GORDON Strachan feared he was poised to become an internet sensation as he chased after the ball on the touchline during the final minutes of Scotland’s penultimate Russia 2018 qualifier against Slovakia at Hampden on Thursday evening.
“As I was running to it I thought, ‘I’m going to fall flat on my a*** here!’” he said. “I could see it appearing on YouTube. That was my biggest problem of the night.”
Strachan has no concerns, though, about his side slipping up in their bid to secure a play-off spot here in Ljubljana this evening and being left nursing bruised pride having once again come so close and failed at the end of what has been a mentally and physically exhausting campaign.
The 60-year-old fully expects the meeting with Slovenia in the Stozice Stadium to be another draining encounter for his charges and to go right to the death as the game three days ago did.
He is confident, however, in the ability of his players to rise to the occasion one last time, get the triumph which they, and the whole country, is longing for and finish runners-up in Group F.
The way that Darren Fletcher and his team-mates dealt with the intense contest against Jan Kozak’s side, kept going until the end and snatched the goal they needed with little over a minute of regulation time remaining, gives him confidence they will be able to handle another energy-sapping and edgy 90 minutes.
He hinted that he would not make any changes to his starting line-up, but would instead alter how his men approached an away game against opponents who pose different kinds of challenges.
“It’ll be another long and difficult night I think,” he said. “We’ll not dominate the game. But the Slovakia match shows we have a fitness level. People talk about mental strength, but you can’t do it because you are not fit enough.
“You have to have the physical strength to keep the mental strength going. Our players have shown they have that in their locker. The fans know we have it in our locker as well.
“Slovenia are a big, big team, bigger than Slovakia who are a big side. They are physically strong. They have played 4-4-2 from what we have been watching. People kind of pooh-pooh that, but you can play it as long as you have two strikers who can get about the park, work back, and you have four midfield players.
“Their system is different to Slovakia so I will just make the players aware. That’s what we were doing today. Within that there is always one or two players to look at. We did the same the other night. To the untrained eye things are maybe always the same, but there are wee tweaks here and there.”
Strachan, who will be unable to field Ryan Fraser after the winger was forced to return to Bournemouth with an injury picked up in training, stressed he had kept training to a minimum ahead of tonight's match.
“The day after the game footballers cannot take anything in apart form ‘well done, that was great’ because they are too tired,” he said. “We got here, had a training session, did some video analysis and I thought that was enough for them. It is very hard to refresh.
“They were involved in a gruelling game as well. Do they freshen it up? Do we need to freshen it up? Is there enough time in terms of putting a new system together? There is very little time to do anything.
“But in the Malta game last month after the Lithuania game, I thought there was plenty there. We had 20-odd chances and energy. I didn’t see any drop at all. I didn’t see any difference at all.”
The Slovenia game is one of the most important the Scotland players, or the manager for that matter, has been involved in, but Strachan insisted the mood in the squad was just the same as it had been before every one of the qualifiers.
“It has not changed,” he said. “It has absolutely not changed. There is nothing visible, tangible, that you can say has changed in any way. I just think there is the right balance about them and I really don’t see a difference in them.”
The former Coventry City, Southampton, Celtic and Middlesbrough manager will be as anxious as every member of the Tartan Army inside the stadium – and around 3000 are expected to be inside the 15,000-capacity arena – or tuned in at home on television.
But he feels that he is in the most privileged position after those who don the dark blue jersey.
“When the game starts the best place to be is on the park,” he said. “That’s what Broonie [injured captain Scott Brown] said to me the other night and he was right. If you’re on the pitch you can do something about it.
“But the second best place to be is where I’m standing. The rest is hard work for everybody else. I might not be out there, but I can tell the boys ‘I’m here with you’. I can feel a part of it when you are there with the bodies round about you.”
Not having Brown, or his Celtic team-mate Stuart Armstrong, available for this double header was a blow to Scotland, and Strachan admitted he would be pleased to welcome the midfielder, who has been his protégé since he signed him during his time in charge at Parkhead 10 years ago, back to the squad for the play-offs.
But he said: “When the boys are going in for headers or tackles and thinking they might get hurt I don’t think they’ll be thinking: ‘Let’s do it for Scott Brown!’. I can’t see it. They’ll be doing it for the group. They’ll be doing it for all the guys who have been here for such a long time. They’ll be doing it for their families.”
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