Clarke can’t afford to suffer votes of no confidence

STEVE CLARKE might be the only man in Britain who’s had a worse week than Boris Johnson. First came a hard Scexit delivered by no-nonsense Brussels technocrats. Now comes a bruising vote of no confidence from the manager of Rangers. Steven Gerrard played 114 times for England. When it comes to international football, he knows his onions. And the Liverpool legend can hardly contain his anger over Ibrox midfielder Ryan Jack returning from Scotland duty injured. The midfielder had a harrowing 90 minutes against Celtic. Nursing a niggly knee condition, the last thing he needed was an 11k double session with Scotland 48 hours later. Gerrard says the Scotland management knew the score. He’s so annoyed about the whole business he can’t bring himself to discuss the matter with either Clarke or his own player. Jack is the meat in the sandwich. He’d already cried off from Scotland duty once or twice and clearly didn’t fancy doing it again with Belgium on the horizon. Yet he shouldn’t have needed to say anything at all. The buck stops with the manager. A newcomer to the international game, Clarke was asked to hit the ground running. Scotland managers don’t get much time with the players. They have to make what time they get on the training ground count and, ahead of Euro 2020 play-offs in March, Clarke needs to whip his side into shape. Flogging knackered players at a training boot camp might not be the best way to do it. A national team boss doesn’t own the players. He borrows them and has a duty to those in his care. And if club managers think the man in charge of Scotland can’t be trusted to do the right thing, those parallels with Boris Johnson will start to look uncanny.