ANDY ROBERTSON admits that he isn’t entirely comfortable playing as a left wing-back for Scotland but acknowledges he will have to adapt if manager Alex McLeish wants to deploy him there.
The Scotland captain is currently excelling at left-back for Liverpool but is being asked to play further forward for his country as McLeish looks to accommodate both Robertson and Kieran Tierney into his line-up.
But he concedes that uncertainty has crept into both his own and Tierney’s games as they look to acclimatise themselves with their new roles in the dark blue.
“It’s a tough one,” Robertson said. “Playing left midfield is a completely different position to left back.
“As a kid I sometimes played there but I find it a lot better with someone in front of me. I like linking up, playing inside and running off. I think that’s where my strength is.
“But, if the manager chooses to go with three at the back both of us have picked up a position we need to get better at. We need to do it.
“If the manager pulls me and says I’m playing here then you have to take it and try to better yourself. If the manager decides to change formation so be it, but now he is sticking with the three.
“KT is used to being a left back with someone in front of him as well. He does have someone in front of him but as a centre-back, he is not sure when to go.
“I think a bit of uncertainty is coming into both our games but that has to come with games. We have only had two competitive games at it. We are still learning the formation and it does take time.
“At club level you have the beauty of a pre-season and have three or four weeks to nail down your formation. With Scotland you don’t have that. There has been a lot of chop and changes in the squad since March.
“You don’t have time to work on it because you need to focus on the opposition you are playing against.
“The players know that, and we need to all pull together and learn this formation a lot better. If we do it can work but just now we are a bit in between.”
Robertson knows that more will be expected from him now when he turns out for his country not only because he has assumed the captain’s armband, but because of the club he plays for.
He sees parallels between his own situation and the burden of expectation that Darren Fletcher shouldered when he came to represent his country as a Manchester United player, but he says the most important thing is that each individual player works for the benefit of the collective.
“We’ve got to play our own games when we come up here and maybe people will have looked at Fletch back in the day and say he’s at Man United, so he’ll come and score a hat-trick every game and will win us it, but that wasn’t his game,” he said.
“What he done he did exactly for us. It’s the same with me.
“My performance on Thursday wasn’t good enough, I’m not coming out and saying I played well and all the rest were rubbish. I was one of the worst, if not the worst in my head, so I’ve got to be better.
“But it doesn’t really matter, at the end of the day, when we come here we’re all Scotland players and we all have to work together.
“Because it doesn’t matter who you play for, at the end of the day, you’ve got a different manager, a different set-up and all that, so we need to pull together and get the right way of playing for all of us that suits us best.”
Above all else, Robertson has urged a maintenance of perspective, with Scotland still in the driving seat to qualify from their UEFA Nations League group.
“It doesn’t feel like it after Thursday the group is still in our hands,” he said. “If we win the next two games that’s us won the league and that’s been the aim from the start.
“I think it’s the first competitive defeat in eight games and when was the last time a Scotland team done that? (29-years ago)
“So, we can’t overreact.”
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