SCOTLAND v ENGLAND: 4 DAYS TO GO
THE last big push starts here.
Now Gordon Strachan and his players have gathered for one final time before the summer there is a sense Saturday can’t come quickly enough.
England at Hampden. In a World Cup qualifier. You get the feeling Strachan has been waiting his entire life for this moment and there are stalwarts within his group – lots of them in fact – who think exactly the same way.
It’s early in the week of course. But yesterday a sense of eagerness and anticipation was already bouncing off the immaculately papered walls of the plush Mar Hall Hotel.
Quite simply, Scotland can’t wait to get started.
“The training was inspirational today,” said Strachan who is seldom more happy than when watching or talking about a wellexecuted session but who knows fine well there is a reason why his players are so full of energy and adrenalin at the end of such a slog of a campaign.
He added: “There is a group of them who have gone about a month without having a game so we had to put on extra stuff for them this morning, hard work, after it was finished.
“We took them away and the rest of the lads went, ‘Well, if they’re doing it, we’re doing it’. So they all joined in. Much to the concern of the fitness coach who was having kittens at the time!
“I thought to myself, ‘I love this. This is the way it used to be, when the top players set the standards of fitness and where you want to go’.
“So they set the standard today for how they want to go about the game on Saturday. The top players said, ‘We’ll join in’ so everybody joined in the hard running which they weren’t meant to do. The fitness coach wasn’t happy about it but I’ve been saying to the fitness coach for years the top players determine how far they push each other.”
Yeah, Strachan’s in his element now. He’s comfortable around these players, as they are with him. If anything, this bond between them has been strengthened over the last few months
as Strachan’s back has been firmly up against the wall.
He’s been managing Scotland on a match-by-match basis, always apparently just 90 minutes away from the end.
And now this game of games presents itself. An opportunity to not just to resurrect Scotland’s hopes of reaching Russia in the here and the now but also a chance for the boss and his men to go down in folklore.
He was asked where a win over England might rank among the biggest achievements of his career. Typically, he sidestepped the question before adding: “I would be more happy for the players because I know what it’s like to have a group celebration.”
The question is then: What will it take to get them here? How exactly do Scotland beat the English? Strachan said: “It can come down to a couple of things. You can be lucky. Something happens and you get result.
“But we actually have to be at our best as individuals. I’m sure two or three on the day will not be at their maximum, in terms of ability so it’s about being good team-mates.
“You usually find out within 20 minutes whether it’s your day or not. You get a sense, ‘Oh, it’s going to be a hard day’. So you stick in there and give us 10 out of 10 for effort. That will do us.”
His squad is full of these “good team-mates” he talks so often about. Yesterday Kieran Tierney was joining in training in between appointments with a specialist who is fitting him with a gumshield so he is able to play despite the pain of a broken jaw.
Leigh Griffiths was given the day off after coming down with a fever. But Strachan is not in the slightest bit concerned about the striker’s chances of being match ready this weekend.
Darren Fletcher also sat it out after playing in Michael Carrick’s testimonial on Sunday.
But the rest of them were putting on the kind of session their manager so enjoys. Over the next few days Strachan will explain exactly what will be required of them within the boundaries of his latest tactical plan.
It could be he has something very different up his sleeve because he has been toying with the notion of reshaping his team into a 3-5-2 formation for this particular opponent.
But at the same time Strachan will also see merit in sticking to the team and tactics that won him three points last time out against Slovenia. These are huge, potentially career-defining, management calls.
But yesterday he was giving nothing away. He said: “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time obviously. You have to look at it and go, ‘That was good against Slovenia, do you move it about, do you put guys into different positions where they might not be comfortable. Are they comfortable with that system?’ “There are a couple of things to think about and you know fine well nobody is going to tell you which way we’re going to play. You can always tinker with our main system and play players 10 yards this way and five yards that way. But we’ve got a good idea what we’re going to do, that’s for sure.”
Strachan talked at length about his satisfaction at the level of performance his players put on at Wembley in November, when they walked into the wrong end of a 3-0 hiding.
The heaviness of that scoreline still gnaws at him. But it also might just have given the manager and his players an added incentive to seek a fairer retribution.
Asked if goal-hungry Griffiths – still waiting for a first strike 12 caps in – might be the man to settle the scores he said: “Has he not scored yet? Why have I picked him? Jesus Christ Almighty!”
No, Strachan has little time for attempting clairvoyance. But he does appear to sense Scotland’s big moment will soon be upon them and this time he needs them to take whatever chances they can fashion.
He said: “I couldn’t tell you how it will go. I can’t tell you if they’re going to take the chances they create because I have no way of knowing. I haven’t got a clue.
“You never know where the goals are coming from. It has always come in a different way altogether, the goals have come from somewhere.
“You can’t envisage how it is going to pan out, you just deal with things as they happen.”
The big push has begun. What comes next is anyone’s guess.
STRACHAN