Scotland swept aside lowly Liechtenstein with minimal fuss in Vaduz to at least lift a little of the gloom hanging over the national team following the Friday night defeat to Iceland.
The last thing Steve Clarke needed was for even the slightest whiff of an awkward evening here, and an early goal from Che Adams settled any nerves, and banished any notion that there may be trouble afoot.
Adams soon added another and George Hirst got a third after the interval, before Adams sealed his hat-trick with the last touch of the game. But it was a young midfielder earning his first start that most caught the eye, and offered some hope for the future.
Here are the talking points from the Rheinpark Stadion…
Lennon Miller puts on a show
The Motherwell (at least, for now) youngster was handed his first start for his country, and he didn’t disappoint. There is a lot of hype about the Fir Park prospect, and while you have to caveat almost everything Scotland did here with the level of the opponent, he showed just why he is so highly rated.
If we’re being generous, we could give the 18-year-old an assist for Adam’s opener, even if his strike from the edge of the goal was heading in the general direction of Zurich. But he definitely could claim the assist for Adams’ second, forcing an error by pressing the home defence high and teeing up the striker to reverse a finish into the bottom corner.
Over and above those contributions, he formed an easy-on-the-eye partnership with Billy Gilmour in the centre of the park, zipping the ball around and displaying an impressive array of passing both short and long.
He was enjoying himself alright, with some of his flicks and tricks lovely to watch, and the Liechtensteiners lost patience with him and resorted to foul means to try and stymie him long before the end.
His performance will have pleased Clarke and excited the Tartan Army, but the happiest people of all to see him show his class probably reside in the Fir Park boardroom.
Strikers finally find their scoring touch
It is one of Scottish football’s great navel-gazers, just where all the quality strikers have gone, and it was good to see both Adams and Hirst finding the net.
As far as Adams is concerned, he grabbed his first goals since last summer’s European Championships warm-up against Gibraltar, with his early opener here the first goal any Scotland striker has scored since then, in fact.
Clarke has often tried to explain away the lack of goals from his frontmen by outlining that the role he asks them to play is an unselfish one, with more emphasis placed on bringing others into play, but Scotland still need their strikers to be finding the net on a more regular basis.
So, it was heartening to see Adams get the first Scotland hat-trick since John McGinn’s against San Marino in 2019 as he headed home at the death.
And Hirst, in fairness to the newcomer, has enjoyed a decent window, being arguably the one chink of light from the loss to Iceland and getting his first international goal here. From small acorns, and all that, but a good start for the Ipswich man in dark blue.
Back four here to stay?
Clarke’s decision to revert to the back five against Iceland to shoehorn Kieran Tierney into the team drew no little scorn, but he said he had always planned to go with a 4-4-2 for this one, and it worked well.
Again, it is hard to judge the merits of the system against such poor opposition, but the players do look more comfortable whenever they are set up in a back four, and the pending return of Ben Doak means that Clarke must play a formation that can accommodate the winger going forward.
The next assignment could hardly be any more different, with an away qualifier in Denmark to come in September, but the Tartan Army will hope that their manager sets them out on the front foot once more.
Lack of experimentation will frustrate Clarke critics again
For all that Clarke did change up his formation, making six changes from the dismal defeat to Iceland, the absence of some of the other fresh faces in his squad from the line up seemed to be an opportunity missed.
Against the 205th ranked team in the world, who had recently lost twice to San Marino, if this wasn’t a chance to see what the likes of Kieron Bowie, Josh Doig, Connor Barron and Andy Irving can bring to the party then you have to wonder what would be.
Finally, on the hour, we saw Doig replacing skipper Andy Robertson and Irving replacing John McGinn, while Barron replaced Gilmour and Bowie came on for Lewis Ferguson with 13 minutes remaining.
It was Doig who made the biggest impression when he did get on, making some positive runs forward and being a little unlucky not to find the net with a couple of efforts on goal, while Barron also showed a couple of nice touches.
Ross Doohan could have stayed on his holidays
Fair play to the Celtic-bound keeper, who climbed off a sun lounger in Turkey to answer his country’s call, but he could just as easily have laid his towel out in the six-yard box and caught some rays here, given that he didn’t have to catch the ball even once.
To say it was a quiet debut would be rather understating things, but he will hope to have muscled his way into the reckoning, and Clarke’s favours, by turning up for duty after Cieran Slicker's night to forget.
