A prayer but no wing-backs as Mcleish shuffles a depleted pack
Bates set to make debut in central defence but call-offs force Scotland manager forced to abandon favoured 3-5-2 formation
The city of Shkoder that will host Scotland’s Albanian assignment this evening was once a foremost Islamic seat of learning. The seven mosques dotted across it bear witness to that.
The midnight and dawn calls to worship projected out loudly from the minarets within these structures account for Alex Mcleish’s squad holing up two hours away in Tirana the night before their Nations League encounter. However, the feeling persists that Scotland will arrive at the Loro Borici Stadium on a wing and a prayer anyway.
Crucially, it appears Mcleish what will not do is offer meditations on wing-backs ahead of his team taking to the field for a game they can afford to lose without fatally wounding Euro 2020 play-off ambitions; yet daren’t do so.
Winging it will be forced by personnel issues, exacerbated by a shed-load of call-offs that yesterday cost him the presence of Kieran Tierney. The sheer paucity of numbers in defence following the loss of Charlie Mulgrew, Stephen O’donnell, Mikey Devlin and even potential auxiliary rightback Ryan Jack ahead of being denied the Celtic left-back is likely to force his hand. The result won’t just be dispensing of the 3-5-2 formation he set as his “dynamic” default formation when in February he was placed in charge of his country for a second time. It will be selecting a back four that is untried in any environment.
A debutant in David Bates will surely partner Scott Mckenna in the central roles. One plus of that is the fact it will allow Andrew Robertson to be berthed in the left-back role he occupies so winningly for Liverpool. The negative is that Callum Paterson is probably going to be deployed at rightback despite his Cardiff City manager Neil Warnock’s pushing of him into attack this season because he entirely doubts his defensive qualities.
The needs-must elements to these modifications is entitled to cause a degree of fretting. If these might be assuaged by the fact the game is not a mustwin, there remains a desperate need to produce a performance ahead of Scotland – baring a three-goal thumping in Albania – facing a victory-orvanquished confrontation with Israel at Hampden on Tuesday evening.
Following the tousing in Haifa last month, frankly Mcleish has few backers to lead Scotland to the top placing in the Nations League C Group 1 that carries the prize of a Euro 2020 play-off slot.
Scotland players dropping like flies for the climax to a qualifying campaign that was supposed to open up new frontiers will be taken as a slight on the man in charge. It is impossible to determine whether that is fair or not. Mcleish would argue he has simply been a victim of circumstance.
“We’ve had a lot of injuries and these are the things that as a manager or coach you can never legislate for,” he said. “Injuries are part and parcel of the game that you can’t control. OK, you can sometimes control the input of a player when it comes to resting but when it’s freak injuries, you don’t have a leg to stand on… oops, that was a pun.”
Little credit is given to Mcleishforanydevelopments that may have occurred on his watch. His moulding of Scott Mckenna, though, has suggested that the historic problems Scotland have suffered in central defence may not prove so pronounced in coming years. There is an entitlement to have faith in him over his willingness to throw in Bates, whose assimilation into German football since joining Hamburg from Rangers in the summer has been impressively smooth.
“Well, I’m not scared to throw the young ones in,” the Scotland manager said. “I’ve done it in the past and I’m not scared to throw them in and sometimes you have to bite the bullet and say ‘you’re in’. You can’t find the perfect player to slot into the position and there’s a young very, very good
“I’m not scared to throw the young ones in. I’ve done it in the past. Sometimes you have to bit the bullet and say ‘you’re in’”