The players are ready.. I see it in their eyes
(after I clean my gregorys)
I see guys very motivated to win for Scotland. You get a good feeling as a manager when you see that kind of player ALEX McLEISH
STRANGE times these.
Not only did Scotland win a game the other night in a rampant, flamboyant and thoroughly convincing fashion but by breakfast time this morning – unless some klutz drops a butter knife on their bare foot in the queue for the buffet – Alex McLeish will have made it four whole days without a single call-off.
It’s quite incredible what a good result can do to alter the mood. And if McLeish and his players can manage another one tonight this feelgood factor may even begin to creep outside the boundaries of the home dressing room and start to spread itself across the land like some sort of alien contagion.
For now, the nation continues to cast a wary eye in the direction of this Scotland team and its manager. It’s been let down once too often.
At the last count only around 20,000 tickets have been shifted for this Nations League game with Israel even though this single match could catapult the Tartan Army to within touching distance of a major finals for the first time in 20 years.
But the manner in which McLeish bounded into his media duties yesterday indicated the general malaise hasn’t been allowed to dampen spirits inside the camp. Not after Saturday night’s awakening in Albania.
“Yeah, I can see it in their eyes,” was how McLeish put it yesterday when asked if a repeat performance at Hampden will be powerful enough to put this section to bed and secure a pathway into the play-offs for Euro 2020.
“I’ve been in football a long, long time and I know when you get a good feeling about things. I get a good feeling about this group of players. I see it in their body language.
“I see guys who are very motivated to win for Scotland and give their best. You get a good feeling as a manager when you see that kind of player in your dressing room.”
This is a far cry from the chaos that appeared, just a few short days ago, to be pushing McLeish towards a crisis point ahead of the flight to Tirana when players were falling like skittles amid talk of a dressing-room revolt.
McLeish and his group appear to have brought their mojo with them back through
customs after the 4-0 win. Now comes the tricky part. Keeping hold of it in the swirling winds that so often surround and occasionally engulf the best-laid Scottish plans.
When asked if he has ever experienced a week like this last one, spent in the eye of the storm, McLeish said: “It was good. We were pretty singleminded. We prepared well and knew what we wanted to do.
“There were a couple of casualties from our first-choice 11. But the team played to a great performance level. We said if they did that we’d be confident about the outcome. That’s what happened.”
The truth of the matter is McLeish caught some good fortune too at exactly the right time – just when it seemed Lady Luck might have run out on him for good.
A dreadfully poor Albanian side undone by its own indiscipline. A Russian ref with an apparent thing for big tall red heads. And a raft of call-offs that left him with very little option in player selection, formation and tactics.
No square pegs for round holes dilemma over Kieran Tierney and Andy Robertson. No choice but to revert to a back four and let wingmen James Forrest and Ryan Fraser run riot.
McLeish might have been forced into some if not all of it but even so the coach called it spot on just in the nick of time.
He said: “Sometimes these things can be forced on you. But I don’t think we got there by mistake. I don’t think we found a team.
“At the end of the day it’s about the quality of players on the pitch. We know they will always work hard. They need to bring their level to add a wee bit on to that. But over the last couple of years just observing football and watching games I have looked at 4-3-3.
“It’s been very effective for a lot of the teams in England and that was always in my head.
“But we wanted to try things in the summer, new faces. Other things prevented us from getting to certain systems. We tried other ones and I don’t regret that. You have to do that.
“It was an era in our history we had to do that. We said we had to take a hit in terms of some results. But it is still painful when you lose. Overall I’m happy at the minute.”
The time for experimenting over, McLeish needs now to foster consistency. So the temptation to send out an unchanged XI tonight is likely to be overwhelming. Assuming, that is, Steven Fletcher’s old legs have another game in them and the likes of Forrest survive the butter knives at breakfast.
After all, the Celtic man’s sudden return to Scotland’s line-up and the huge upturn in performance were no coincidence. And no one gets that more than McLeish.
He said: “James has a fantastic attitude. It is great to see him getting his first goals for Scotland. He had a great performance but the whole team did.
“I am glad to see guys have picked up the mantle and said, ‘Well, there are some players missing, here’s a chance for us to make an impression.’
“But James has found himself in a situation similar to James McFadden back in the day when he was out of the team.
“I would tell him it only takes a minute, a second even, for things to change. That is exactly what happened with James in that game on Saturday night.”