ALTHOUGH IT'S not all doom and gloom, as I'll explain later, this was a very stodgy game in which the two teams cancelled each other out. The ball never seemed to settle, it was in the air a lot, and fluency is not something you would ever associate with this 90 minutes.

Those paying for their tickets will never unanimously agree with the composition of any side, but I was sitting with a group of SPL managers and the consensus was that the team looked solid.

Although it would have surprised some, George Burley picked Barry Robson to play on the right because of John Arne Riise - and when he saw Riise wasn't causing a problem getting forward he switched him with James Morrison, which was a sensible thing to do.

I thought Scott Brown was our best player, both destructively and trying to get a tempo into the game. He was chosen as the holding midfielder, and had to follow instructions, which were to play behind Darren Fletcher and, eventually, Robson. Despite that, he was still able to move forward to effect on a few occasions.

It's goals that change games and nobody will need reminding that we had the best chance of the match. Whatever George's plans were, they were designed at one point to let Scotland win the game. That point arrived midway through the second half when Chris Iwelumo faced an open goal and it seemed impossible not to score. Calamitously for player and manager, the impossible was achieved.

Was George right to have taken James McFadden off and put Iwelumo on? In a game like yesterday's you have to be decisive and back your own judgment. He believed that he would have an effect on the game and his arrival with Steven Fletcher moved the game up the field 30 yards which meant Scotland found they were getting a lot more concerted pressure - albeit that at times they got stretched in the middle of the park in terms of counter-attacking.

As to George's thoughts on why he put Iwelumo and Fletcher on instead of Kris Boyd, only he can answer that. But the fact is that the Wolves striker did have the chance to win the game.

Iwelumo played for me at Brighton and he's a tremendously strong character. He's got a huge amount of self-belief and he's thought for a long, long time that he deserved to play at this level. He'll try to counter that miss with his bravado, but the fact is that he'll be massively disappointed.

George's sides usually start games at a high tempo, especially at home, but that just didn't happen yesterday. It occurs at club level as well - you do everything right through the week, you feel as if you've picked the right team, they know the opposition and then suddenly that energy, that other gear, just isn't there. There was a period near the end, when we had two up front, that it became more of a percentage game. There were more balls falling in the box and maybe a scuffed one might have won it for us. That last half hour was certainly our most productive period.

Despite yesterday's failings, I don't think this ends Scotland's chances. Clearly they are going to have to go to Norway and win, but from what we saw at Hampden Scotland can do better and I'm not sure Norway can. It's feasible that Scotland can go to Oslo and get three points, although the more results there are like this one the more difficult it will be.

It was important we didn't lose yesterday, so the tactics of 4-1-4-1 were sensible because they've kept us in the competition. This is not domestic league football, this is a different game.

For the Norwegians, John Carew came into the game playing really well for a team that has a lot of confidence. He surprised me a couple of times with his pace and looked quicker than I expected. He missed a couple of half decent chances and will be annoyed with himself, but there's no doubt he's a danger and it would be a big help to us if he wasn't able to play in the return.

With or without him Scotland are still in the hunt and a win over there, coupled with beating Macedonia and Iceland here, would let us achieve that.

As told to Alan Campbell