Smith urges Clarke to consider both Gilmour and Patterson
Gordon Smith has hailed Steve Clarke for fixing Scotland’s Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney dilemma.
But the former Scottish Football Association chief fears the national team boss has another corundum to solve as youngsters Billy Gilmour and Nathan Patterson push for a start.
Clarke has come up with a novel way of getting the best out of his pair of world-class left-backs, with skipper Robertson pushed into a wingback role and Tierney given licence to romp forward on the overlap from the left of a back three.
That cunning plan has silenced those who claimed it was impossible to accommodate both of his star defenders in the same line-up.
But Smith reckons the emergence of Chelsea teenager Gilmour and his former Rangers youth academy team-mate Patterson could leave Clarke with another headache.
The pair are short on firstteam experience but brim0 Gordon Smith saw Billy Gilmour play as a nine year old
ming with potential and there are calls for both to be fasttracked into the starting lineup for Monday’s Euro 2020 opener with the Czech Republic
at Hampden. That would go against the Scotland manager’s notoriously conservative instincts but Smith insists it is time to throw caution to the wind.
The former Rangers frontman said: “You need your best players on the pitch. Tierney is outstanding. But if you’re looking at getting your best players out there, Gilmour and Patterson have to be considered too.
“Certainly, if Scott Mctominay is pulled back into defence, Gilmour would go in there. He’s an outstanding player. I first saw him when he was aged nine in a Rangers-celtic
youth game and he ran the show.
“When he went to Chelsea I wondered about his physicality but he seems to cope with that.
“It’s a tough one for Stevie Clarke to see if he can fit him in somewhere. You saw him the other night when he came on against Luxembourg that he can play at that level.
“I thought young Patterson was outstanding when he went on the other night too.
“Steve just has to have the belief that they have the quality to do their job, regardless of age and experience.”