Celtic, Rangers and Hearts need to be Euro redeemers because it's bordering on the bloody ridiculous - Keith Jackson

It's becoming a depressingly familiar tale.

Just when it seemed as if Scottish football might finally be ready to emerge from years in the doldrums, our clubs have stumbled back out onto the European stage like accident prone novices. The record thus far makes fairly abysmal reading. All together, five Scottish clubs have played a combined total of 13 ties over the first few weeks of the season.

They have managed just three wins and one draw between them. That’s nine defeats with an aggregate score to date standing at 28-8 to the other guys. There’s little to be gained from mincing words when we’re being butchered in front of the watching world. Of course, it’s not too late for Celtic, Rangers and Hearts to redeem themselves and to restore some sort of national pride as they attempt to recover from being roughed up so spectacularly over the course of a bruising first week of group stage football.

But it does feel as if a damaging trend has already been set in motion where the international credibility of our game is concerned and, let’s be blunt, it’s been bordering on the bloody ridiculous since this latest campaign got up and running across the continent. It wasn’t all that long ago that it seemed reasonable to hope that we might get close to a full set of teams competing across UEFA ’s three tiers, now that our national sport finally feels like it’s back on the up.

Having only just marvelled at Rangers on their remarkable run to the Europa League Final, there was a sense of heady anticipation of what might be to follow with Motherwell, Dundee United and Hearts digging out their passports over the summer. That Motherwell were the first to be oxtered off the premises, having been turned over home and away by Sligo