There will be many questions facing the Scottish Football Association hierarchy after their clear number one choice for the Scotland manager’s role, Michael O’Neill, knocked back the job on Monday.

Uppermost of those should be this; how do we progress as a nation at senior international level? Progress may be being made in improving the technical ability of our younger players, and that is to be applauded, but in the here and now, how do we help our national side to move forward?

Is it by sticking to the tried and trusted list of candidates, or is it by looking further afield to see what an outside influence could bring to our team?

When Gordon Strachan left his position, there was the opportunity for the SFA to scour the world and assess the best coaches that were available, or who may have an interest in taking on the role. The usual names of Scottish coaches like Alex McLeish and Malky Mackay have been touted, but with no harm meant to these guys, who could very well be the right person for the job, I feel that we should be taking this opportunity to at least see what else is out there.

If you look at the European Championships in 2016, which of course, we weren’t a part of yet again, then you would see a host of smaller countries who had qualified and competed well with a foreign manager at the helm.

In Scotland, we seem to struggle with things that aren’t familiar. So afraid are the SFA of making yet another mistake with this appointment, they want to be seen to be going for an appointment that would be considered ‘low-risk’. But that philosophy has hardly got us anywhere of late, has it?

Now the SFA might have done this, I don’t know, but one of the first things I would have done in their position is to get on the phone to Slaven Bilic and at least have a chat to see what he would think about the role. It would be interesting I believe for the SFA to at least hear about his experiences with Croatia, where he was very successful, as someone who was a young and untested coach at the time.

Bilic has worked in the UK game, he is steeped in it. And even if then you find that he is not interested, at least the discussion may have broadened some minds and opened some doors to a different approach. I think he would be a great shout, so at least put the feelers out there.

Today, as Michael O’Neill attends the UEFA Nations League draw in Lausanne as part of the Northern Ireland delegation, and Stewart Regan attends without a manager on behalf of Scotland, it will be 105 days since Gordon Strachan left his post. That’s an awful long time to be without a national team boss, and it draws sharper into focus the closer the friendly matches in March become.

If O’Neill was the only name to come from that process, with no plan B, then the SFA should be taking a long, hard look at themselves. Is the scope of our imagination to throw everything into getting a coach from across the Irish Sea, who actually lives in Edinburgh? I’d like to hope not.

So, let’s talk to as many people as possible. If you remember previously, the SFA spoke to Lars Lagerback before deciding not to give him the job, and we all know what he went on to do with Iceland. It seemed then as it still seems now, that the stigma around foreign coaches taking charge of Scotland still lingers from the Berti Vogts era, but discounting other coaches because of that would be both nonsensical and self-defeating. And in actual fact, Vogts’s record doesn’t stack up too badly on reflection to the Scots who have followed him.

The SFA should forget going with a big name or a Scottish candidate simply to avoid looking as though they are taking a risk. Someone less well-known who has actually succeeded in similar circumstances could actually be argued to be a safer bet, even if they aren’t a household name in Scotland. Someone like Gianni De Biasi or Bernt Stork, who took Albania and Hungary to Euro 2016, for example.

However they decide to proceed, I just hope the SFA will have explored every avenue and left no stone unturned to find the right candidate, whether they are from Scotland or anywhere else.