LET’S GET BACK TO BASICS
Clarke holding out for a hero ahead of Israel crunch:
AHEALTHY aversion to delivering anything too complex has frequently been nominated by his players as one of the charms of working under
Steve Clarke. Retaining that approach has been sorely tested this year, as the Scotland manager explains.
It was on November
22, 2019 that Clarke learned his next game in charge of Scotland would be at home to
Israel, starting the long countdown to late
March and a Euro 2020 qualifying showdown.
Then another Israel game popped up thanks to the Nations League draw, shortly before lockdown and the postponement of the play-off tie.
With nothing new to watch,
Clarke was in danger of letting the footage of one country in action frazzle the tactical senses.
‘I’ve definitely had far too much time to think,’ admitted Clarke. ‘I’ve come up with strange formations, players playing in different positions!
‘Then I go away from it and think: “That’s not possible, let’s just keep it simple”.
‘In all my managerial jobs and in my coaching career, I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible — and that’s what I’ll try to do again.
‘I spent an awful lot of time in January, February and March getting ready for Israel. So I actually just ended up putting them away and parked them. But I’ve picked them up again this week.’
Content that he has avoided the inactivity pitfall of tying himself in knots over one opposition team, the national coach will — by and large — stick with tried-and-trusted methods.
It may be unusual to associate Oli Burke with the theme of reliability. However, Clarke selecting a player deemed surplus to requirements at newly promoted West Brom doesn’t entirely stem from the time he leant on the winger for a mighty favour in June of last year.
Burke’s late, face-saving winner against Cyprus earned Clarke three points and purchased him plenty of patience on his first big night in the job.
The 23-year-old went on to add a season in Spain’s top flight to go with his one in the Bundesliga, English Premier League experience, a spell with a Treble-winning Celtic squad and £28million of transfers.
Yet despite that impressive pedigree, his name remains filed under unfulfilled potential. Clarke doesn’t need to think too deeply about how to iron out all the inconsistencies in Burke or find the key to him stringing a full season of starts together.
He can be confident that the obvious power, pace and presence are weapons capable of being unleashed effectively when required within his Scotland attacking provision.
But in order for Burke to realise all the promise and Scotland to reap the most benefits, Clarke believes he must now successfully settle with a club.
Three years into a five-year
West Brom contract, it appears Slaven
Bilic is prepared to write off a
£15m outlay made by Tony Pulis and deal him away from the Hawthorns.
Yet, once again to confirm the high regard in which Burke is held, one confirmed interested party is the Premier League’s ninth best team of 2019/20 — Sheffield United.
Chris Wilder was a believer in Burke’s Scotland colleague Oli McBurnie to the extent he persuaded the Bramall Lane board to part with a club-record £20m fee a year ago.
If Burke lands there, Clarke may be delivered the answer to his wishes.
‘I think what
Oli needs to do is to find a home,’ said Clarke. ‘He has been drifting around from club to club and going here and there.
‘He needs to find a manager who loves him and he needs to find a club he can call home.
‘When he gets that, he will improve, he will get better. He is a relatively young man, he hasn’t got too many international caps. ‘Sometimes the pressure is to push these players all the time and to say: “Well, he plays alright for his club but he doesn’t play too well for Scotland”. But it is a different level. It takes time to step up, get used to the environment, find a bit of confidence at that level. I think confidence with Oli Burke will be a big factor. He’s a confidence player.
‘He needs to find somewhere where he can go and play week in, week out. I’m sure if he gets that his performance levels will be good.’ Gordon Strachan ensured Burke bypassed the Scotland Under-21s after barely a dozen Nottingham Forest first-team appearances and debuted for the national team in a March 2016 friendly win over Denmark. By the time he made his competitive bow in Malta six months later, he was a £13m RB Leipzig player and being touted as Scotland’s Gareth Bale.
‘It is not so much sympathy for him but I think he has been a little bit unfortunate with a few of the moves that haven’t quite allowed him to be able to continue his development,’ suggested Clarke.
‘He is getting older. Hopefully he is getting wiser. He has made the big-money moves, he has got the money in the bank now. ‘When you get to that level, if you want to be a top player, you stop thinking about the money and you start thinking about performances.
‘Listen, he had a good spell out in Spain with Alaves last year. He didn’t play all the games but he played a lot of them and picked up more experience.
‘Oli has been good for me in the squads. He has always come in with a good attitude and a good work ethic.
‘He obviously scored the winner in the last minute against Cyprus at Hampden in my first game. So I am very grateful to him for that because I wouldn’t have liked to start with a draw.’
With Lawrence Shankland dropping out injured, all three forwards set to hit the training field on Tuesday with Clarke and his staff are physical types.
Burke and McBurnie are joined by new recruit, £2m QPR signing Lyndon Dykes.
‘I think that’s important,’ noted Clarke. ‘If you look at the make-up of the team and what we’ve got, you do need a physical presence up front.
‘You do need someone who can get a hold of the ball and prevent defenders from getting a hold of the ball, who drops into good areas so your midfield players arrive.
‘We’ve got some good wide players. Somebody like Ryan Christie coming in from wide and joining in, John McGinn joining in from midfield, which he did very well for us towards the end of the last campaign.
‘Oli McBurnie had a terrific season, really good link-up play with Sheffield United. And Lyndon will bring the qualities that he’s got. There are three really good options.’
If Burke’s 11-cap Scotland career hasn’t yet lived up to the expectations created by his first involvement four-and-a-half years ago, then it at least overshadows that of the other new boy from the Denmark friendly squad.
Liam Cooper was drafted in for the first time, too, on that occasion but failed to make an appearance.
He was an unused sub at home to both Canada and Slovenia 12 months later then got no further than the bench again in Ljubljana in October 2017 as World Cup qualifying hopes disintegrated.
Finally, and a couple of Scotland managers later, Cooper featured in the Hampden double-header defeats to Russia and Belgium a year ago.
Cooper, who turns 29 today, skippered Leeds to the Championship title and Clarke is keen for him to enjoy a run of games at international level to continue the late blossoming of his top-level career.
‘Liam played in a couple of games for me last year where we didn’t get great results against difficult opponents,’ stressed Clarke. ‘After that, he was injured.
‘But he got back into the Leeds team towards the end of last season and was captain of a team that was very strong in the Championship — and I’m sure will be strong in the Premier League.
‘I liked his demeanour. He’s a bit of a leader. So that should help the centre-backs. You want your centre-backs to be comfortable on the ball, be able to make a pass out into midfield without giving the ball away.
‘In international football, if you give the ball away, you can spend a long time trying to get it back and you can also be heavily punished on the counter-attack.
‘So it’s important you have people who can play from the back — and know when to play from the back and when not to.
‘I think with Liam’s experience he would have that in his locker.’