Let's Go to Workwalter Smith Is a Restless Man. With Four Weeks to His First Squad Meeting and 69 Days to Scotland S Match Against Italy, He Feels Like a Manager with No Players to Manage. In an Exclusive Interview, Michael Grant Finds That He Just Wants to Get the Revolution Started

Summary

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SO far, managing Scotland has not seemed like a real day's work. Taking over this country's national team is supposedly one of the most unappealing jobs in the game, but it has not seemed that way to Walter Smith. To put it bluntly, Smith feels like an old manual labourer suddenly stuck awkwardly into a desk job. In quiet moments, when no-one is looking, he might even be twiddling his thumbs, shifting the stationery around or finding some other way to fill the hours.

It is football management, but not as he knows it. Smith's career has been spent on the training ground each morning, but suddenly he has found himself as a manager with no-one to manage. Last week he arranged a match against Austria which will not take place for another seven months.

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Let's Go to Workwalter Smith Is a Restless Man. With Four Weeks to His First Squad Meeting and 69 Days to Scotland S Match Against Italy, He Feels Like a Manager with No Players to Manage. In an Exclusive Interview, Michael Grant Finds That He Just Wants to Get the Revolution Started

It will be another four weeks before he is reacquainted with the reassuring pleasure of dealing with footballers on a training pitch. Only then will he really begin to feel that he is back, a manager again.

"I don't feel like I'm doing a day's work yet, " he said, a little conspiratorially, inside Hampden. "It's an office environment here. Normally I've been used to training and then coming b...

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