Clarke chose the right time to get his team spot on

STEVE CLARKE usually looks like he’s just found a fiver but lost a tenner.

But beneath the scowly demeanour and behind the closed doors of his hotel room he was probably moonwalking like Michael Jackson over the past 10 days.

Clarke had some proper time to work with players and that’s always been his forte. Everyone who has worked with him will tell you that in terms of coaching, there are few better.

The training ground is his domain and as an international manager there is rarely enough time to get your players on it and drilled to such an extent that they develop an almost telepathic understanding of each other.

That’s what he achieved at Kilmarnock, creating a team that was much more than the sum of its parts. He organised them in such a way that they frustrated the life out of so-called better outfits but had enough about them in an attacking sense to beat clubs that had a similar quality of player.

It took months on the training pitch. Clarke doesn’t have that luxury with Scotland but these players know their jobs within the set-up.

Such is the structure and solid foundation that a newcomer like Andy Considine could join the group for his first training session last Monday morning and 48 hours later be playing as the left centre-back in a three as if he’d 50 caps.

His performances were remarkable, considering he would have been fourth choice behind Kieran Tierney, Scott McKenna and Liam Cooper. If any of that trio are fit for next month, there’s every chance Considine won’t play.

But Clarke knows that in the Aberdeen defender he has another player upon whom he can rely.

Add a real desire to be representing his country, as each and every one of them now seems to have, and suddenly there’s a potent mix of organisation and motivation.

The top end of the pitch has long been Scotland’s Achilles heel but Clarke has stumbled upon a solution in the partnership that has been struck up between Lyndon Dykes and Ryan Fraser. That may never have happened had Ryan Christie been available to the Scotland manager, so if there’s a bit of luck involved he’ll take it.

Christie, Tierney, McKenna, Cooper, Stuart Armstrong, James Forrest, Steven Naismith and, hopefully, Leigh Griffiths, will be available to him next month.

Suddenly, there are options and we have to trust Clarke to pick the

Everyone will tell you that in terms of coaching few are better

right ones. If we were playing a Latvia or a Bosnia at home, I’d be more worried than I am about going to Serbia because those games where we are expected to be on the front foot and dominating, are where we usually struggle.

But Serbia away? That’s right up Clarke’s street. He’ll be spending every minute of every day plotting his strategy.

His players know him now, know what to expect, and if we’ve learned one thing over the past 10 days it’s that there’s no need to panic if half our team is missing. Not when those who come in for them have shown they can take us to where we all want to be.

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