John Carver has called for ‘realism’ as Scotland look to put their Euro 2024 nightmare behind them and make a strong start to the Nations League against Poland.
A 12-game run that’s brought only one win – in a friendly against Gibraltar – and culminated in a miserable group stage exit in Germany in the summer has heaped pressure on Steve Clarke. But assistant boss Carver reckons there needs to be perspective ahead of what he admits is a ‘daunting’ Nations League task in which the first priority is survival.
He pointed to the size of Scotland as a reason for the failure to deliver a bloody nose to the bigger nations. That’s despite Slovenia and Georgia – both with smaller populations than Scotland – managing to qualify from their groups in Germany. Asked if the group need to get Tartan Army back on side, Carver said: “I’ve got to be honest, I don’t think so.
“Let’s not forget that our recent games have been against top sides. And top sides in the world, not just in Europe. So let’s have a bit of realism here.
“It’s going to be tough because the next six games are going to be exactly the same, coming against top nations. But would you not rather have that? I would.
“I would rather be playing against Portugal and Poland and Croatia in the next six games because that is challenging. It’s going to be tough, we know that. But I’m sure if you are Tartan Army you want to play games like that.
“The amount of people I’ve met since the Euros who have come up to me, and not one person has come up to me and said they were disappointed. They’ve actually said how much of a great time they’ve had, it’s been a great journey, so that gives you a little bit of a lift the fact that people are saying that.
“I know you are going to have people who are going to criticise and they have got a right to say that, but I listen to the ones who have come face to face with me and tell me what they thought. And they thought the journey that they have been on, the experience, they haven’t had it for so many years, even when they qualified the previous time they were maybe too young to travel.
“So yeah, there is disappointment there, but people are realistic as well. Let’s not forget how big our nation is. It’s a wonderful place up here but we are not a huge country.
“What’s the population, 5.5million? It’s not a huge population and there are other sports. But we are striving to try and improve it and give more success, if we can, to the people.
“Let’s not forget, Scotland were in the doldrums for 23 years, and we’ve now qualified for two back-to-back Euros, we’ve got into Nations League Group A, so I think we’re going in the right direction.
“It is a new start because a new competition is starting. Let’s not forget we are now in Group A of the Nations League. That has to be a huge incentive for all these players, all the newcomers. You face this challenge. It is going to be daunting.
“And our aim is to survive in the group – that’s what have to do. Yes, we want to win it, or come second but our primary aim is can we stay in the group.”
Carver admits there were regrets from the summer’s failure but insists injuries were a huge factor too with Aaron Hickey, Nathan Patterson, Lewis Ferguson, Ben Doak and Lyndon Dykes ruled out before the competition even started.
He said: “Regrets? Well, obviously not getting out of the group. We can look at what we did in the last game and talk about, ‘should we have played this system or those players?’
“But at the end of the day if you think hard and fast about it we had an obvious penalty that wasn’t given. We then had a great chance at one end and they go up the other end and get the winner.
“It’s a fine line, a fine margin. But from a personal point of view we had a chance to create history and we didn’t, so that’s got to be a drive and a motivation to go again.
“I think if you put it into perspective, there was an awful lot of mitigating circumstances. If you look at the guys we lost before we went into the tournament, during the tournament we obviously lost Kieran Tierney as well, we lost big players for this national team.
“When you lose your big players I think any team struggles. We’ve seen it, I’ve seen it with my own club Newcastle last season.
“We lost so many big players and we struggled because of it, and we didn’t qualify for Europe. So, we had a lot of things that went against us, but at least we went into that last game…yeah we were disappointed because we didn’t get out of the group and we wanted to create history, but we went into that last game with the opportunity to go through.
“I’m not going to go into details, I know Steve spoke about it when he named the squad, but there were things that went against us. It’s a fine line between success and failure, and unfortunately we didn’t get across the line, which is why we were all disappointed.”