HOPE AFTER SUPER GLUMDAY
and hopeless as Scotland’s situation feels, Clarke is still only two play-off games away from taking us all there too.
Which is why we might as well persevere and hope, through the driving rain, we too were getting a glimpse of some sort of Scottish recovery.
Of course, it would be absurd to describe a win over San Marino as a turning point. But it was a welcome relief all the same as John McGinn poached a first-half hattrick to completely remove any threat of further embarrassment.
Well it would’ve done had the heavens not continued to dump themselves out over Glasgow’s south side because there was a nagging doubt the longer this game went on, the more sodden and treacherous the playing surface became, the worsening conditions could force an abandonment before Clarke had the points tucked in the bag.
He won’t have learned much from it he did not already know. McGinn has got a motor on him that runs in any conditions and no matter the level of opposition.
He’ll have been pleased too new boy Stuart Findlay was able to coast through a debut at centre-half. Although Clarke already knows this player inside out from their days together at Kilmarnock, so giving him a run out against a team of plumbers and electricians was hardly a risky business.
But Findlay hardly put a foot wrong in any case and even managed to head home his first Scotland goal just to cap off his international unveiling.
Same goes for keeper Jon McLaughlin who won his first competitive cap and could have been doing with it just to keep the rain out of his eyes because he had quite literally nothing else to cause him any concern as the keeper squelched around his own penalty box.
That there was something of a fairytale homecoming for Lawrence Shankland, who used to play here in front of even fewer fans during his days at Queen’s Park, will have been another pleasing positive.
Shankland scored once to put Scotland into a 4-0 lead just moments before Findlay found the net with the fifth but the Dundee United striker cannot be judged on his work last night, as satisfactory as it was.
He will return to this stage at some point in the future and he’ll probably add to his scoring collection but right now Shankland is being used purely on an emergency basis.
When his time does come he will be ready for it and, when that moment arrives, the fact he has already opened his account will do him no harm at all.
But Clarke will be hoping not to have to rely on such an inexperienced No.9 when the real stuff begins next March and a place at the finals will actually be at stake.
The bottom line in all of this is there could still be better days ahead for Clarke and his squad. There simply has to be.
Because if last night is as good as it gets for being Scottish then we’re in bigger trouble than we realised.
It could be worse I suppose, we could be San Marino. But that’s not the kind of consolation Clarke has in mind. LAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON SCOTLAND... COME ON