OVER his own 51 caps for Scotland, Steven Naismith suffered his fair share of disappointments, and often saw his manager pay the price. As qualification campaigns came and went without the Scots making it to a major tournament, the coaches would come and go too.
Steve Clarke was eventually the man to stop that rot, making it to the European Championships last summer, but he has now come under fire from some quarters following Scotland’s desperately disappointing World Cup play-off defeat to Ukraine last week.
Naismith, predictably given he is on Clarke’s coaching staff, you might say, believes that any talk of Clarke losing his job over that failure to reach Qatar would be ridiculous, but his view isn’t solely based upon his own instincts to preserve his job.
The former Kilmarnock, Rangers, Everton and Hearts frontman shares the frustrations of the entire nation at once again being on the outside of a tournament looking in, but he points to the progress made by Clarke with the national side over the past three years as more than enough evidence to support his argument that the SFA should stick by their manager.
“There is going to be disappointment,” Naismith said.
“I think the manager expects that and people are going to have their say.
“But history shows you that changing the manager and just saying ‘it’s not worked, next, next, next..’
“The gaffer has a great relationship with this squad and the squad have a great relationship with him. And within the squad, it’s brilliant.
“So I think it would be a knee-jerk reaction for anybody to do that. Whether it’s straight after the game, in the heat of the moment, people are saying that.
“Look at where we’ve come from. We have made massive strides. Even the World Cup campaign, the group stages, the amount of points we collected, nine games unbeaten then there’s the eight-game run. When you look at the bigger picture, we are heading in the right direction.
“For us to be disappointed we are not going to a World Cup right at the last stage is a bit of a change from when I was a player, and you are going into the last two games knowing it’s not happening.
“So, strides have been made. It’s definitely a period when the expectation within and without is that we can get to more tournaments. That’s starts on Wednesday night.
“The manager is very driven, whether that be short term goals, improvements within the squad, within the preparation, within the development of the players and coaches. He is driven on that front.
“In the longer term, he is driven to get to tournaments because he understands how good this group is. At the start of the Nations League last time, we had your (John) McGinns, Robbos (Andy Robertson) and (Scott) McTominays breaking into their teams. Now we have about six club captains, guys who are winning trophies, guys who are main players in their team at a top level. It’s a good place to be.
“It’s a bump in the road more than anything else.”
To convince any sceptics in the Tartan Army that Clarke is still steering Scotland in the right direction, only a win over Armenia tomorrow night at Hampden as the Scots get their UEFA Nations League campaign up and running will suffice.
In the longer term, perhaps only qualification for the next European Championships will be enough to save his position from further scrutiny, but Naismith believes that as long as Clarke has his team challenging then little can be said against him.
“I think a fair expectation is that we are round about the qualifiers and we are right there to the end,” he said.
“I don’t think you can go from not making a tournament for 23 years to saying ‘we should be at every one’. It’s not like that. As long as they are progressing.
“Even within this squad, you now have a second wave - (David) Turnbull, (Lewis) Ferguson, (Allan) Campbell. You might not see it just now but these are the next guys who, in two campaigns, will be pushing up.
“It’s the bigger picture for me. I don’t think you can get to the point where you are saying ‘we should be at any tournaments because we have a good group of players’. They’ve done it once. They’ve now had a setback. They then need to go again and get that consistency to be in the latter stages and say ‘we’ve got a chance’.
“More times than not, if you keep progressing, you’ll get there.”
Meanwhile, Naismith says that Armenia’s shock win over Ireland has concentrated the minds of the Scotland players over the challenge they will face at Hampden tomorrow night.
"The manager and the analysts knew about Armenia but the Republic of Ireland result highlights the fact,” he said.
"Everyone thought before the game that Ireland would beat them but they are a team who are well organised and are comfortable on the ball. It's not just a case of defending deep and scoring a lucky goal.
"They will try and play and have players in their team who are comfortable in taking the ball under pressure. It's something we need to take seriously and it's the first game of a campaign where we need to get off to a good start.”
Naismith also revealed that Lewis Ferguson has picked up a minor knock and will be unavailable for selection tomorrow, but that he should return before the end of this current run of fixtures.
