The big adventure continued under Alex McLeish last night and took the national team plus about 1500 weary souls to the cavernous and mostly empty Sammy Ofer Stadium in Haifa, Israel for the latest instalment of the UEFA Nations League.
There they were subjected to some of the worst football we’ve seen from a Scotland national team in a long, long time.
Now that really is saying something.
Getting beaten by World Cup qualifiers such as Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico and hammered by the second best national team in the world in Belgium is one thing but Israel are rated 96 in the FIFA rankings and had one win in ten coming into this.
They have some very good players at their disposal such as former Celtic midfielder Beram Kayal, now with Brighton in the EPL, as well as the prolific Red Bull Salzburg striker Munas Dabbur who we know all about after his shenanigans a week ago last night against us in the Europa League.
But the fact remains that they seldom if indeed ever pull it together at national team level until they met Scotland of course.
Scotland were rubbish from the get-go. The nonsense of trying to deploy both Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney down the same flank continues and nullifies the abilities of both. That aside it appeared to be five at the back with a deep-lying midfield and the two strikers completely cut off.
Scotland never pressed the ball at all until going behind in the second half and generally sat deep allowing the Israeli team to ping the ball about in front of them like a classic Brazil team and build both momentum and confidence.
A gift was handed out in the 23rd minute when Peretz needlessly barged Naismith to the ground in the box. Charlie Mulgrew subsequently stepped up and converted and you thought that might actually breathe some life into the Scotland performance but instead, it seemed to fire up the hosts who proceeded to subject the Scottish goal to wave after wave of attack for the remainder of the game.
Peretz made up for his earlier misdemeanour by equalising on 54 minutes which was long overdue and after Souttar walked for a second yellow – his first was mindless and second came from his mistake – there was only going to ever be one outcome and it happened when a hopelessly out of position Tierney scored an OG he’d like to forget with about of a quarter of an hour left.
Allan McGregor made save after save and Israel hit the bar when they should have scored and 2-1 flattered Scotland. Despite that Callum McGregor had a few chances to actually pull something out of the fire but shanked them both which was a continuation of his finishing against Albania.
Disjointed, disorganised, fatigued and ultimately dispirited just about sums up Scotland last night as they made it five defeats from seven under Alex McLeish with a first competitive defeat in 23 months.
Players such as Kevin McDonald and Johnny Russell appear to be getting games for no reason whatsoever. McDonald is playing in a Fulham team that are being trounced most weeks and Johnny Russell is playing in the retirement village that is the MLS at 28 and even then is hardly setting the heather alight.
They now play Portugal at Hampden on Monday night which will likely be attended by ten men and a dog and anyone who thinks Portugal don’t have the potential to destroy Scotland without the presence of the scandal-mired Cristiano Ronaldo are sadly mistaken. Portugal won 3-2 away in Poland last night and even without their talisman, they are a handy outfit rated seventh in the world.
Though a right hammering might not be such a bad thing as it might force the SFA’s hand vis-Ă -vis the ongoing farcical second reign of McLeish which hit a new low last night and considering his inability to make any actual big decisions, implement anything approaching a system and his alienation of some of the countries best players a decision really needs to be made sooner rather than later.
Under the previous manager, Scotland had gone unbeaten in seven – six of them competitive – whilst under Big Eck they have lost five in seven scoring four and conceding ten. Expect that to be even worse after Monday evening.
In the post-match press conference, Alex thought the system was actually working in the first half, that the team had kept possession okay and John Souttar’s red card was harsh. He also said he was about to bring on Scott McKenna for Souttar just before he got his second yellow even though McKenna was already on the pitch having been substituted on for the injured Charlie Mulgrew at half-time………………………………
God help us!
....Always A Tim! 