HEARD the one about the Scotsmen, the Englishmen and the Northern Irishman? So all-pervasive has the Brendan Rodgers effect been since the former Liverpool manager arrived in Scotland last summer that Craig Gordon feels his club boss - a proud native of Carnlough, County Antrim - would deserve to become a bona fide Tartan Army hero if the Scotland national team can breathe new life into our hopes of World Cup qualification by shocking the Auld Enemy at Hampden on Saturday evening.
No fewer than six Celtic players made it into Gordon Strachan's squad for the match - Gordon, Scott Brown, Stuart Armstrong, Kieran Tierney, Leigh Griffiths and James Forrest - with a seventh, Callum McGregor, unfortunate not to join them. While an invincible domestic season and some creditable Champions League showings are reward enough, these players are in a happy habit of not losing games. It would say something about the levels the club has reached this season if half a dozen Scottish-based players could combine to produce a famous result against Gareth Southgate's selection of Barclays Premier League superstars.
"We have got a lot to thank him [Rodgers] for, and how that has transferred over into the national team as well," said Gordon. "A lot of the combinations that we practice here we are able to transfer them over to the national team. So I am sure he will take a bit of the credit for that as well. He will see it, he will watch the game and he knows what we are trying to do. We don't want to get beaten again this season, we just want to keep winning. We have to do that in every game, whether for Celtic or Scotland, just keep performing at the levels we have been. If we can do that, we will give ourselves a good chance."
A Scotland-England match at Hampden Park requires little in the way of pre-amble, but Gordon - who saw an approach from Chelsea rebuffed by the club in January - concedes that he would derive an extra dollop of personal satisfaction in proving that he can still live with the best England has to offer. He was introduced to the action as a substitute during the 3-1 friendly defeat at Celtic Park in late 2014.
"Yes, I will take every bit of motivation going into that game," said Gordon. "But we don't need it. We will just go out there and play our game. At times at Wembley, we performed really well, we created chances which could have changed the game. We didn't defend very well but we defended a lot better against Slovenia in March.
"We kept the ball better. We were a little bit guilty against England of trying to attack too quickly, but against Slovenia we got the difference between keeping the ball and attacking, we got that a lot stronger and kept the ball in the right areas. That was more pleasing, the way we controlled the game. It is easier to do that at home than it is away but we certainly controlled the game better and we want to continue that against England."
Compared to the boos which rang out around a half-full national stadium when Chris Martin was introduced to the fray in March, at least Scotland can rely on the full-throated support of the crowd this time around.
"Probably that will be the case," dead-panned Gordon. "But I think everybody realises that everybody gave everything that night [against Slovenia]. We knew we really had to win the game, we left it late, but we were still pressing, still trying to get that winner. We got a little bit of luck towards the end. I say luck but it was a great goal, Stuart [Armstrong] did well to get the ball through to big Chris and his left foot swinger found the bottom corner. So it was actually a good goal and we deserved it for the 90 minutes.
"There were a lot of positives to be taken out of that game and that can give everyone positivity going into the next one, which just happens to be England. We have put ourselves into a bit of a better place, now we need to keep putting in performances of a similar standard."
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