Slovakia do not have problems to seek

AMID the disappointment of losing Scott Brown and Stuart Armstrong for Thursday’s World Cup crunch, there is some solace to be taken from the fact the Slovaks have their own personnel problems to deal with, too.

Inter Milan’s young defender Milan Skriniar is suspended. Marek Hamsik, the only Slovakian player involved in this year’s Champions League, is struggling for form at Napoli and has only managed 90 minutes once this season.

Of the other nine players who started against England at Wembley last month, full-back Peter Pekarik has not been playing at Hertha Berlin, Tomas Hubocan is not featuring at Trabzonspor and Robert Mak, our chief tormentor in Trnava a year ago, has lost his starting place at PAOK in Greece.

Vladimir Weiss, meanwhile, is out in Qatar with Al-Gharafa and forward Adam Nemec is in the Romanian league with Rapid Bucharest. There are clear issues in terms of players receiving regular action in top-level competition.

It is very much the way of it with nations outside the elite these days, but Scotland, at least, do have a number of men available who are either involved in the Champions League with Celtic or playing pretty regularly in the English Premier League.

Slovakia are 24 places above us in the FIFA world rankings for a reason. They will fancy getting the point they need at Hampden.

We have players to trouble them, though, and any reason for hope, however tenuous, should be grasped with vigour. It’s going to be a fraught old night.