TIME FOR No.1 ZAND-OVER
CALLUM DAVIDSON reckons Zander Clark deserves a crack at his first Scotland cap this week.
Former England Under-21 cap Angus Gunn has been parachuted in to fill the Craig Gordon void.
Perennial squad men Clark and Motherwell’s Liam Kelly provide the competition. Clark’s former club are fully behind the Hearts man in his bid for the No.1 shirt.
Davidson says Clark was always at his best in the biggest games for Saints.
He left Perth at the end of last season and was without a club until Jambos swooped in September.
Now he’s top man at Tynecastle since Gordon’s double leg break and, according to Davidson, ready for a senior debut.
He said: “It’s something Zander probably thought, in June or July last year, was a long way away. All credit to him for keeping the faith and believing in himself that he’s capable of doing the job.
“Unfortunately, Craig got injured then Zander has had to be ready. I always believed he was ready to play and step in at Hearts.
“Now he’s playing for Hearts and he’s got the rewards with a call-up. The next stage would be to get minutes on the pitch for Scotland, which would be great. Hopefully he can get that cap.
“His performance levels in the big games were incredible when he was at St Johnstone.”
Despite that form, Clark was routinely omitted from Scotland squads.
In 2018 he was snubbed by Alex McLeish after five successive clean sheets as Scotland selected Celtic’s No.2 Scott Bain and Kilmarnock’s Jamie McDonald as back-ups.
Davidson said: “It was a difficult one. For a while, you had really good Scotland goalies like Allan McGregor, Craig Gordon and David Marshall. I think there was probably one space for Zander. Liam Kelly and Zander have recently been the two competing for it.
“It was tough but I’ll never criticise other managers for selections, he sees what he sees and I’m just glad he’s back in the squad.
“Zander did get called up for a few squads while playing for us. But he played really well when he didn’t get into squads.”