CLARKE FINDS VITAL SPARK
Manager’s forward thinking is rewarded
ATESTAMENT to Steve Clarke’s intelligence as a coach is the change in John McGinn. As a holding midfielder, the Aston Villa man was an accidental tourist. Now moved forward to support the main striker and press defenders, he’s becoming a rare and precious specimen. A Scotland player who scores goals.
The former Hibernian star made it seven goals in six games with a second-half double as Clarke’s team served a measure of vengeance on Kazakhstan and secured third place in Group I.
Steven Naismith took his own tally to ten goals in 52 appearances on a night which offered further grounds for cautious optimism ahead of the critical Euro 2020 play-off games in March.
‘We’ve found a good position for John,’ said the Scotland boss.
‘He’s playing it very well, him and Steven Naismith are developing a decent understanding and, as well as the goals, they give us a good early press and the desire to meet the opposition high up the pitch which helps us as well.’
After wins over San Marino and Cyprus, this victory made it three-in-a-row for the first time since 2017 when, under Gordon Strachan, the Scots sunk Lithuania, Malta and Slovakia.
Had they started this campaign the way they finished it, they might have been contenders. As it stands, the play-offs are there to catch their fall.
It was all about the second half in the end. Before the interval, a dank night on Glasgow’s south side reflected the performance. Before a sparse Hampden crowd of 19,515, the Scots conceded a poor goal after 34 minutes.
Against a counter-attacking team ranked 121 in the world, a 3-0 defeat in the Astana Arena was bad enough. Losing at home would have felt like the bursting of a bubble.
However, a stirring comeback sent Clarke’s team into their biggest games in a generation with momentum and the wind at their back. Hampden is a venue for next summer’s Euro finals and will host four games.
You still wouldn’t stake the mortgage on Scotland playing a part in any of them yet, but if Friday’s draw in Nyon could throw up two home games that would certainly help. The emergence of a central defence in the next four months would do no harm, either.
In ten games in Group I, the team in dark blue conceded 19 goals, mustering two clean sheets against San Marino. Here, once more, the deficiencies at the heart of the defence were exposed by the classy first-half strike which saw Kazakhstan threaten to inflict more misery on the Scots.
While the quality of the finish from Baktiyor Zainutdinov can’t be denied, the failings were multiple and increasingly typical. Right-back Liam Palmer surrendered possession in his own half. When Aleksey Shchetkin worked the ball to his team-mate 20 yards out, Scott McKenna offered the attacker all the time and space in the world to curl a sublime effort into the net.
Despite Clarke claiming they played well throughout, the Scots huffed and puffed to create openings in the first half and could have lost more than one.
Decent play by Ryan Jack ended in a Ryan Christie shot forcing Dmytro Nepohodov to push round the post after the ball deflected off the chest of Sergei Maliy.
Jack could also have equalised and opened his Scotland account against physical, sometimes cynical opponents, when he gathered a Palmer pass and won the break of the ball before thrashing an effort straight at the keeper.
The half ended with Christie lashing a 20-yard free-kick over the crossbar and boos from the supporters.
To turn things around, Scotland had to do the basics. They had to show tempo, urgency and do the dirty work. They had to find a way back into the game and, mercifully, it didn’t take long.
McGinn’s sixth goal in a dark blue shirt came not a moment too soon. Three minutes into the second half, Naismith won a free-kick right on the edge of the Kazakhstan area. It needed a huge slice of luck for the equaliser to finish up in the net, the ball striking Bauyrzhan Islamkhan in the wall before changing direction and wrongfooting the keeper.
At that point, Scotland would have taken a goal off the striker’s backside never mind his chest.
The game changed in an instant but it took longer than it should have to score a second. For the best part of 20 minutes, indeed, it seemed it might never come.
In superb scoring form this
season, James Forrest blew a great chance after 51 minutes. McGinn fed Greg Taylor on the left flank, the cutback offering his Celtic team-mate the kind of chance he tends to gobble up. Taking a first touch to steady himself, Forrest was falling off balance when he fired a yard wide of the upright.
Naismith wasted another couple of opportunities before finally finding his groove. The Hearts man took a superb touch from a McGinn cross to create a shooting chance after 55 minutes, blazing high and wide when Christie was in a better position to finish.
Christie’s delightful pass to Palmer then created a cutback he should have scored from.
With 64 minutes gone, Scotland began to wonder if it was one of those nights. It was third time lucky in the end.
The productive Christie-Palmer combination got the desired outcome when the right-back’s cutback spun up off a defender and dropped under the crossbar.
Kazakhstan’s keeper Nepohodov had a decent case for a free-kick when McGinn careered into him three yards out. Playing to the whistle, Naismith didn’t hang around, nodding into the net from three yards with his last contribution of the game.
McGinn wasn’t done just yet, poking Taylor’s low cross into the net from 12 yards as the board went up for four minutes of stoppage time.
‘John is on a fantastic run of form,’ said Clarke. ‘He has been great for Aston Villa for the last couple of seasons and he is starting to bring it on to the international stage.
‘It’s very important to remember he is still in the early stages of his international career. The more games you play at this level, the better you become, the more experience you get and the better the team will become.’