POINT WELL MADE FOR STRACHAN
Boss is delighted to salvage a point after Scotland’s dire start
APERFECTIONIST would have had a field day analysing Scotland’s performance in Dublin. For 45 minutes they were awful. The scars of the first half-hour against Wales two years ago are still embedded in Gordon Strachan’s psyche.
He might need another year or two to get his head around what happened here in the first half.
‘It never got as bad as Wales,’ insisted Strachan. ‘It didn’t get anywhere near that. But was it as bad as we’ve passed the ball since then?
‘Well, Norway away wasn’t good — I didn’t like that — but, then again, that was only a friendly. The Ireland game was a bit different.’
A team with pretentions of automatic qualification for next summer’s European Championship Finals in France should travel to the Aviva and beat this Ireland team. Cut out their corner-kicks and you cut out their team.
But then you look at Scotland’s first-half performance. Suddenly, a point doesn’t seem a bad result.
‘It was more a feeling of relief than anything else,’ added the Scotland boss. ‘There was also a sense of satisfaction we could do something about changing it from giving the ball away so much and being a wee bit better in the second half.
‘Poland got a good result on Saturday, too (a 4-0 win home over Georgia), but we’re still in the mix for an automatic place, absolutely.
‘We took a point from Poland (away) and now we’ve taken a point in Ireland. If you had said we would take four points from the Republic, then you would be delighted.’
At half-time in the Aviva, anyone predicting four from Ireland would have been certified.
Craig Forsyth made his competitive debut at l ef t - back, j angling and clanging louder than a bag of spanners.
Matt Ritchie had people asking again precisely why he has been handed a fast pass to Strachan’s starting 11.
Key men like Scott Brown, James Morrison and Steven Naismith didn’t look themselves.
Ireland had just two tactics. Win corners and let Robbie Brady take them, then fire it high at Darryl Murphy.
In Wes Hoolahan, they had the most creative and cleverest player on the pitch. But he is wasted here, because with a Martin O’Neill team, it is about the set-pieces.
Murphy starting ahead of Robbie Keane and Shane Long told you everything.
The former Celtic striker had a clear header from a Brady corner in 39 minutes. David Marshall did well to save it but, from an offside position, Jon Walters rattled the ball into the net.
Throw them in, knock them down, bingo.
After the game, the Irish had a mump and a moan about Italian referee Nicola Rizzoli. Frankly, they had a cheek.
In a city- centre bar l ate on Saturday night, Scotland defender Russell Martin could be found with a plaster keeping his nose together, the legacy of James McCarthy’s first-half flailing elbow.
The Irish midfielder should have been sent off. However, the referee saw it but administered a yellow card and compounded the offence when his assistants failed to spot Walters a yard offside for the goal.
Scotland’s defending was poor, but there i s no excuse f or a linesman failing to spot that at this level.
The Scots probably deserved to be a goal down for their performance. The questions asked of Strachan’s team selection pre-match were pretty much justified in the first half.
Against Gibraltar, there were hints he had overdone the changes. They rang true again here.
Scotland’s improvement is based on a settled team picking itself. Andy Robertson at left-back. Ikechi Anya on the flank. Neither started here.
Irish fans started asking questions of O’Neill on Saturday night and we would have been doing the same of Strachan but for a change in personnel at half-time.
He threw on Anya. Ritchie made way. Forsyth, somehow, stayed put. The Derby left-back got away with it in the end because Anya improved things. He kept Ireland in their own half and granted Forsyth some breathing space.
Within a minute of the restart, Shaun Maloney had equalised. This time fortune favoured the Scots, the ball deflecting off the back of John O’Shea and into the net following a one-two with Anya.
But they made their own luck after that with an i mproved performance.
Brown, Morrison and others came onto a game. Charlie Mulgrew was another eyebrow-raising starter at centre-half beside Martin.
As Ireland threw in corner after corner, high ball after high ball, the Celtic player was composed and unflappable. Scotland found their stride eventually.
‘ The system we used wasn’t working because we weren’t passing the ball well enough, so we had to try something else to make the players feel more comfortable,’ conceded Strachan.
‘It’s something we may have to think about in the future. But overall, because of what we had to put up with, we did OK.’
Marshall earned his corn after the equaliser, producing a critical block from Murphy after surging, clever play from former Livingston player Hoolahan.
Ireland threatened with every Brady corner. But O’Neill’s problems are obvious. They don’t create enough and, if you cannot do that, you don’t score goals.
They are not out of it yet, though. Scotland, however, have breathing space. Georgia and Germany in September are critical games, but there is a margin for error the Irish don’t have.
After his years of dominance of the Scottish scene with Celtic, it’s odd now to see O’Neill toiling to get something from this Irish team.
Their football is one dimensional. Keane is older now and there is no Henrik Larsson to score the goals. In Dublin, the first shards of criticism are beginning to poke through.
‘We must try to become more creative,’ said O’Neill. ‘We need to have midfield players trying to get goals. We don’t score a lot of goals, so we have to try to improve our chance ratio and not just have a final 15-minute burst where you put absolutely everything in the area.
‘In periods when we had possession, I thought we did fine. Scotland were on the back foot for probably all of the first half.
‘But what a lift they got just after half-time when they scored a goal they haven’t really worked for. That knocks you.’
It’s not as if Scotland were worldbeaters themselves. In truth, this was a game to make the eyes bleed. But the result was unquestionably better for the visitors.
As Strachan said, four points from home and away games with Ireland has been a very decent outcome.
‘There are times when you would love to play great football but there are other times when you need to put on the working dungarees and get stuck in,’ he concluded.
Saturday was undeniably one of them.