Ideally, Levein will be in a position to add real quality to his squad and build on the confidence gained from the victory over the Czechs. The pluses outweighed the minuses on Wednesday,but it was a close-run thing. One such positive was the result itself, and a clean sheet against a side who Levein feels are strongest “middle to front”.

Charlie Adam and Lee Wallace suggest they are more than ready to make an impact during this campaign. Scott Brown weighed in with a winner and another mighty display for his country. There was also the maturity shown by the Scotland crowd over the return of Kris Boyd and the performance the player produced.

On the other hand, however, was the realisation that a Czech play bazaar side without Petr Cech, Milan Baros, David Rozehnal and Zdenek Grygera got the better of the Scots for large swathes of the game. Star turns included Tomas Rosicky and Jaroslav Plasil but there were no real surprises for Levein.

“There weren’t any of them who we thought ‘oh we will have to give them more attention’,” Levein said. “But if we are going to beat them in either of the qualifying games we will have to play well, our defenders will have to be very good and our goalkeeper will have to be good. The Czechs might have better individuals, but the team and the work ethic are worth more than 10 places in the world rankings. The question is whether they can be worth more than 20 places in the rankings?”

While Levein was celebrating a win in his first game in charge, his chief scout, Michael Oliver, was spying on Spain, whom Scotland face in the Euro 2012 qualifiers.

“Michael told me they were the best team he had ever seen, and that we shouldn’t bother turning up.”

Back to earth with a bump then.

Celtic and the SFA have gone to war.

It all began with a Celtic ‘source’ leaking a story to the media in the frantic build-up to February’s Old Firm game about a Parkhead complaint to the game’s governing body over a lenghty list of complaints they believe have gone against them this term.

Both previous Old Firm games were cited in the list, the first when Celtic were denied what was a stonewall penalty at Ibrox in a game they lost 2-1, the other in the game against Rangers in January when they were denied a goal from Marc-Antoine Fortune, a match they went on to draw 1-1.

In between times we a couple of offside goals against Falkirk and Dundee United that TV cameras later proved to be legitimate. Celtic drew both of the games.

However, the furore that greeted their complaints ensured that referee Dougie McDonald was under intense pressure going into the third Old Firm game at Ibrox at the end of the month. The game was an hour old when Scott McDonald and Kyle Lafferty tussled and the red card was waved in Brown, the Celtic captain’s direction.