Gilmour is leading Scotland’s recovery
BILLY GILMOUR and his Scotland teammates got back to their Darlington base at 2am yesterday, although it is unlikely they managed much sleep amid the elation of their draw at Wembley.
Chelsea youngster Gilmour — man-ofthe-match against England — was among those whose tired eyes were focused on a golf ball and not a football yesterday afternoon, as Steve Clarke afforded his players half a round.
But while Gilmour was enjoying a quiet stroll around the luscious Rockliffe Hall course, all of the talk back in the clubhouse was of the nation’s new hero.
‘ It didn’t surprise me,’ said coach Steven Reid, assessing the 20-year-old’s performance on his first Scotland start. ‘From day one in the camp he has been incredible.
‘Billy has done enough to justify inclusion, and boy did he step up! He was fantastic — he was brave on the ball and played with personality and confidence.
‘I can’t think of too many I’ve coached or played with who, at that young age, could step up in that environment and magnitude of game.
‘He’s a confident lad. You’d think he’d been around it quite a few years. I wish I’d had that confidence when I broke into the Republic of Ireland team at such a young age.
‘ He stepped up but there was no surprise at all in the performance he delivered.’
Scotland’s goalless draw means a win against Croatia at Hampden Park on Tuesday would almost certainly put them into the knock-out rounds of a major tournament for the first time in their history.
The squad had a discussion in the aftermath of Friday’ s game, reminding themselves that it will count for nothing should they fail to beat the Croats. And that’s right. This may be unfair but history will only judge the merit of their performance at Wembley in the context of what follows. Will it be the cornerstone of their recovery towards a landmark progression? Or will it be another match in which they failed to score en route to elimination? The latter remains the concern — Scotland have had 30 shots on goal at this tournament and are yet to score. Only six of them have found the target. Clarke, however, was relaxed when pressed on the issue yesterday. ‘If you look at the key chances in the game against England, Stephen O’Donnell hit his shot very well and it was probably the save of the match from Jordan Pickford,’ said the manager.
‘The little nuances you need is for that ball to spin up straight on to Che Adams’ head and he’s nodding it into an empty goal.
‘When Lyndon Dykes had his shot cleared off the line and it falls between Che and Tyrone Mings in the box — if it’s your night then that ball falls perfectly for Che to shoot into the back of net. It didn’t.
‘ We created a lot of chances against the Czech Republic (lost 2-0) and enough chances against England to get a goal, and I’m sure if we create enough against the Croatians then we can score the goals that we need.’
Not that Clarke plans to schedule too much shooting practice over the next 48 hours.
‘Now is two days of almost complete recovery,’ he said. ‘There’s not much we can do tactically on the football pitch, so it’s a little bit more in the classroom.
‘ The message for the next three days is recovery, recovery, recovery.’
To qualify on the back of their opening-game defeat — now that would be the greatest recovery of all.