Steve Clarke will not blame individuals after ‘disappointing’ defeat to Poland

Posted Friday, September 06, 2024 by PA

Steve Clarke refused to point the finger of blame at Grant Hanley for conceding the added-time penalty which helped Poland beat Scotland 3-2 win at Hampden Park.

The Scots’ first encounter with top-tier Nations League football began by losing first-half goals to a Sebastian Syzmanski strike and a Robert Lewandowski penalty.

However, in a turnaround in the League A Group I opener, midfielder Billy Gilmour reduced the deficit after a minute of the second half and Scott McTominay grabbed the equaliser in the 77th minute.

But the comeback blew up in the sixth minute of added time when defender Hanley clattered Nicola Zalewski inside the box before the Pole got up to fire in the winner from the spot.

Clarke said: “Everyone’s disappointed. we lost a game that we shouldn’t have lost.

“It is not about picking out individuals. I’ve never done that and I am not going to start now.

“We win as a team, we lose as a team. We’ll go away, we will analyse the game and we’ll speak in camp.

“A game we shouldn’t lose but if you make errors at this level, you get punished, and we were punished severely for the errors we made in the game.

“Lots of good thing but still a defeat. I think if I analyse the performance, I have to be happy with the performance.

“So there’s a small crumb of comfort for a head coach. We didn’t have a lot of time to work on the training pitch.

“We knew the system that Poland would play would cause us one or two different issues to me with what you would normally face.

“I thought we dealt with that well. I thought the team shape was good. The attitude, the energy was excellent but like I said before, if you make small mistakes at this level, you get punished.”

Clarke was pleased with the contributions of 28-year-old Ryan Gauld and 18-year-old Ben Doak who came on at 2-1 to make their debuts, with the latter involved in McTominay’s equaliser.

He said: “I think they brought energy to the game at a time when the game had opened up.

“All the substitutions that went on to the pitch made a good impact on the game.

“Obviously it helps when you make a substitution and you score immediately, that helps everybody.

“It gets us back to a scoreline which should have been the worst scoreline we faced at the end of the game.

“It should have been at worst 2-2. Like I said, you get punished for mistakes at this level.”

Scotland now have to face Portugal in Lisbon on Sunday and go into the game looking to improve their current record of one win in 13 games.

He said: “If you want to just report on the scoreline, it’s negative, it’s disappointing for everybody.

“If you want to look objectively at the performance, there are a lot of good things we can take forward.

“Obviously there are some things we have to eradicate from our performance and that’s what we have to look to do.

“It certainly doesn’t get any tougher than going to Lisbon to play Portugal. At the moment I just feel really disappointed for the players because I thought their efforts deserved to get at least a point out of the game.

“I’m sure we’ll get over that disappointment tomorrow. We have to reflect on the game a little bit and then move on to the Portuguese.”