the guys who have had a good season are bringing to the group

“All that adds up to feeling good."