Fraser Brown: Scotland can't afford nightmare Six Nations scenario - and how to target England

England are coming to Murrayfield having not won here since 2020. That game took place in what felt like a hurricane and was an absolute nightmare to play in but it was close. Very close.

So despite the defeat in Rome and the disappointing nature of the match, Scotland should be confident about facing England, even though this England team go into the game on the back of a 12-match winning run.

Scotland have managed to hurt England every time they’ve played them in the last seven or eight years. You go back to the famous win of 2018, the equally memorable draw in 2019, the 2020 blip, then four wins in a row between 2021 and 2024. We lost at Twickenham last year but it was a really competitive fixture and Scotland could have won.

Scotland will not fear whichever England team travels north this weekend, but they have to fix the structural issues around set-piece and defence that blighted the performance against Italy.

It’s a pivotal moment for this team. They simply can’t afford to travel to the Principality Stadium the following weekend having lost two from two.

If they go to Cardiff on the back of a Calcutta Cup win then there’s the chance to go two from three going into the break, then we have France at home, who we've been successful against at Murrayfield in the recent past, and then Ireland away in Dublin where Scotland will feel like they're due a result against an Irish team that's not firing.

Selection obviously will play a big part and I think there will be a change or two following the 18-15 loss in Rome.

What to do with the forwards

The lineout and scrum performance against Italy means that there must be changes up front. There seems to have been a shift over the last year or so away from selecting the best or most consistent set-piece operators. Players whose primary role was secure ball at source.

Over the last couple of years, the number of kicks in the game has increased due to the law changes and it has meant kicking has become a much larger possession source for teams in international rugby. I don’t know whether this has affected some of the thinking around selection, prioritising the best open play ‘rugby players’ rather than set-piece specialist.

England like to kick more than most. Under Steve Borthwick, they're very driven by statistics and trends in the game. At the minute, the biggest trend in the game is to kick contestables and try to win the ball back off those aerial duels, because the teams that do that the best and the most win games. They will certainly target Scotland in this area with high balls from 9 and 10. They will also put immense pressure on Scotland from the touchline and one thing is certain, if Scotland are to win at the weekend, they will need their best scrum and lineout specialists on the pitch to secure as much clean possession as possible.

It will be interesting to see what Gregor Townsend does in the second row. Would you change someone like Grant Gilchrist, who's been ever-present in Gregor's teams for the best part of a decade? Does Scott Cummings take on the lineout calling responsibility? And do you bring in Max Williamson or Gregor Brown to start in the second row? Gregor, as he always does, had a good impact off the bench against Italy, very physical, very abrasive, and knows his detail really well.

I’m not sure there will be a change in the back row. I thought Rory Darge and Jack Dempsey played well in Rome, and Matt Fagerson did the dirty work, but it probably wasn't his best game. Scotland might look to bring in someone like Jamie Ritchie who has been playing well all season in France and who travelled with the team to Italy. In hindsight, it was possibly a mistake not having an out-and-out jackler among the replacements in Rome. Someone like a Jamie or even Freddy Douglas to come on and be a poacher that's going to win you turnovers towards the end of the game.

In the backline, I think the halfbacks and centres will stay the same but there are big calls to be made in the back three. Does Blair Kinghorn come back in at full-back for Tom Jordan? Do Darcy Graham and/or Duhan van der Merwe - who's always been a menace against England - return?

The back three are going to be targeted by England in the air as they look to utilise the kicking ability of George Ford. I have no doubt he'll be putting a couple of spiral bombs straight down the middle of the pitch to try and isolate whoever's at 15.

There was more than one point of failure in Scotland’s lineout at the weekend. Some bad throwing yes but also there was a lot of call errors as well as some good lineout defence from the Italians.

Some questionable calls

Ewan Ashman is a very flat thrower. A lot of the options, particularly in the first 10 minutes where Scotland had chances down in Italy's 22, were balls that were just in behind the Italian defensive pod. For a flat thrower in those conditions, that's very, very difficult. So again, I would question some of the call selections there.

Italy had their own problems at the lineout, but the easiest throws to go to when it's very wet are throw-catches. And that is what Italy resorted to as the game went on and the conditions worsened.

I thought Italy were very good in the conditions. They were physical and confrontational up front. They had their own lineout blips but they figured it out. And, tactically, they were very smart for their tries.

They'd identified how hard and early Scotland close in the backfield, and they threaded those balls through to exploit this.

They were very smart in how they kicked to Scotland. They were obviously prepared and had been coached very well during the week.

Conversely, Scotland just struggled to adapt. In those conditions, when you are playing in a virtual monsoon, it’s just how quickly you can transfer pressure onto the opposition, how quickly and efficiently you can pin them inside their own third.

When Scotland won lineouts, they were going through multiple phases to set up their perfect kick structure when they could have kicked directly from source. There was no need to take the risk.

Also, the amount of energy that Scotland were forcing the forwards to burn through in the middle part of the pitch was draining. Scotland had more territory and more possession than Italy but almost all of it was between the Italians' 10-metre line and the halfway line. That's where Scotland played all of their rugby, not in the danger zone.

They played phase after phase often with no apparent structure due to the conditions. How many times did you hear Sione Tuipulotu or Huw Jones mentioned during the commentary? Hardly at all.

The conditions weren't right to get them into the game on the halfway line so why were Scotland playing so much rugby there? It was the same with Finn Russell - he wasn't in the game.

A lot of the match from a Scotland point of view was the forwards picking and going. What was the purpose of burning that much energy on the halfway line when everything pointed to it being a tight game? As soon as the weather kicked in, we knew it was going to be a closely fought scrap.

Gregor Townsend’s future has now become a focus and the only way he can change that is by winning this week. Whatever's going on in the background with Red Bull must be put to one side. His sole focus must be on performing and winning this week and, knowing Gregor, how proud and how professional he is, of course it will be.

The only way he can stop stories about his future and take the pressure off himself is by the team performing this week, next week, and then in the final two games. It’s as simple as that.