Austin MacPhee has stepped down from his role in the Scotland set-up.
The set-piece coach will no longer be involved with the national team after deciding to step back from his position in Steve Clarke's backroom team.
It's understood MacPhee - who is a set-piece coach at Aston Villa - made the call due to family reasons as his father battles against illness. The coach will now spend more time with his family outwith his club duties.
MacPhee is also thought to have left the Scotland backroom team as he contends with increased demands at Aston Villa with the club competing in the Premier League as well as the Champions League this season.
Clarke had appointed MacPhee to the backroom staff in 2021 and will now look to replace the specialist coach after his departure from Hampden duties.
Read more:
The Scotland manager is considering his options in replacing MacPhee but no immediate replacement has been identified.
It means Scotland could be without a successor to MacPhee for the upcoming Nations League matches against Croatia and Potrugal next month.
However, assistant coaches John Carver and Alan Irvine - as well as national team analysts - are fully understanding of set-piece protocols and processes to oversee that area of training in the absence of MacPhee.
Scotland travel to face Croatia on Saturday, October 12 before hosting Portugal at Hampden on Tuesday, October 15 in Nations League A.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here