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Scotland manager Steve Clarke last night took aim at the Tartan Army after seeing his team booed off the park at Hampden in the wake of a 1-0 friendly loss to Japan.
Clarke’s side got their World Cup warm-up programme off to a poor start in going down to an 83rd-minute goal from visiting substitute Junyo Ito and there were certainly some jeers at the end, although hardly deafening ones.
Asked afterwards if he was surprised by the reaction, the national coach replied: ‘Yep. I am disappointed. I’ve got to be honest. It’s just the modern way. It seems to be now that, if you lose a game, you get booed. You’ve just got to deal with it, but it disappoints me.’
Clarke admitted his side failed to click in the final third of the pitch despite seeing an eighth-minute effort from Scott McTominay pushed onto the post by Japan goalkeeper Zion Suzuki.
However, he believes there were other elements of the overall performance against a team rated 18th in the world rankings, 22 places above Scotland, to feel happy about.
‘There are a lot of things I can take from the game that were decent,’ he said. ‘We played against top-quality opposition, but we didn’t create enough in the final third of the pitch and that is something to look at.
Clarke took a swipe at the Tartan Army after they booed off his players at the full-time whistle
‘It is something we have spoken about often and we’ll keep trying to get better.
‘First of all, you do have to look at the quality of the opposition. They are a top-class team and, towards the end, they were bringing on stronger and stronger players.
‘I chose to go the opposite way because I had players who needed minutes on the pitch and also had to protect them. It’s just about keeping working at what we do.
‘The end result is important. We spoke before the game about the fact our record in friendlies is not as good as it should be.
‘I thought the performance, at times, was OK against a good team.
‘It’s not a game you want to lose, but I thought there was enough in that game against the opposition we played against to feel positive about what we are trying to do.
‘We have another tough game in Liverpool against Ivory Coast on Tuesday. I think some of my players look at me and ask what I’m doing, but I always try to pick difficult friendlies.
‘We will try to get a positive result to carry us forward, but, if the performance is good and you can take things from it, you can carry that on too.
‘We’ll have a look at the lads, but I would expect six or seven changes to the team as there are other things I want to look at.’
Clarke also felt the concession of the goal that gave Japan victory delivered an important lesson to his players.
‘I didn’t think it would be a low-scoring game,’ he said. ‘Even the goal we conceded came from a wrong choice to go forward too early. We weren’t organised enough to defend a set-play.
‘We can learn little lessons. It shows that if you make bad decisions against top teams, you get punished.
Scott McTominay has an effort from a free-kick but was unable to find the net
‘This is where you have to be at, lads. This is the level you want to reach. If you want to get the points to get you out of the group stage, you have to play to that standard.’
Clarke handed a start to Middlesbrough attacker Tommy Conway on the left and made a point of giving him a special mention.
‘There were one or two things I thought were decent in the game,’ said Clarke. ‘I thought we defended quite well. I thought the two centre-backs (Scott McKenna and Jack Hendry) were good and I thought Angus (Gunn) was really good in goals.
‘It was nice to see young Tommy (Conway) come in. He did well, so there were a lot of good things. We don’t have loads and loads of wide players. Tommy was decent.
‘He has played himself back into the squad and didn’t do himself any harm.’
Japan head coach Hajime Moriyasu, who started without a number of established faces, admits the win will help strengthen his side’s confidence before the World Cup, but felt they should have won by more.
‘It was great in terms of building confidence, but I am aware, in terms of link-up, we didn’t achieve things perfectly,’ he said. ‘That’s an issue we have to address before the World Cup.
‘We had chances before we managed to score the goal and we have to convert those. The players on the field in the second half are regulars, but the team in the first half played well.’
