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The National (Scotland)
The National (Scotland)
Sport
Ewan Paton

Scotland boss Steve Clarke hits out at bottle throwing following Armenia clash

Scotland boss Steve Clarke hits out at bottle throwing following Armenia clash

STEVE CLARKE last night hit out at yobs who threw bottle onto the pitch during Scotland's victory over Armenia.

Clarke's men ran out comfortable 4-1 winners in the end thanks to a Stuart Armstrong double, a John McGinn finish and a Che Adams curled effort.

It wasn't straight forward to begin with though, with the hosts taking an unexpected lead inside the opening ten-minutes.

Armenia finished the game with just nine men, however, in what ended up a bad-tempered affair. 

Arman Hovhannisyan was sent off just minutes before the interval following 30-seconds of madness. 

The defender hacked down Nathan Patterson in a poor tackle before proceeding to headbutt McGinn who was unhappy with the challenge.

Just last week he appeared to lob a water bottle towards a linesman at Hampden.

Minutes before the end of the match, Armenia's captain Kamo Hovhannisyan was also shown red. 

The skipper put in a shocking tackle on Lewis Ferguson, catching the Aberdeen star high on the shin with a late lunge.

This was the moment things really started to boil over, as Anthony Ralston and Scott McTominay stood up for their teammate and took the Armenian's to task.

In and amongst the incident, Clarke claims he saw bottles thrown onto the pitch by fans. He was left furious with that situation.

There also appeared to be some agro at the end of the match before Armenia's coaching staff cooled down the aggressors.

Asked about the angry exchanges, Clarke said: "I don't think there was too much. To be fair to their coaching staff, they got onto the pitch pretty quickly. They made sure that everyone was calm.

"Listen, there were some bad tackles towards the end of the game. Professional players are always going to react to that but it was nothing.

"I'm more concerned about the bottles that got thrown onto the pitch after the tackle on Lewis (Ferguson), I think it was."

Clarke was asked if it was the referee who was targeted by the missile, and added: "I don't know, but I saw one bounce on the middle of the pitch.

"It was a hell of a throw."

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