Putting this one up ridiculously late as a family funeral took precedence over the week. Ironically this particular family member lived right beside Hampden and I was over there for the wake on the night this game took place.
Alas, I got home in time to see most of it and then even indulged the highlights on BBC 1 later that evening.
Scotland dominated a pretty poor Albania team and showed that even though they are way off the likes of Belgium – pretty understandable as they are universally regarded as the second-best international team on the planet behind World Cup winners France – that on their day they are still way ahead of this level of opposition and especially when at home.
I’m still not a fan of the idea of Andy Robertson and Kieron Tierney both being deployed down the left. It’s an unfortunate scenario that Scotland finally produces two world-class players and both play in the same position but that’s the way the cookie has crumbled so a decision has to be made.
In fairness, it actually worked okay against the Albanians with both combining well and overlapping down the left-hand side where Scotland had plenty of joy. Though, you know…….it was Albania.
My initial reaction to the starting line-up was one of puzzlement with the likes of Calum Patterson and Leight Griffiths dropped for Kilmarnock’s right back Stephen O’Donnell and Steven Naismith.
But in fairness, Leigh has not been at the races form wise for some time now and O’Donnell is actually starting to grow on me. Yeah, he plays at Kilmarnock but they’ve actually been very impressive for the past 12 months and he looks destined for bigger and better things. Indeed I’m actually starting to think he might be a not bad shout for us considering that position has been an increasingly problematic one at Celtic for some time.
Anyway, the game was played in driving rain which would be second nature to the Scottish boys and Scotland dominated coming out of the traps fast and setting a marker for a pretty one-sided affair.
Naismith headed a stick on opportunity off the post in the first half when it looked easier to score, then missed a tap-in from a low cross by Tierney as he was paying too much attention to a defender and not the ball before attempting a fresh air swipe. He did have the ball in the net before the end of the half but it was chopped off. Replays showed he was about five inches offside.
In the second half, Scotland did score with a clearly offside Naismith’s wide bound header deflecting off of Atalanta’s Berat Djimsiti two minutes after the restart and Naismith finally did score one when he headed into an empty net from a corner after some awful goalkeeping by Lazio’s Thomas Strakosha.
There were a couple of hairy moments with John McGinn attempting a few suicidal passes back to the keeper and Allan McGregor in the Scotland goal produced a wonderful save with his feet from Bekim Balaj after some fine build-up play in a rare moment of Albanian ambition. Balaj blazed over not long after to compound his earlier miss.
But that aside it was pretty much a walk in the park as Scotland won their maiden Nations League encounter to go top of a three-team group in front of a paltry crowd of 17, 455.
For me, Callum McGregor ran the show and technically looks a level above most of the other Scottish players. Tierney was solid throughout and Griffiths came on late to see the game out, spurning a good free kick opportunity on the edge of the box. I’d say Leigh can feel rightly aggrieved though that he didn’t start beside Naismith as Johnny Russell ran about and did very little up front all night before coming off. James Forrest and Craig Gordon remained on the bench throughout.
Scotland are next out in the Nations League against Israel in Tel-Aviv in mid-October as we now return to domestic action ie: the real stuff that we all actually genuinely care about.
....Always A Tim! 