Steve Clarke: The curious case of the 'redeemed' Scotland manager and the worst ever competitive run

It seems strange to talk about redemption in relation to Steve Clarke while simultaneously contemplating a new nadir in the national team’s fortunes.

No one can complain about him not leading Scotland to new frontiers. The first manager to qualify for back-to-back European Championships, now the first ever to oversee a run of eight competitive matches without a victory. How are we to assess this complicated period in the Scottish football team's history? It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Charles Dickens could have had Lyndon Dykes and friends in mind when he wrote those words.

Football historians in the future might review this current run and wonder why the manager was allowed to survive. Defeats are stacking up. And yet rather than increasing, the pressure on Clarke appears to be relenting. The longer the run has continued, the less intense the heat. This puzzling contradiction might flummox those football boffins from the future flicking through pages of newspapers from 2024.

Scotland head coach Steve Clarke at full time after the Nations League defeat to Portugal in Lisbon. (Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group)

They might wonder what the hell was going on. Were the SFA asleep at the wheel? Not a ridiculous notion, admittedly. Did this Mr Clarke character have photographs of someone doing something they ought not to be doing?

A home defeat to Northern Ireland. Multi-goal losses to the Netherlands and, even more embarrassingly, to Germany, when the eyes of Europe were on Clarke’s team. And now the double-fisted punch to the guts that have been these two narrow defeats to Poland and Portugal sending the Scots reeling into Autumn. It’s a full year since Scotland won a meaningful football match. They have become expert at losing them, the later the better it seems.

So not everyone is reassured by signs that a revival might be underway. Not everyone is convinced Clarke remains the man. They can’t see past his stubbornness and his thrawn, sometimes brusque manner. They aren’t persuaded by the “re-fresh” promised post Euro 2024 and view the addition of players such as Ryan Gauld and Ben Doak as mere sops to the Tartan Army. It is not going far enough. And anyway, the brevity of cameos handed to Gauld and Doak against Poland and Portugal was insulting.

The fact is Clarke, in the first two post-Euro 2024 matches, stuck with eight of the 11 starters who played against Hungary in the final group game in Germany. And who knows, he might have played all 11 had they been available.

Ryan Gauld was one of two players who made their Scotland debuts in this international window. Ben Doak was the other. (Photo by Craig Foy / SNS Group)

So yes, many critics remain unconvinced. They don’t view losing football matches in the dying moments as being unlucky. Rather, they see it as evidence of coaching impotence. Defensive weakness is defensive weakness whether it occurs in the first or last minute. Granted the manager cannot be held accountable for individual mistakes. But they are players he picks.

Following Scotland should come with a government health warning and Clarke could well argue that this habit of conceding late in matches predates him. There was a particularly harrowing spreadsheet doing the rounds on social media on Sunday night detailing the many times Scotland have failed to see out games. It dates back to 2001, and that still traumatic 93rd minute equaliser from 2-0 down by ten-man Belgium.

Of course, the red zone at the end of football matches is far longer now due to the amount of extra time added on by VAR-related interruptions. Still, it’s incumbent on Clarke to find a solution. He was quizzed on what can be done about this fragility after Sunday’s Ronaldo-delivered sucker punch.

“You just have to believe in yourself and work hard to the end of the game,” he said. “The late goals are something everyone will talk about. We lost an early goal as well. We lost one after 50 odd minutes. I felt we had just started to weather that little spell in the game. Even after the 2-1, we still went forward, we still tried to get something from the game. We had some shots or had some opportunities to shoot, but the shots were blocked.”

Players certainly gave the impression of still wanting to play for Clarke while throwing themselves in the way of shots, Scott McKenna and the much-maligned Grant Hanley especially. Goalkeeper Angus Gunn, too, excelled. One Portuguese newspaper gave him an 8. Only Ronaldo, with 9, rated higher.

“Everyone defended well,” noted Clarke. “We knew the threats that Portugal have. We know they are quality players. We know that eventually they are going to create a goal chance and by and large we managed to defend the goal chances very well, with brave defending. That is what you have to do at this level. There are no short cuts.”

In the case of the previously mentioned Gauld, there is also now no going back. Scotland might not have earned any points from this window but they gained a player. The Vancouver Whitecaps playmaker is now tied to Scotland and is no longer potentially eligible for Canada on residency grounds. Clarke was put on the spot by a Portuguese journalist, who wondered why someone who was earning such good reviews in the Portuguese top flight with Farense as long ago as 2018 was only now being introduced to the national side. Why was he exiled for so long?

“I can’t speak about the early part (of the exile) but the later part was because I didn’t pick him,” said Clarke. “There is a reason for that. The midfield area in the Scotland squad is one of our strongest areas. Obviously going into this camp we’ve lost Lewis Ferguson, who is doing very well in Serie A. "We are missing one or two players," he added. "Stuart Armstrong, who is a similar type of player, was in the squad and doing very well. Sometimes you have to be very patient. And Ryan has been very patient. He's got two caps now. Hopefully, he can be part of the squad going forward.”

This remains in Clarke’s gift. If nothing else, the manager has bought himself a little more time.