Clarke admits Scotland now need result against Belgium
STEVE Clarke last night admitted Scotland need a result against Belgium at Hampden on Monday evening to keep their slim hopes of qualifying for the Euro 2020 finals automatically alive.
The national team squandered an early lead in their Group I match against Russia to crash to a 2-1 defeat - their third in five games - and fall six points adrift of their second-placed opponents.
Clarke admitted he was surprised at how nervous his players became after John McGinn had netted and revealed he could make extensive changes for the meeting with Roberto Martinez’s team. However, the manager, who was only taking charge of his third match, denied that the country’s chances of finishing in the top two in their section and booking a place in next summer’s finals were over.
Beating rivals who are currently in first place in the official FIFA World Rankings and who defeated them 3-0 in Brussels back in June will be a tall order - but he has targeted either a draw or a victory.
Asked how he assessed Scotland’s chances of qualifying after the defeat, Clarke said: “More difficult than it was before. We spoke earlier this week about the three difficult games we have coming up.
“Monday night is beginning to look like a game we have to get something out of – whether it is one point or three – to have a realistic chance of getting out of the group.
“Everybody loves the term mustwin. If we get one point on Monday night and three points in Russia (in Moscow next month) there are still enough points to get something out of the group. Rather than say it is a mustwin let’s say it is a game we have to get something out of.”
Clarke was disappointed with how the Scotland players performed after McGinn had scored his first international goal in the 10th minute of the match and with how they had gifted Russia their goals with mistakes.
“That is the biggest disappointment – we gave the ball away quite cheaply,” he said. “We seemed to become quite nervous on the ball for some reason. It is something that we have to address. We didn’t have enough threat going forward once we had the lead. We huffed and puffed going forward towards the end of the game, but we didn’t look like scoring.
“Russia started the second-half better than we did, that’s for sure. I thought we had weathered the storm and then we lose a really poor goal – there were a lot of players out of position. I thought we had weathered their start and were starting to get a foothold in the game again.
“You have to wait and see how the players turn up tomorrow morning, whether we have any knocks or niggles. It’s a short turnaround between two difficult games.
“We will assess the players in the morning and decide. I think the last time I made five changes between the Cyprus and Belgium games and two of them were enforced. It could be something similar again.”
Clarke added: “You have to believe there’s a solution of course. It’s only my third game in. I am learning about the players, I am learning all the time. Within the group of players I believe we have enough talent to be competitive. We will have to look at whether it is a mental thing or a quality thing.”