Celtic-owned Ewan Henderson’s international career has taken a hit today as he was omitted from the Scotland under-21 squad to face Greece.
The match will be Scotland’s final game of their Euro 2019 qualification campaign. They currently sit top of the group having played one game more than the Greeks. But victory at Tynecastle on November 15th could be enough to see them qualify.
And it seemed highly-likely that Henderson was going to be a part of the squad. After all, he’s played regularly with Ross County and has certainly been getting exposed to first-team football.
However, instead of the Celtic-owned County man, the likes of Allan Campbell, Kyle Magennis, and Lewis Smith are ahead of him respectively.
It’s odd considering Henderson made the last squad to face both Lithuania and the Czech Republic respectively. Henderson only played a cameo role against Lithuania, but it was better than nothing.
Has a lack of game-time this month halted his inclusion?
Perhaps you could point to Henderson’s lack of game-time as a reason for his omission this time around. After all, he didn’t feature against Celtic or Rangers this month respectively. Henderson was ineligible to face the Hoops of course since we’re his parent club.
All Hendo has managed to gain is 64 minutes against Hibernian from last Saturday since the last under-21 squad. He was also on the bench against St Johnstone as an unused sub at the start of October too.
It still seems a tad bewildering that Stuart Kettlewell and Steven Ferguson didn’t feature Henderson last night. With County facing Rangers, his motivation levels would’ve been sky-high.
But despite starting the season as a regular, he seems to have slipped onto the bench in recent times. Hopefully, the Celtic starlet can fight his way back into the side.
It’s the first real piece of adversity Henderson has come up against in his senior career. He made several appearances for Celtic last year, and most fans were certainly taken aback by how good he looked. But now he has a different challenge on his hands.
His Scotland omission, unless it’s down to an injury unbeknownst to the rest of us, is a big lesson for him.
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