Scotland’s need to overturn its fortunes at Euro 2024 is greater now than it ever has been. And with four Celtic players in his squad, Steve Clarke knows he has born winners he can depend on when a result is required.
Against Germany, the Scots were outgunned, overpowered and simply outplayed by one of the tournament favourites.
But against Switzerland tonight, Clarke knows that a win would put his team back on course to qualify from his group.
To do that though, Scotland must score and to score Clarke needs players in his team to fashion out chances.
So this could be the ideal game for Celtic winger, James Forrest, to make an appearance, right?
Forrest to make a Scotland ‘impact’
Peter Grant was casting his eye over who should start in this make-or-break game for Scotland against the Swiss and the former Celtic hero rated Forrest’s chances of getting the nod for the 8 pm kick-off.
Grant said [The Go Radio Football Show], “The difficulty is I think in the system I can’t see him [Steve Clarke] changing to a back four. There’s absolutely no way I can see him doing that.
“If he does that, he’s going to be playing people out of shape or he’s going to play Grant Hanley who’s not played many games as one of his centre-halves and I just think they’d be too quick, too powerful because you look at Mbolo and all these guys they are so powerful and strong and quick.
“And I think you need that three there. James just probably doesn’t fit into the shape of the team. I think he could have an impact on the game for sure, I agree.
“I think he’s had a wonderful end to the season and I think he was one of the reasons Celtic ended up winning the league convincingly was because of James.
“And he came in in the cup as well because he obviously produced in the cup ties as well. So there’s absolutely no doubt he could impact it.
“But I just think with Stevie’s team tomorrow night, he’ll not go away from the three and then because James is a natural wide player, that doesn’t allow for that because he’ll want someone to play a little bit closer to the front men.”
One thing is for sure, Scotland can’t be as bad as they were against Germany or they will exit the tournament before the final group game is played.
If Steve Clarke can’t find a way, or system, to include the goal-threat of James Forrest then there is a very real chance that that could happen.
With Scotland’s form being so poor, it does look like Clarke could do with mixing things up and Forrest is the perfect player to do just that as he proved with Celtic last season.
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