Milne’s moans are too late Left-back call is crucial

IT IS 20 years since Stewart Milne became the chairman of Aberdeen. In those two decades Scotland’s national team has failed to qualify for six European Championships and five World Cup finals. A collapse in the club coefficient cast our right to two Champions League teams down a manhole. And English clubs became obscenely wealthy around the same time Rangers plunged off a financial cliff and Hearts clung to the edge by their fingertips. Through this cluster of flux Milne didn’t have much to say for himself. Yet here he is expressing ‘genuine concern for the state of the game in Scotland’. And calling for a summit between the SPFL and SFA. Why? Because Dons defender Mikey Devlin failed to have a ropey red card overturned. And the SPFL made a complete and utter ricket of scheduling the Betfred League Cup semi-finals. We all wish we could understand what Scottish football’s powerbrokers are thinking sometimes. Nevertheless, Milne’s earnest call for a top-table summit might have carried a little more weight had it come when the Scottish game was lost and firing distress flares into the sky. Not when a couple of dodgy decisions failed to go Aberdeen’s way. THE reasons neither Andrew Robertson or Kieran Tierney play left-back for Scotland should be obvious to all by now. Alex McLeish wants to shoehorn two of his best players into the team by hook or by crook. And the 3-5-2 shape allows him to use both while taking the issue of who plays right-back out of the equation. But Robertson didn’t become a Champions League player at Liverpool playing left wing-back. Just as Tierney didn’t become one of the game’s most coveted young full-backs by operating in the centre of defence. Neither of them really want to play there. The fact they can doesn’t necessarily mean that they should. One quality player out of position is bad enough. Two feels like a death wish. A recipe for disaster. McLeish has forgotten more about football tactics than the rest of us will ever know. But the compromise isn’t working and he has three games against Portugal, Israel and Albania to manufacture some signs of progress. Sooner or later, every international manager earns his corn by making tough decisions. And picking Robertson (left) or Tierney to play left-back in a back four is one that can’t be put off forever.