Alex McLeish to be named as new Scotland manager today

The 59-year-old emerged as a frontrunner for the job over the last 48 hours on the back of Walter Smith ruling himself out of being Gordon Strachan’s replacement, while Michael O’Neill turned down the Scottish Football Association last month.

Earlier in the week he met with the SFA board where the foormer Rangers and Aston Villa manager outlined his vision that will take Scotland back to our first major tournament since 1998.

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On the back of that chat McLeish received the unanimous backing of the board who have now signed him up on a deal taking him and the association up to the 2020 European Championships.

His unveiling will take place this morning at 11.30am where the man with 77 playing caps to his name will be paraded to the media at Hampden Park. 

McLeish has the highest win rate of any Scotland manager with a 70 per cent record from the 10 games he was in charge of in 2007.

His first games in charge will be against Costa Rica at Hampden then Hungary away next month before his attention will eventually turn to taking his squad all the way to Peru in May and Mexico in June for the controversial summer tour. 

Speaking back in December, McLeish said of the position: “The national job is something that would interest me.”

Meanwhile, it emerged earlier in the day that Leeann Dempster, the Hibernian chief executive who was the favourite to land the vacant ceo role at Hampden, had ruled herself out of the running to replace Stewart Regan.

Dempster confessed to being flattered to have been mentioned as a possible successor to Regan, who fell on his sword following his failure to land Northern Ireland’s Michael O’Neill as the new Scotland manager.

However, she insists she remains happy at Hibs and excited by the task of trying to continue the improvements made at the club since arriving from Motherwell amid significant unrest in the wake of relegation from the top-flight in 2014.

“It’s absolutely true that that job is one of the best, if not the best football job in Scotland,” she said. “And any normal person who is linked with it wouldn’t be telling the truth if they said they never stopped and blinked for a second.

“But that’s effectively what it was, I stopped and blinked for a second and then reflected on life here and the work that’s happening here. It’s a big challenge for whoever goes in there, and that’s not something I wouldn’t be up for, but I’m enjoying life here. So, I just need to focus on this and make sure that’s where my energy is.

Read more: Matthew Lindsay: Alex McLeish is a returning king with very little fanfare

“When it happened, it was lovely, because people you work with and colleagues, external colleagues, put your name forward and say great things about you. That’s nice to hear because it means you’re being recognised for doing some good work. But I see my time in Scotland firmly at Hibernian. I don’t really see myself working in Scotland at another organisation in football outside this club. If the truth be told, at a point in the future, I think every chief executive has their time.

“But I don’t see an opportunity or an option to do anything else in Scotland, so that inevitably means my life will head somewhere else at a point in the future.

“It’s been a really enjoyable three or three and a half years since I joined. The people at the club, we are all in unison in what we want for this club.

“We’re in a period where we’ve got a chance now, I think, to either kick ourselves on again, and that’s what want to do, or we can can let it drift by. I see myself and the people round about me as quite a core part of that.”

She added: “There are opportunities to improve the game in Scotland and, with the events of the last couple of weeks, I think we’re at a stage now where we’ve got a chance to look towards the future.”