The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Douglas believes Clark’s Scotland chance will come
You have to say the number of call-offs from the Scotland squad is getting ridiculous. We even have boys who have been brought in as replacements then calling off themselves.
I certainly don’t envy manager Alex McLeish as he tries to put a team together for the games against Albania and Israel.
This must be hurting his preparations.
If you are injured then you are injured but it just doesn’t look good to have so many opting out of international duty.
It may be an old cliché but honours in football really don’t come much greater than playing for your country.
The build-up to these Nations League games has also been dogged by the controversy surrounding the goalkeeping position.
I do understand why St Johnstone are unhappy about in-form Zander Clark being overlooked by McLeish.
Alan Hodgkinson, the late, great former Scotland goalkeeping coach, used to say that if you got one clean sheet in every three games then you were doing well.
Big Zander has now had five shutouts on the bounce so that is a brilliant run and one that rightly has people arguing his case for recognition by his country.
Big Zander has now had five shutouts on the bounce so that is a brilliant run and one that rightly has people arguing his case for recognition by his country
He is a player I like and rate, and he is obviously playing out of his skin for his club.
Maybe the Scotland management team, who are under a fair bit of pressure, just felt that Scott Bain would give them more experience in the squad for what are extremely important matches.
I think Clark deserves his chance, though, and maybe it will be come sooner rather than later.
Some Dens positives
I stated in the build-up to the Dundee v St Mirren game that the two clubs were involved in a mini-league of their own.
The scoreline from Dens Park – a 1-1 draw – did nothing to change my mind on that.
I just feel the likes of Motherwell and Hamilton Accies are too far ahead already, although both were on the wrong end of heavy defeats at the weekend.
It is difficult to decide whether or not that was a decent result for the Dark Blues.
On the one hand they should be looking to beat the Buddies at home but, on the other, it at least gave Jim McIntyre his first point and there was the added bonus of Kenny Miller getting off the mark.
Those are positives and maybe what was really a baby step in terms of the result can lead to better things in the coming weeks. I certainly hope so.