It’s a campaign that’s flown by, beginning with a hugely credible, and largely unexpected, draw in Copenhagen in September. Scotland’s resilience was evident that night. <\/p>\n
Angus Gunn had not played a club game since May. Lewis Ferguson had been an unused substitute in Bologna’s previous two games. Adams had been in and out at Torino. Dykes had started one game in six for Birmingham City. Aaron Hickey had played 77 minutes in almost two years before facing Denmark.<\/p>\n
Scotland fans were almost hyperventilating when Grant Hanley was named in the team, but the Hibernian centre-back was terrific against Denmark, emblematic of a performance that was disciplined, dogged and occasionally threatening.<\/p>\n
A point away from home – and a clean sheet – was an excellent beginning to a group that few saw Scotland surviving in. <\/p>\n
They backed it up with a professional win over Belarus in a closed-doors game in Zalaegerszeg in Hungary. Two goals and another clean sheet. <\/p>\n
Four points from six in a six-game group. Out of the blocks quickly in a section that is tantamount to a sprint.<\/p>\n
Then everything became a little trippy in October. Against Greece at home, Scotland didn’t have an attempt on goal for an hour. Greece led and deserved to be leading by more. <\/p>\n
Vangelis Pavlidis, their go-to striker, missed a sitter early on and then missed again and again. Greece weren’t in any danger and, lo, they were losing 3-1. “We were like a dazed boxer,” Dimitris Giannoulis, the Greek substitute, said. <\/p>\n
Credit Scotland with the fight they showed in coming back from a grim place, but even in victory there were red flags all over the place and even more so when they stumbled across the line against Belarus a few days later.<\/p>\n
Luck was on their side again. Belarus, who had already lost 5-1 to Greece and 6-0 to Denmark, had 22 attempts on goal to Scotland’s 12. McKenna said later that Belarus “probably looked more dangerous than us”, which was broadly true.<\/p>\n
Out of character, Clarke went barmy at the break – and that’s the last time we saw his team. Booed off and slamming their own performance. <\/p>\n
And yet, on an ugly night, that table looked handsome. It was hard to know what to think. And it still is. <\/p>\n
There will be no Gunn and no Billy Gilmour on Saturday night. It’s been an uncomfortably long time since Scotland has seen the best of McGinn and McTominay, their twin totems, and Ryan Christie hasn’t started any of Bournemouth’s last five games. <\/p>\n
Gannon-Doak has played 53 minutes of club football since the end of September – and he’s supposed to be Scotland’s fearless spark out wide. It’s hard to be fearless when you’re a bit-part player with your club.<\/p>\n
To add to the heady mix of uncertainty, Greece are out of contention and their head coach, Ivan Jovanovic, is under pressure. <\/p>\n
But this is Scotland they’re playing, the Scotland that sucker-punched them in Glasgow and destroyed their World Cup hopes in the process. If they have a bit of vengeance in mind then who would blame them?<\/p>\n
In early autumn, every Scotland supporter would have bitten your hand if you’d offered them this scenario. <\/p>\n
You might say, though, that the easy bit has been done and done well with good fortune on board. Now comes the hardest bit – the biggest test of their mettle to move another step closer to the greatest dream of them all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s a campaign that’s flown by, beginning with a hugely credible, and largely unexpected, draw in Copenhagen in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-264085","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}