George Burley could be within 48 hours of being sacked, depending on the outcome of an SFA board meeting that is due to be convened in Glasgow tomorrow.

Burley was still smarting yesterday from Saturday’s 3-0 defeat against Wales in Cardiff, a result and performance that caused the Tartan Army to round on the Scotland manager with some feeling. Burley has vowed to fight on but the SFA may see things differently tomorrow.

Gordon Smith, the SFA chief executive, and George Peat, the president, both refused to comment yesterday, but are known to be bitterly disappointed by the events in Wales.

Peat at least had the good fortune to miss the debacle, having gone to Azerbaijan instead with the Scotland Under-21 team. But Smith was in Cardiff and wore a grim expression throughout.

The next game on Burley’s schedule is the friendly against the Czech Republic on March 3 in Glasgow. The SFA will make a straight choice over the next 48 hours — stay with Burley at least until that game, or sack him forthwith.

Under Burley, Scotland have won only three of 14 matches and they have failed to score in their past five outings, their last goal coming in the April 1 encounter with Iceland at Hampden Park in a 2-1 World Cup qualifying victory.

A number of Scotland players, including Darren Fletcher and Steven Naismith, tried to take the heat off their national coach yesterday by taking the blame themselves for Saturday’s loss. “The defeat was nothing to do with not wanting to play for the manager,” Fletcher said. “We all just got low in confidence in Cardiff after losing three quick goals. We capitulated. There were bad defensive errors, and not enough tracking runners. It was a calamity of errors from the whole team.”

Naismith similarly attempted to shield Burley from blame. “It was the whole team,” the Rangers striker said. “I think I was partly at fault for the first goal for not tracking my runner. All three goals could have been avoided and that was the problem.”

Naismith said that he fully understood the abuse heaped on Burley by the Tartan Army in Wales — and admitted that he might even have been joining in himself if he had been a paying spectator.

“It wasn’t just the manager, it was all of us who were getting it,” he said. “I can definitely see the fans’ point of view. If I was a fan in the crowd I would have been doing the same.”

Burley himself continued to dodge questions about his future, instead insisting that “that is for others to decide”. The Scotland manager did admit, though, to his pain over Saturday’s humiliation at the hands of John Toshack’s team.

“There are no excuses — the performance wasn’t good enough,” he said. “But I feel I’m picking the best squad of players, and am working with them to try to get the best out of them. That’s all I can do as a manager.

“I can’t take any positives from Saturday at all. It was shocking, like I said, we folded like a pack of cards. I felt we had been getting stronger as a squad in our last two games, but on Saturday we definitely went back the way.”

Asked again if he would try to hold on to his position, Burley said that his fate lay in others’ hands.

“That is up to other people,” he said. “I’m just thinking about this game, and I know we’ve got to do better. We were beaten too easily. I couldn’t take one positive out of the match, whereas in the other games we had been going in the right direction. So we’ve got to assess it again.”