McLeish calls on Old Firm to rally to cause

Published on Sunday 21 October 2007 01:03

THE countdown to the game of the millennium against Italy on November 17 will begin this week when Alex McLeish picks up the phone and dials some old friends at Parkhead and Ibrox.

The Scotland manager is planning to ask Gordon Strachan and Walter Smith for their blessing in a bid to postpone the Old Firm's games on the weekend before the denouement with Italy. Ten of McLeish's squad and six of his recognised first team are with the Glasgow clubs so the logic of standing them down from SPL action is obvious.

Celtic are due to play Falkirk at home on November 10 with Rangers at St Mirren the following afternoon. Earlier that week the Old Firm will have had stressful and draining nights in round four of the Champions League; Celtic host Benfica, Rangers are away to Barcelona. The fear of fatigue or, worse still, injury ahead of the Italy match is a very real one.

Wednesday night's debacle in Georgia served as a reminder as to what can happen to the national team when key men are missing. Recent results might have suggested otherwise but this team is not bullet-proof. The absence of Alan Hutton, Scott Brown, Lee McCulloch and Paul Hartley in Tbilisi reduced McLeish's team to a bunch of toilers.

Similar defections would render the Scotland cause utterly hopeless against the Italians, who must be defeated on the day.

"We've got a big bulk of the players coming from the Old Firm and because of what these boys have been through in recent weeks - Champions League, internationals, SPL games - it would be great if they could get a break in between. It would give us every chance. But we'd obviously need the approval of Gordon and Walter. They'd need to be on board with that."

On their way to the UEFA Cup final in Seville, Celtic had a domestic game rearranged to suit their schedule but nothing of this nature has been done before for the national side. But it will be a formality. The whole idea is sure to be put through on the nod. After all, it would take an incredibly brave - make that incurably stupid - man to go against McLeish's wishes and thereby put at risk Scotland's chances of overcoming the Italians. Once he makes his move the manager will surely get his way.

"We'd have to speak to the managers and the SPL first because they would then face rearranging games. I think we'll attempt it. I'll definitely speak to Gordon and Walter to get their thoughts on it.

"Players would benefit mentally as much as physically but I suppose the thing is what do we do with them? If the Old Firm don't have games on then they might shut up shop and say, 'we'll see you after the international'. And then of course I would have to trust the players because bringing them in and training them for a whole week and then having them again for another week, they'd go stir crazy. They'd probably need to maintain that fitness to keep them ticking over with day-to-day training. It [postponement] cuts out the prospect of injury as well - it wipes that out of the equation. We can't do anything about an injury happening between now and then but I just pray all these guys come through it."

Prayers and defiance. McLeish is in no mood to dwell on the events in Georgia, which is fair enough because Tbilisi is irrelevant. Scotland's odyssey has been touched by fantasy but a modicum of reality was all that was needed to realise that McLeish's team were bound to struggle in Georgia. Darren Fletcher cannot have been fully fit and on top of that the Manchester United player has not had a game in five weeks and has not started a match all season for his club. In all, he has played 87 minutes for United since August.

Shaun Maloney is in a similar boat. His two starts for Aston Villa have come in the Carling Cup. He has not begun a Premiership game this season, the sum total of his involvement being 93 minutes. Stephen Pearson, on the other hand, has been heavily involved but, like the others, you have to wonder what his confidence levels are like right now. He's won one game in ten with Derby, has suffered through a 4-0 loss to Spurs, a 5-0 hammering to Arsenal and a 6-0 drubbing by Liverpool. Pearson's feelgood can't be great at the moment.

In the absence of Brown, McCulloch and Hartley, that's three of your midfield. Any wonder they struggled? If they'd done anything else against a bubbly and accurate home team then it would have been a feat to rival anything we've seen from Scotland in this remarkable journey.

Pearson and Maloney will become fringe players presuming everybody is fit for Italy but Fletcher is different. He is a must-have. Sir Alex Ferguson could do his country a favour by utilising his midfielder a little more often in the coming weeks.

McLeish says he has no worries on that score. All through this campaign he has batted away the doubters, silenced them with his relentless optimism. "This is a party political broadcast on behalf of the Positive Party," he said on Friday, a broad smile on his face.

McLeish is not on the hustings exactly but he does have a message, an important message.

"There was no mass furore or hysteria in France after they lost to us in Paris. There was no castigation of Raymond Domenech. They moved on and looked forward. We've got to do that and keep doing that as a nation to change the mindset of kids growing up."

So no griping about penalties not given or about the group of death or about the fact that Germany and the Czech Republic have already qualified out of Group B with 23 points and 20 points respectively and Scotland still have their nose to the coalface with 24 points. McLeish pointed out that such is their team's consistency, if they had been stuck in with anybody else bar the World Cup finalists they'd already be home-free.

"If we'd produced the same campaign I don't think there's a doubt we'd have qualified if we'd been in any other group."

But that's the kind of talk he doesn't like. Let's start cranking it up for Italy, he says. Let's get this baby on the road.

"It's going to be a tough game but the Italians have to go away from home knowing they have to avoid defeat to qualify. They've been over it [qualification] a few times but whether they've actually had it come down to the last day, I don't know.

"History will probably show they've had that experience but I'll tell you what, the Italians will know they've been in the game when they come to Hampden." Fighting talk already and there's a still a month to go.

"It's all clear-cut. It's a position where nobody thought we'd have been at and the Italian and French will be the most surprised teams in the world that we're still in the mix. They would have thought they'd have been out of sight - both of them - by now.

"I've said it, we'll give the world champions the game of their lives when they come to Hampden and France and Italy, I repeat, would have thought they'd qualified by now."

They haven't. Neither have Scotland. But there's hope. Always hope.

The Positive Party have picked themselves up off the floor after Georgia, have dusted themselves down and are ready to go, one more time.