Strachan wants players to be more like Souness

GORDON Strachan’s goal celebration on Friday night was telling. Just after the ball landed in the Welsh net to hand Scotland a highly unlikely 1-0 interval lead, the camera flashed back to the Scotland manager.

He blew out his cheeks and raised both his eyebrows, as if to say: “We’ll take it, but how this has happened, I will never know.”

Frankness has always been one of Strachan’s endearing traits, along with his wit. However, now is not the time for humour. There was, rather, a need for honest reflection as Scotland arrived in Belgrade yesterday, before the journey on to Novi Sad for tonight’s Group A fixture with Serbia.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Talk of “shell-shocked Scotland” won’t do in a city that has known the true meaning of this phrase in recent memory. But Strachan was undoubtedly still reeling from the events of Friday night, when his first competitive match in charge had ended – and, in truth, had started – in such disappointing fashion.

The manager is relying on his honesty to get him through the darker moments, and he admitted he had suffered through a re-run of Friday night’s game, one which confirmed to him that Scotland had been more awful in that opening spell against Wales than even he had dared believe. “There’s passing and there’s... some of the things you saw there you couldn’t describe as passing,” he said yesterday. 
“It was just complete madness. It was like, ‘this is crazy’.”

He was sitting in a boardroom-style setting in one of Belgrade’s top hotels. The opulence was out of keeping with Scotland’s current status as bottom markers in Group A. The plan, one devised in a time of optimism by Craig Levein, had been for Scotland to collect three points from their first 
afternoon’s work against Serbia at Hampden back in September. Five matches later, and with the return game against the Serbians now upon us, Scotland still remain a point short of the hoped-for return.

Scotland must again seek to ensure that a salvage operation gets underway tonight, amid the wreckage of their qualification hopes. Strachan has challenged his players to show him they can prosper in a setting that, if not completely hostile, can certainly not be regarded as a comfort zone. Wales, indeed, conceded six goals inside the 12,000 capacity Karadjorje stadium last year.

In any case, can Scotland expect to feel comfortable anywhere these days? Even at Hampden, in front of a support that is rooting for them, nervousness can quickly be detected. In three home qualifying games, Scotland have scored just two goals and taken only two points. Of course, away from home it has been even grimmer.

“It was an exceptional thing,” said Strachan, with reference to the start Scotland made against Wales. “I’ve never seen it before. I have never seen it from any team I have played with,” he added. “It was freaky.”

Strachan noted the silence on the park while all around the grumbles grew louder, as misplaced pass followed misplaced pass. He believes that modern society has helped mould people who are unwilling or unable to confront one another, certainly compared to what happened in his day, when the likes of Graeme Souness demanded an immediate improvement if standards dipped even slightly below what was expected.

“It’s life,” he shrugged. “[Players in my day] were more in your face. They were more demanding of each other. We’ve got a society where we’re scared to speak to somebody next door because if I say something he might not like me.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“He might Tweet about me or somebody might say something to his mate in the media that he said this and he said that. We had the characters to say ‘right, you’re not playing well, sort yourself out’, and scare them into playing better. That kind of thing’s gone. Even with managers, we’re a bit like that now.”

Strachan has not been overly critical of the players in private, believing that they cannot ever play any worse than in the opening 20 or so minutes on Friday. Indeed, skipper Gary Caldwell yesterday credited the team with having the mettle to recover from such a poor start. “We dug in when we could have folded,” he said.

In all his days fire-fighting at the back, for Celtic in the San Siro, for Scotland in such hostile places as the Amsterdam Arena, it is highly unlikely that Caldwell has had to endure such an intense opening spell as he experienced on Friday night.

Beside him there was an international novice, and within the opening minute Grant Hanley had almost gifted a goal to Wales. The evident nervousness spread throughout the team, and Caldwell himself was not unaffected. Even though it reached another level on Friday, Caldwell is used to the feeling under pressure at the back. Almost every time Wigan Athletic play a fixture in the Premier League, they are expected to have to absorb pressure, and Caldwell admits such constant grind can come at a cost.

“It is tough, more mentally than physically,” he said. “That is the life of a footballer. We were just talking about it. You take a lot of knocks in your career and you have to pick yourself up. There is no other way to do it. If you don’t you will fall away.”

Now the skipper must contemplate the prospect of another difficult evening against Serbia tonight. He didn’t yet know who might partner him in the centre of defence, although Strachan appeared to suggest he was minded to name Hanley again, in the hope that some continuity can be established in a crucial area of the team.

Not that Caldwell is spending too much time worrying about who joins him at the back. “I just need to try and get myself in the team,” he said yesterday. His uncertainty with regard to this should not be interpreted as a sign that this Scotland side is a difficult one to get into. Instead, it is a further evidence of deterioration. Worryingly, even the skipper fears for his place when a team is struggling to the extent that Scotland are at present.

Also worrying is Caldwell’s assertion that they are doing their absolute best to arrest the decline. They have little more to give, he insisted yesterday.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The skipper sounded almost weary as he contemplated what Scotland can now hope to achieve, transferring the burden of expectation from the current team’s hands into those who are set to follow in their footsteps.

Caldwell, sadly, is one of the mascots of this recent undistinguished period. Along with Kenny Miller, he has been present for five successive failed qualification campaigns. This, his sixth, has now been written off, with five matches still to play.

“I am sure he will get it right,” he said, with reference to Strachan. “But it is going to take time, not just for this group, but for years to come. The technical ability of Scottish players has got to be greater. It’s not just this group of players who are going to change. How we go in future campaigns, it is going to be the younger generation.”