Steve Clarke insists Scotland will be ready for Germany this summer despite falling to defeat in what was termed a must-win friendly clash with Northern Ireland.
A historic defeat – it was Northern Ireland’s first win over Scotland at Hampden for nearly 50 years – was not how Clarke envisaged continuing warm-up preparations for Euro 2024, especially coming on the back of a 4-0 loss against the Netherlands on Friday. The manager said he “didn’t notice” the booing from fans at the end.
AdvertisementPerhaps of most concern was an injury sustained by Andy Robertson that saw the skipper forced off in the first half. His Liverpool teammate Conor Bradley scored what proved the winner around about the same time after a mistake by Nathan Patterson. It was the 20-year-old’s first goal for his country. Clarke reported that his club will assess the extent of the damage to Robertson following a collision with Trai Hume just before the hour mark. It was too early to give a prognosis.
As for Scotland, the patient seems to be ailing. It is the first time since 1997-98 that Scotland have gone as many as seven games without a win. “I’m not counting,” said Clarke. “We want to be ready in June and that will be the most important thing. We had a lot of the game and tried our best to open them up. It was difficult to find space between the lines. It was a totally different type of game to what we’ve had recently when we’ve played against the top teams.
“They will just open the pitch and you saw that on Friday night (v the Netherlands) when we managed to create a number of really good chances. Tonight when we needed a little bit of craft and guile in the final third of the pitch we couldn’t find that. That’s basically why we lost the game. We had more than the lion’s share of possession and 14 shots, but not one good enough to go in the back of the net.”
“It’s fair to say we’re not very good at friendlies,” he added. “We don’t win too many of them so let’s hope that, when it comes to the competitive stuff in June, we are ready to go. I’m sure we will be.”
He picked out the positives, including Lewis Ferguson. The Bologna midfielder replaced Robertson as Scotland changed formation. “He got in the box a few times and made good runs,” said the manager.
“I thought Liam Cooper was good at centre back tonight,” Clarke added. “Coops hasn’t played much for his club this year so nice to see he has kept himself in shape. It was good to get Nathan back on the pitch, another game for young Nathan. He’s not playing much football for his club, but when he comes here he gets a chance to play. Good performance for 70 minutes against a top side on Friday night. That was good. We have to be better at the bits that were not so good.
“I will go away, assess both games and the biggest thing for us is to be ready for June. I was a little bit late for this press conference and I’d rather be sitting here in my position than, unfortunately, Wales – who just got knocked out on penalty kicks. So it’s not all doom and gloom.”
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