Scott McKenna: Why Scotland defender who "simply oozes class" deserves more respect to his name

So dismayed was a Nottingham Forest blogger over the social media slating received by Scott McKenna from a section of the Tartan Army following his, eh, 11-minute run-out in the national team’s sparkling, World Cup play-off earning, 2-0 win at home to Denmark in November, he was moved to pen an open letter.

“Dear Scotland fans, we love Scott McKenna even if you don’t” ran the headline. In a nutshell, that pretty much gives the thrust of his stout defence of the strapping centre-back. “We’d like some respect to be placed on his name,” implored the Forest devotee, who declared that the 25-year-old “simply oozes class week in, week out” and has done so since his £3m move from Aberdeen in September 2020. In the next fortnight, the demand for respect for the capabilities and career-choices of the hugely likeable McKenna could be irresistible. Both from his Midlands fan club, and his far more difficult-to-please ain folk.

Humungous hardly begins to do justice to what could be on the line for McKenna across that timeframe. On Sunday, he will be at the heart of the Forest backline as one of English football’s storied names seeks to find its way back to a top flight from which it has been exiled for a torturous 23 years. A period during which the fall from grace for the two-times European Cup winners was so precipitous, the mid-2000s even brought a three-year stay in the third tier. The Premier League play-off final that will see Steve Cooper’s side confront Huddlesfield in the so-called £170m game, just by merely pitching the club up at Wembley, returns them to the fabled amphitheatre for the first time in 30 years. An arena wherein they snared four League Cups during their golden period under the wondrous Brian Clough; the