In trying to calm his anxious Tartan Army, Steve Clarke is taking a leaf out of the Dad’s Army playbook. Don’t panic, was his main message here in Faro last night, after Scotland’s burgeoning injury crisis claimed its latest victim in Lyndon Dykes.
The striker is the fifth and perhaps most notable withdrawal from Clarke’s European Championship squad, and with the first of two friendlies to negotiate tonight against Gibraltar, there are still potential pitfalls ahead before Scotland arrive in Germany.
But Clarke cannot allow himself or his players to get too down about the plight of their stricken teammates. And he certainly doesn’t want to allow a negative narrative to develop around his squad ahead of a momentous few weeks for the national team.
“It’s OK,” Clarke said.
“Part and parcel of the job, part and parcel of football. We will deal with it and move on. That’s what you have to do.
“I’m not really sure why there would be any negativity. The worst we can do in the campaign is the same as every other Scottish team which has qualified for a tournament. We have qualified for two out of three tournaments, got to a playoff in the other one. We are not in too bad a place.
“I don’t see any reason to be negative about anything. Injuries are part and parcel of football, the players understand that, the coaches understand that, you just need to deal with anything thrown at you and get on with it.
“We still have, in my opinion a hell of a good squad and we look forward to the tournament.”
The nation itself still seems to be looking forward to it, if the enthusiasm of one Scotland supporter in Glasgow is anything to go by, who certainly wasn’t getting his knickers in a twist about much of anything.
“There was a guy half naked hanging out his window watching from one of the flats the other day,” Clarke laughed.
“Not such a pretty sight, but everybody is watching, everybody wants a little bit of it. You can feel that.”
That passion for the national team and the excitement about what they may be able to achieve in Germany is something Clarke has been eager to tap into.
“Some of the coaching staff walk from the hotel down to Hampden in the morning to get a bit and they can feel the mood of the nation,” he said.
“That has been quite important. The last time was obviously covid, so there was isolation anyway, but we were stuck down in a fantastic facility in the north of England.
“It’s nice to be in the country. I think the players are enjoying it as well. The last time we went to Spain for the pre-camp and had a lovely camp there in La Finca Resort.
“We decided this time to just keep them in the country and let them feel how excited everybody is and then hopefully it rubs off.
“They know anyway. They understand how big it is for the country.”
Clarke is set to name something of an unfamiliar line-up for the game against Gibraltar, using the fixture against the second-lowest ranked team in Europe to get some minutes into players who may not have had too much football of late.
Scott McTominay, Stuart Armstrong and John Souttar will, however, not be risked.
“I’m just keeping them ticking over,” he said.
“For the two friendly matches I’m focusing on what we do, especially attacking wise.
“When we go to the tournament there will be one or two things we need to tweak defensively depending on who we are playing.
“We can work on them leading up to the tournament. We go to Germany on Sunday and we’ve got from Monday to Friday to prepare for the first game.
"And then because it is the first game starting on the Friday we have five days going into the Swiss game. So, we have plenty of time to deal with any tactical things we need for each game.
“For now it is just about concentrating on ourselves and work a little bit in training on what we want to be good at.
“The Championship season finished in the first week in May, a long time ago, so those boys haven’t had many minutes. Fortunately, Southampton, Norwich and Leeds got to the latter stages of the play-offs, so those boys had a little bit longer than we thought.
“There were six or seven players we thought would need minutes, it’s not quite as many as that now. There is also the flip side where Liam (Cooper) didn’t play too often at the end of the season and Gran (Hanley)t was the same at Norwich.
“So, we have guys who need minutes on the pitch. The team that starts [against Gibraltar] will be quite different to any team I have started before but that’s with the purpose of getting players on the pitch.”
