Some sort of plague has descended on Scotland’s defenders, with Grant Hanley, John Souttar and Liam cooper also on the sidelines.
The obvious answer to McKenna’s loss would have been McTominay moving back, but that option is not available. Hendry is the most experienced centre-half available. There could be a revisiting of three at the back as a consequence.
Clarke’s squad has shown a resilience. The Ukraine game last week was deeply frustrating for 70 minutes. All those chances and no breakthrough. At no point did they panic or lose heart. At no point did they look like they would become yet another entry to the list of suckers who got punished for failing to take their chances when they had them. Their belief remained, their intensity increased and they won going away.
Saturday was different. Ireland were excellent in the first half. They had the lead and deserved it. They had the better of midfield and had shut down all of Scotland’s go-to men. At the break, it looked dicey. Even on the restart, Clarke’s players gave the ball away cheaply three times in the opening few minutes. Hendry and Christie changed all of that.
Slowly but surely, Scotland’s midfield got on top. It was a win that was ground out. Hard fought. They were in a hole and they climbed out of it. If the Ukraine victory was about class, this was about character, about overcoming their own deficiencies on the night, about staying calm.
In the summer, Scotland went one-nil down in Dublin and folded. There was an entirely different mindset in adversity on Saturday. Clarke had every right to be thrilled. His players are getting more savvy.
Ukraine need no other motivation than playing for their people in a time of war, but they’ll have that extra edge regardless because of what Scotland did to them last week.
They made 11 changes for Saturday’s 5-0 win against Armenia and some of the characters who put Scotland away in June reappeared from the start – Vitaliy Mykolenko, Viktor Tsygankov, Roman Yaremchuk.
So influential in the Hampden play-off, Oleksandr Zinchenko is still out injured.
Still, you fancy that Ukraine on Tuesday will be an altogether different prospect to what we saw at in Glasgow last time around.
Clarke has a lot of thinking to do. If he’s to stick with a back four then who is the second centre-half? If it’s a three then it’s Hickey, Hendry and who else? Whatever way you cut it, it’s going to be callow.
Kenny McLean is likely to be cast in the McTominay role. Ryan Fraser’s energy could be a useful thing from the start. Three games in a week is a fair old physical burden for some of Clarke’s players and Stuart Armstrong, who has started just once in the league for Southampton this season, is one of them.
These are positive times for Scotland, but also anxious times.
Only a single point is needed now to win the group, to achieve promotion to the Nations League A-listers next time and to take a play-off spot for Euro 2024. It’s a point that became harder with the hammer blow news of the loss of Tierney and McKenna. One game left, but so much riding on it.
