KIERAN Tierney is set to miss training with Scotland today due to the calf injury that kept him out of the Euro 2020 game with the Czech Republic and remains a major doubt for the match against England.
Members of the Tartan Army yesterday received a huge lift in the wake of the defeat to the Czechs at Hampden on Monday afternoon when Tierney was pictured running with the national squad at their base outside Darlington.
Manager Steve Clarke is hopeful the Arsenal defender, who has been outstanding for his country at left centre half this season, will be available for selection for the Group D encounter at Wembley on Friday night.
However, the £25m player only took part in a light session yesterday and is unlikely be involved in heavier work at the Middlesbrough training complex today.
Clarke confessed he is still unsure if the 24-year-old will be involved for the eagerly-anticipated meeting with Gareth Southgate’s side in London.
“He is back light training that is a big difference to normal training,” he said. “I wouldn’t think Kieran will train tomorrow. I can’t tell if he is going to be okay, that is the honest answer. We’ll now just need to see how it develops and see how he does. And then decide from there.”
Clarke revealed the former Celtic player was desperate to be involved against the Czechs, but could not be considered due to the nature of his injury.
“He wanted to play, like everybody wanted to play,” he said. “That tells you there was a problem. He couldn’t have played. You can’t play with a calf injury.
“We have waited a long time for the tournament to come and to miss out is a bit of a blow. We are used to that, it was football. There were two others who were left out with him. John Fleck and Declan Gallagher, they also wanted to play.
“I knew there was an issue 48 hours before the game. You are hoping when he wakes up the next day he will be okay and you can tell he has a chance.
“You can tell how close he was because he was back in light training on Tuesday morning. It was one of them. If you have a calf injury it can be a bit of a bugger. It’s just a little niggle.”
Meanwhile, Clarke, whose team must pick up results in their games against England and Croatia in Glasgow on Tuesday to stand any chance of making the last 16, defended persevering with a back three on Monday after Tierney was ruled out.
“The system has worked well for us,” he said. “When we beat the Czech Republic last October Andrew Considine was left centre back and it was the same when we beat Slovakia. It is a system that has worked well for us.
“I couldn’t understand any clamour to change the system. You certainly can’t change the system 48 hours before a game, especially after you have worked on it for so long.
“The preparation work was all done through the games and it was only against Luxembourg where we went for four at the back to see if we could get a second goal. It is a system that has worked well for us.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel