If there’s a thin line between genius and madness then Steve Clarke had better watch his next step.
There is, rightly, some goodwill left in the bottom of the tank where the Scotland boss is concerned but that rosy glow which washed over the nation along with qualification for a first tournament in 23 years is fading. And fading fast.
And the feel-good factor reached dangerously low levels on Wednesday night when Clarke picked a starting XI apparently with two pencils rammed up his nostrils and a pair of underpants on his head.
Let’s be blunt. By choosing to deploy Andy Robertson on the right and ignoring a far more obvious solution to the misfortune of losing both Stephen O’Donnell and Nathan Patterson, Clarke placed himself out on a limb.
That’s the thing with coming up with the kind of approach to problem solving that no one else in the country could possibly imagine. If it comes off, you’re a diamond. If it doesn’t, you’re a dumpling.
And that’s the unfortunate position Clarke finds himself in this morning as the country continues to scratch its head and wonder what on earth he was thinking when he jotted down his team to face the Danes in Copenhagen.
There are some who did not want Clarke to be appointed in the first place. They will now feel emboldened and maybe even vindicated. There are plenty of others who believed the SFA were making a solid, reliable choice when they asked Clarke to restore order of the chaos Scotland had become.
And, yes, Clarke has done a great deal to justify that initial faith.
By identifying very early on that John McGinn was being misused at the base of Scotland’s midfield and instead allowing the Aston Villa man to wreak havoc much further up the pitch, Clarke made his first successful adjustment.
In his role as second striker, McGinn notched seven goals in six games.
Clarke then designed a bespoke, three-at-the-back formation, neatly solving the conundrum of how to fit Robertson and Kieran Tierney into the same team.
By converting Scott McTominay, he also added another layer of calm and composure into Scotland’s defence while minimising the need to dig too deep into a shallow pool of natural centre halves, not many of whom are cut out for this level.
With this system, Clarke needed only one of them to get a head or a boot on to anything that might come his way while leaving the more intricate stuff to those better qualified.
This was genius. All of it.
But, frustratingly, it does feel sometimes as if the manager forgets why he made such radical changes in the first place.
Before the Euros, for example, when he made a point of insisting McTominay would be back in midfield for the duration of the tournament.
Then, when injury ruled Tierney out of the opener against the Czechs, he stuck with the three-man defence which was created with both Tierney and McTominay in mind.
The result? Three big central defenders resorted to launching long balls up the pitch, by-passing the very midfield which contains the most talented players in his squad.
And, predictably, Scotland’s long awaited return to a major finals got off to the worst possible start.
McTominay was returned to a back three at Wembley. Tierney too.
And, with Billy Gilmour let off the leash, Clarke’s team was transformed. But when Covid crept inside the camp and kept Gilmour in isolation for the final group game against Croatia, Clarke’s judgment was questionable once again.
The manager chose to replace a ball player with a runner in the shape of Stuart Armstrong and the whole balance of his midfield was thrown off kilter.
The result? More long balls hoofed out from the back in the hope that Armstrong might get on the end of a flick on.
As Graeme Souness lamented on the night, it was like watching football from a different era.
What Clarke really needed after such a disappointing summer was to light a fresh flame under his team’s hopes of making it to the World Cup in Qatar.
But, by sticking with a back three, shifting Tierney on to the left and asking Robertson to switch flanks to the right, Clarke compounded all manner of errors. The manager’s logic looked seriously flawed even before kick-off. After 15 minutes or so it became unfathomable as Denmark threatened to run riot.
It should not have taken Clarke until half-time to correct his mistakes. But even so, by replacing Scott McKenna with Lyndon Dykes, moving Ryan Fraser to right-back, returning Robertson to the left and shifting Tierney inside, this was an admission of how horribly wrong his plan had gone.
What Clarke did not appear to address was another glaring issue in midfield, where Gilmour and Kenny McLean should have swapped positions.
It was only when circumstances dictated that the pair dovetailed and Gilmour took on the responsibility of dictating the play from McLean’s more central role, that Scotland really began to tick for prolonged periods.
But, on each occasion, McLean would eventually move back inside to where the manager wanted him to be.
Yes, Clarke will say with justification Gilmour played on the right of a three-man midfield against England and was able to run the show from there too.
The key difference being that McGinn was given the central role that night and his forward running left space for Gilmour to fill. McLean was never likely to budge over.
Whenever he did though, Gilmour stepped in to prove once again that he is on a different planet to even the most experienced of Clarke’s core stalwarts.
It’s time to build a team around this teenager, rather than merely find a way of fitting him into one.
That could be Clarke’s next big trick as well as the manager’s best hope of climbing out of a rut that now stretches back quite some distance.
One win – against the Faroes – from nine competitive games, represents a worrying trend. Clarke now needs two from two against Moldova and Austria to prevent serious madness from setting in.
