STEVE Clarke has confessed he will make fewer changes to the Scotland starting line-up against Northern Ireland than he had originally intended to due to the defeat against the Netherlands last week – but insisted his side should be good enough to win whoever he selects.
The national team are currently on their worst winless run since 2008 – they have lost to England, Spain, France and the Dutch and drawn with Georgia and Norway in the past six months – and the Euro 2024 finals kick off in June.
Clarke knows that Andy Robertson and his team mates need to get back to winning ways in their remaining friendly matches against Northern Ireland, Gibraltar and Finland before they play host Germany in Munich on June 14.
READ MORE: Scotland manager defends Hearts striker despite Netherlands miss
However, the Scotland manager dismissed suggestions that making six second half substitutions last week had been responsible for their late collapse and emphasised he has complete faith in every member of his squad.
Asked if the loss in the Johan Cruyff Arena had changed his mindset, he said: “A little bit. I probably had in my mind three or four changes, now it will be two or three.
“But I think we are strong no matter who I pick. That’s my own honest opinion. There’s not too much in what we are going to do tomorrow night in terms of how strong we are. If we make a couple of changes, it shouldn’t weaken us.
READ MORE: Steve Clarke's club-style approach is best path for Scotland
“We haven’t mentioned that (the substitutions on Friday night), we haven’t spoken about that for a reason. Because we want to be accountable for everybody that goes onto the pitch. We want to be accountable for the whole performance over the 93 minutes. So it would be too easy to say that.
“We feel that we have a good squad of players and that when we make changes we don’t expect the level of the team to drop. I don’t think the substitutes were the reason, 100 per cent. That wasn’t what happened. And we allowed the game to get away from us. Why that was, I can’t tell you. Because the opposition might see that.
“Hopefully in the future we can show we learned lessons. It’s been three tough friendly games. - England, France and Holland. Have we learned from them? Only time will tell. So maybe judge us at the end of this year. Judge us then and we’ll see how we’ve done. We’re still in a good place.”
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 here