Positivity usually radiates from John Carver when the Scotland assistant walks into a room.
The big smile, the warm Geordie welcome, a little wise crack here and there. In so many ways Carver is the yin to the dour Steve Clarke’s yang in the Hampden coaching set-up. And it’s worked for much of the four years the double act have been at the helm of the national team. But you know when the 59-year-old starts to talk of career lows and having no interest in watching his other side’s march to the Euro 2024 final in the wake of our own limp exit that Scotland really did suffer in the summer.
Carver, like the rest of the Tartan Army, is in need of a pick-me-up. An acknowledgement that there has to be a change of approach, a fresh injection of attacking intent and a strong Nations League campaign is a good start. Carver says the appointment of Alan Irvine as first team coach beneath himself and Clarke is the first step with the former West Brom, Sheffield Wednesday and Preston boss charged with producing new ideas on the attacking front.
Then it’s down to implementing it on the park. How that might look remains to be seen but a move back to four at the back looks likely, particularly with the injury absence of Kieran Tierney. It was put to Carver that Georgia showed how a smaller nation can upset the odds and reach the knockout stages with a brand of front-foot football.
Like Gordon Strachan almost a decade before him, he pointed to two world class forwards in Lyon’s Georges Mikautadze and Napoli’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia as the big difference between us and them.
How do we address the lack of magicians on the ball? The recent SFA report into the lack of minutes for young Scots in the Premiership was highlighted by Carver. But
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