Scotland are off to a good start in their quest to reach next year's World Cup, but the way Steve Clarke has gone about securing a draw against Denmark in Copenhagen and an away win over Belarus has still rubbed some fans up the wrong way. Graeme McGarry asks, can the Scotland manager ever win with some fans, even when his team are winning?
For all that Steve Clarke’s detractors would characterise him as something of a dour figure, they aren’t too shabby at finding things to moan about themselves.
Reading much of the reaction on social media after the game against Belarus the other night, you’d think the World Cup dream was over already. Same old ‘Jurassic Clarke’, the footballing dinosaur, came the most common complaint.
Granted, his Scotland side hardly produced vintage performances of free-flowing football over their opening two qualifiers for next year’s big party in the Americas, but beforehand, the manager and the Tartan Army would have surely bitten your hand off had they been offered four points from two away fixtures, particularly in the circumstances.
It didn’t. After a wobbly start, the Scots grew into the game and might even have pinched a win in the end after creating some decent opportunities on the counter. A point was more than acceptable.
Then, they had to travel to Hungarian outpost Zalaegerszeg to take on a Belarus team behind closed doors, with their own manager reacting to the cuffing they took in their own opening game against Greece by shifting to a back five and packing his team through the centre with giant, defensive players.
It had all the hallmarks of one of those horrible evenings that live on in Scotland international infamy, but they navigated it professionally enough and came home with three points safely tucked under their arms. They sit second in the group by a single goal to Denmark after their thumping and somewhat surprising win in Piraeus.
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From the outside, you might think we would have nothing to complain about then. But this is Scotland, where the production of world class moaners is the one talent pipeline we’ve never had to worry about drying up.
And for the record, hands up, I have been among them. It’s like a compulsion buried deep in our DNA. There can be no gripes about what Clarke achieved over the two games in this international window, but the method by which he did it? Oh yes, we could find plenty.
What was he doing going back to Grant Hanley, I cried ahead of Copenhagen? What a slice of humble pastry the big defender served up after an outstanding showing.
It seemed not entirely sufficient that the manager’s masterplan produced a priceless point in Parken, though. Still, I wanted Ben Gannon-Doak and Billy Gilmour in from the start too. And the win over Belarus? Even with that pair in the team, it wasn’t good enough.
When the second goal went in on the 65th minute, I spent the next 20 minutes shouting at the telly for Clarke to get Lennon Miller and Kieron Bowie onto the pitch. It seemed an almost deliberate act of provocation from the Scotland manager when instead, with seven minutes of regulation time remaining, he turned to Kenny McLean and Lyndon Dykes. A ‘get it right round ye’ to the armchair tacticians back home.
Even if it was, Clarke would have slung it a deaf ear. We all know by now that he didn’t come into this job to win any popularity contests. He came into it to get the nation back to major tournaments, and whatever the gripes about his often frustrating conservatism and how that has cost us once we did eventually get there, he can justifiably point to the two European Championships he has qualified for and have the right to wonder just what all the moaning is about.
And now, he has put Scotland in a position with four games of this qualification campaign remaining – three of which will be at Hampden – where we have a great chance of finally ending the 28-year wait for World Cup football. And still, we are quarrelling among ourselves about his substitutions.
Listen, even if many of these moans stem from club loyalties, and are a lingering after-effect of rubbing some fans up the wrong way when he was at Kilmarnock, not all the complaints about Clarke are without merit.
He blew a wonderful opportunity to make history last summer for example by sending his team out in a bafflingly cautious style against a Hungary team that were there to be got at. By the time he eventually twisted, it was too late.
And while he would likely point out that he has started to bleed young players like Gannon-Doak, Miller and Bowie into the group, there really was no reason why the latter two couldn’t have come onto the park with plenty of time to spare against Belarus. The game was over as soon as the second goal went in.
Even if this is to be Clarke’s last campaign as Scotland manager, as he has intimated it might be, he has a duty to bring through the next generation of players and ensure that his successor isn’t left starting from scratch with an aging squad, a host of likely retirements and some younger players, however talented they may be, who have yet to be properly exposed to the level.
That being said, his top priority in the here and now is to get Scotland to the World Cup, by hook or by crook. If he manages to do so from what is a tough section, then maybe even I’ll struggle to find much to moan about.
Even if he chooses players that many fans, pundits or journos might not have, it still seems incumbent upon the rest of us to get fully behind whoever pulls on that dark blue jersey, whether that is Miller, Bowie, McLean or Dykes.
It seems though that if Clarke marches upon the Americas with the Tartan Army and brings back the old golden globe itself, it still won’t be enough for some.
