Craig Levein must sacrifice a midfielder to get goals to fire Scotland to Euro 2012

Published on Saturday 4 September 2010 17:57

So much of what Craig Levein had to say in the aftermath of Kaunas was on the money. Scotland had more shots on goal and more shots on target than Lithuania, they had more possession, more corners, more of a will to win.

They also had more grounds to gripe about the referee.

When a manager whinges about decisions that went against his team it's always a decent idea to meet his carping with cynicism, but when Levein complained on Friday about some of the hosts' crude tackling, he had a point.

Look at it from the Scotland manager's point of view. Saulius Mikoliunas committed eight fouls in the match, seven of which the referee spotted and dealt with by awarding the visitors a free-kick. Seven free-kicks against one player and yet no booking for Mikoliunas.

It took Cuneyt Cakir, the Turkish referee, all of 67 minutes to take the name of Andrius Skerla. By then, Skerla had scythed down Barry Robson and clattered into Steven Naismith. Both of these fouls should have seen him booked and therefore sent off. It was only his fourth foul that got him punished.

Levein also had cause to point to Tadas Kijanskas. Little was made of it but Scotland probably should have had a penalty early in the match when Kijanskas appeared to barge into Robson in the box. Minutes later, Kijanskas cynically took Scott Brown out of the play with a body-check. He was booked for that one. Before half-time, he had given away another free-kick for a foul on Kenny Miller. On the night, Mr Cakir showed the patience of a saint, which, to be honest, is not in his job description.

Right, that's the whimpering done and dusted. The regrettable bottom line here is that after just one game, Scotland have loosened the grip on their own destiny. The much-needed momentum that a win would have given them has evaporated. Already they're hoping that the Czech Republic don't take full points when they go to Lithuania next year. Already the Scots must feel that they're playing catch-up.

There were things to admire in the Scottish performance. The tempo was good, the passing was decent in the main and there was a hunger for the ball and a solidity that didn't exist nearly as much in the previous era. Alan Hutton was terrific. We shouldn't underestimate what he did even if he did it against an average side. Friday night was Hutton's first competitive game of the season for club or country and only his second since the end of April.

By rights, his confidence should be shot to smithereens by now.Harry Redknapp doesn't want him and he isn't the type to soft-soap a player when he doesn't fancy him.

Through injury and his plummeting stock at Tottenham, Hutton will have had plenty of cause to doubt himself over the last year and, yet, he was confident and adventurous on the ball in Kaunas. There is optimism in his return to the Scotland fold.

What there isn't, of course, is a sign that Scotland's drought in front of goal is any closer to getting fixed. Levein has been in charge for three games and his side have managed one goal. This is a continuation of a long-established problem. They've failed to score in five of their last six matches and haven't found the net in their last six games away from home going back two years.

They had plenty of efforts on Friday night, but most of them were much of a muchness. There were decent, but speculative, shots from distance (Robson), a volley from Stephen McManus that would have been an extraordinary finish had it gone in, a header from the penalty spot from Miller and an effort from outside the box from Naismith. There was nothing gilt-edged about any of them. There wasn't a single one where you could say that it should, indisputably, have resulted in a goal.

Levein is experiencing the same problem now that his predecessors had. Namely, finding the right balance between being hard to beat and being bold in pursuit of goals. His side on Friday was a kind of halfway house, straddling both strategies, but more mindful of not conceding than going out to score.

Sure, he picked Hutton and Steven Whittaker, both attacking full-backs. And even though he left out James McFadden, he replaced him with Naismith, who's a tricky customer going forward. But the failure of Friday night was the remoteness of Miller up front. He is a striker who is at the pitch of his form at the moment, a guy who has been banging in the goals domestically. Miller's not a magician, though. He needs service and he didn't get it. He wasn't once put through on goal via a clever pass through the heart of a hulking Lithuanian defence. He had one chance, from a header. And that, pretty much, was all his team-mates could do for him on the night.

Levein has to change the philosophy or else Scotland are going to die a slow death in this group. They're going to play honourably, as they did in Kaunas, but they're going to fall short through lack of goals. It's happened before and it will happen again unless he changes his thinking.

The manager needs to sacrifice some ballast in his midfield and replace it with some creativity before it is too late.

There is no reason to change the back four for Liechtenstein, but something has got to give in the midfield. You can see what Robson is in the team for. Nice passer, good crosser from wide positions, knows his defensive responsibilities and is effective at carrying them out. Similarly, Darren Fletcher. Lee McCulloch is the bruiser Scotland needs.He channels aggression better than Brown.

Brown is the puzzler here. What exactly is his role? He doesn't get forward to support Miller in any constructive way, doesn't do anything in shoring up the midfield that McCulloch can't do with a little more discipline than the Celtic player. So isn't there a surfeit of hard-working midfielders in there?

This won't happen, because Brown would appear to be a protected species in the Scotland team, but there should be some thought given to playing 4-3-1-2 with Robson, Fletcher and McCulloch playing behind McFadden, who might be able to work some openings for Miller and Steven Fletcher (or Kris Boyd) up front.

Being hard to beat is all very well, but it isn't enough. Levein had reason to moan about the tactics of the Lithuanians, and the lack of action from Mr Cakir, but ultimately the failure of Kaunas was in his inability to solve the riddle of the dearth of goals that has ruined many campaigns in the past and has already landed a blow to this one, at a painfully early stage.