Scotland have been hit by more injury woes after Scott McTominay and Kieran Tierney were ruled out of tomorrow’s friendly with Liechtenstein.
The pair both started last Friday night’s 3-1 defeat to Iceland at Hampden, before being taken off in the second half.
Neither player has made the trip to Vaduz, forcing Steve Clarke into another reshuffle as problems pile up for the under-fire manager.
Clarke is already facing a goalkeeping crisis and today called up Aberdeen’s second-choice keeper Ross Doohan and 18-year-old Callan McKenna of Bournemouth in a bid to ease the strain.
The Scotland boss has been scrambling to find cover after Angus Gunn picked up a knock in the early stages of the Iceland match and Robby McCrorie was injured in the warm-up.
Cieran Slicker, 22, endured a torrid debut after coming on as a substitute and was at fault for all three goals.
Scott McTominay has pulled out of the Scotland squad with an injury picked up against Iceland
Kieran Tierney is another who has not made the trip to Vaduz for the Liechtenstein friendly
Goalkeeper Ross Doohan has cut short a family holiday in Turkey to join the Scotland squad
With Craig Gordon, Zander Clark and Liam Kelly all injured, Clarke is desperately short of options for the game with minnows Liechtenstein.
Doohan, 27, cut short a family holiday in Turkey to answer Clarke’s call, while McKenna rejoins the squad after training with them last week.
If Clarke takes Slicker out of the firing line, Doohan is likely to make his Scotland debut.
Explaining the logistics of his late call-up, Clarke said: ‘Phone call. Are you available? Yes. Can you get a flight? Yes. And there he was, in the hotel.
‘He’d been away with his family. It says everything, but a chance to join up with the national squad is not something you turn down, not in my book anyway.’
Doohan has played second fiddle to Dimitar Mitov at the Dons this season, but the former Celtic youth player looks set to return to Parkhead this summer having also played for Ayr, Ross County, Dundee United, Tranmere and Forest Green.
‘He’s got over 150 senior games,’ said Clarke. ‘One of the things we were trying to find was somebody who’d trained pretty late into the season, so obviously Ross had been involved in the (Scottish) Cup final not that long ago, so it’s not as if he’s going to be deconditioned or out of practice.’
Clarke has tried to rebuild Slicker’s confidence.
‘Obviously we’ve touched on it,’ he said. ‘Listen, everybody makes a big thing about Cieran. If you play a young goalkeeper, there’s a chance he’ll make mistakes.
‘If you go through the three goals, we should have dealt much better with the two set plays.
‘The first one’s a clearance on his weaker foot that doesn’t quite clear the boy in midfield. When the ball comes to the two blocks, we allow the striker to turn and shoot, and nobody was saving that shot because it was a great finish.
‘Cieran’s a good goalkeeper. Trains well, works well in the camp when he’s in. He’s just had an unfortunate night. He’ll bounce back from it, he’ll do well at his club.
‘He needs to play more games, he knows that. He needs to play more games regularly, but he’s got a big future in front of him.’
The injuries to Napoli’s McTominay and Celtic-bound Tierney mean Clarke may well be forced into a change of shape as well as personnel.
‘The team will be freshened up a little bit,’ he said. ‘Probably a little bit more than I normally do. More than one anyway.
‘Scott and Kieran both came into camp carrying some little issues over from the season. I think if we’d had a longer turnaround between the games they might have had a chance, but this is the end of season for those two.
‘The most important thing is to have a good rest over the summer and come back flying in the autumn.’
After Scotland were booed off the pitch following a dreadful display against Iceland, midfielder Lewis Ferguson has stressed the need to get back to winning ways and rediscover some momentum ahead of the World Cup qualifiers starting in September.
Tomorrow’s match will be their last chance to find a spark before they head into a qualifying section alongside Denmark, Greece and Belarus.
‘We need to win our next game on Monday night and put on a good performance,’ said Bologna star Ferguson. ‘Winning games is what breeds confidence. We need to get back to that.
‘For how bad we were, I don’t think Iceland ever put us under serious pressure. But we were the home team and we had the onus to go and try to win. We gave ourselves too much work to do.’
