WELL where do we start on the Scotland versus Costa Rica game Friday night? It would be fair to say that Alex McLeish’s second spell as Scotland manager didn’t exactly get off to a flyer.
It was more grounded at take off. A narrow defeat by an old nemesis has had many fans going for the throat of the new manager already.
One friendly game in. The pressure is on already which is frankly ridiculous but just shows the depth of ill-feeling towards his appointment by a lot of supporters.
Read more: Now is not the time to panic, says Scotland manager Alex McLeish
Some of that is for football reasons, which is fair enough. We are all entitled to our opinion, but some of it isn’t. All this is not taking into account that it was a patchwork Scottish team thrown together after a few days training playing against a side who are going to Russia in a few months, beat the USA home and away in qualifying and topped a group containing England, Uruguay and Italy at the last World Cup in Brazil.
They are certainly no mugs. Even if we were at full strength we would have struggled to beat them never mind with an experimental team out.
Some degree of patience surely has to be shown. It would have been very easy for Alex to go as strong as he could and go all out to win the game to pad his win column but what would we have learned from that?
The result for me was secondary to trying to source players capable of really stepping up when the qualifying starts. Surely that is the point of friendlies?
The only real positives on a disappointing night were the performances of Oli McBurnie and Scott McKenna. Maybe we found a couple that the manager will trust in the big pressure games. But it’s early days.
In saying all that, the first-half performance was indefensible. It was dreadfully poor. Friendly or not. There was no energy in the team nor stands for that matter. You could have thrown a blanket over Scott McTominay, Kevin McDonald and Tom Cairney in midfield which left the impressive if somewhat unorthodox McBurnie very isolated in the lone-striker role. We sat off Costa Rica and let them pop the ball about with ease culminating in the only goal.
Read more: Alex McLeish needs Celtic connection on tune for Scotland
We should have come flying out of the traps and pressed them all over the park. It would have got the fans immediately involved in the game. It didn’t happen. If you give good players time on the ball they will look like world beaters.
The two Celtic lads in Callum McGregor and Stuart Armstrong transformed the game for us with their energy and driving runs. Looking forward, those two have got to be in our starting midfield when the real action gets underway alongside either John McGinn or McTominay.
At the back, McKenna had a fine game and did his chances absolutely no harm on the left side of a back three. Unfortunately it’s in the right-sided centre-back area we look weak at with Grant Hanley again unconvincing and a dearth of other options other than maybe John Souttar from Hearts really standing out.
Like in the striker department which we remain almost totally reliant on Leigh Griffiths’s availability, it’s an area that is going to be a concern. We have a plethora of left-sided centre-backs and left-backs and hardly any on the other side. It just sums our luck up I suppose.
I think that with McLeish looking at a back three he is thinking it’s the best system to accommodate our two real quality players in Kieran Tierney and Andy Robertson. The latter again the other night was outstanding and going forward there are not many better in European football. He is top class, as is Tierney.
The game tomorrow night in Budapest against Hungary is probably our best chance of getting a result with three very difficult games to come against top class opposition in Peru, Mexico and Belgium.
Read more: Now is not the time to panic, says Scotland manager Alex McLeish
It’s not impossible that we could go into the Nations Cup qualifying games on the back of five straight friendly defeats and that would place enormous pressure on the manager and players. But the be all and end all is qualifying for Euro 2020. That is all that matters.
That will be the time to judge McLeish. If he gets us there the results and performances in these upcoming friendlies will become fish-and-chip paper.
It doesn’t bear thinking about if he doesn’t.
AND ANOTHER THING
The trials and tribulations of Dundee United continue as yet another game went by without a win in the Championship.
Yes they should still make the play offs with three games in hand over the chasing pack but the chances of them going up in their current form look just north of zero.
The sacking of Ray McKinnon is looking more and more bizarre by the week as was the decision to bring in a manager with no clue of the Scottish second tier.
Not only that but now legendary figure Paul Sturrock has been brought in to help Csaba Laszlo. Is this to help the pressured manager or is it going to end up undermining him at a key point of the season?
What a mess it is up at Tannadice.
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