I have a wee problem with this. Much like the huge over-stating that goes on around the "Old Firm" games, I think the Scotland v England game is being hugely over-stated here (by you!). I think it's very much a fixture of the past, and has lost most of its appeal due to the stagnation of Scotland (and to an extent, England) over the last 20 years. I suspect few people outwith the British Isles give a fuck about it either, whereas it probably used to get a lot of attention due to the quality of player on show from both sides. Same as the old firm shite, I don't believe in dragging up the past to support a current argument, the fixture simply isn't one of the greatest fixtures in the world. In fact, it's probably no greater a rivalry now than that of the other two teams in our group: Slovenia and Slovakia. Spain v Portugal, France v Belgium, Germany v Holland, Brazil v Argentina etc etc are all miles bigger fixtures these days. We're probably akin to something like Northern v Republic Ireland in terms of quality of fixture.
That's not to stay it isn't important to Scotland, however, I was more excited about the recent Poland and Germany games than I was the Engurland one (although I was at those, which helped). Similarly when we played Spain under Levein. I think clinging to games like the England one takes away from our overall goal for tournament qualification. The glorious failures (not that Saturday was failure) and occasional great performances against the bigger sides aren't something I can get excited about. I attended the Lithuania game at the start of the qualification with the intention of going to most of the games this campaign, but was appalled by the attitude of the management. Those are the games that are more important to me.