STEVE Clarke has stressed he is only concerned with Scotland beating Georgia tonight and then securing automatic qualification for the Euro 2024 finals - despite his side being on the verge of a historic achievement.
Clarke’s team, who have racked up wins over Cyprus, Spain and Norway in their Group A games to date, can become the first from this country to win the opening four matches of a qualification campaign if they triumph at Hampden this evening.
But the Ayrshireman is simply interested in picking up three points against visitors who are undefeated in their opening two outings and are in second place in the section and then making it through to Germany next summer without needing to go through the play-offs.
READ MORE: Steve Clarke’s critics eating their words along with their humble pie
“I just want to win the next game,” he said. “It (making history) doesn’t compute in my head. After you have done it you can say: ‘That was great, we did that’. But it is not at the forefront of my mind something like that.”
Tartan Army footsoldiers are on a huge high in the wake of the dramatic 2-1 win over Norway in Oslo on Saturday night – goals from Lyndon Dykes and Kenny McLean in the last four minutes clinched victory – and many of them have been looking at when Scotland can potentially qualify.
However, Clarke knows that Georgia, who beat Cyprus away on Saturday night and will field Napoli sensation Khvicha Kvaratskhelia out wide, will be awkward opponents and has driven home to his players the importance of not getting carried away with their results to date.
Asked if he had attempted to figure out when Scotland could book their place in the finals, he said. “No, no, no. Listen, football has got a great habit of coming back to bite you if you don’t respect it. You have to respect the game. Every team is good. I know what can happen if you switch off. We will try and make sure that we don’t make any mistakes tomorrow night.
“The boys are still singing. I’ve heard them bursting into song every now and again. They are still happy, which is good. You want them to be happy, you want them to enjoy the result and be confident going in to the game. But they understand the importance of the game coming up.”
READ MORE: Scotland injury update as Steve Clarke looks ahead to Georgia clash
Clarke added: “I just want to qualify from the group. I don’t care when the points come. I just want to get the right amount of points to make sure we go to Germany. They come when they come. If it takes until the last game and we still qualify then that’s what we have to do. That doesn’t bother me. I just want to make sure that this group of lads go to another major tournament.
“We have spoken about it. Before the last camp, somebody mentioned the play-offs and I said: ‘What play-offs?’. Everybody looked at me as if I was daft, but I knew what I was saying. We speak only about automatic qualification, that’s the only thing we have in our heads.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here