SCOTLAND have called in Gordon Strachan, the national team manager, to join Ricky Sbragia’s backroom staff ahead of the country’s crunch European Under-21 qualifying tie with Ukraine next week.
The Scots currently sit fourth in Group 3 with four points from three games ahead of the sections bottom side – who have yet to score a goal – visiting Paisley a week on Friday. The importance of the game cannot be underplayed with second-placed France likely to pick up more points against Northern Ireland the night before they travel to Skopje to play Macedonia who sit in third.
It is an international break which also sees Scotland’s A squad without a game after failing to make it into the Euro 2016 play-offs last month, and it has now emerged that Strachan will put his free week to productive use by exerting his influence on Sbragia’s young group. Despite not being in charge of team selection, the presence of the national manager will offer a boost for the players going into the tie, and the U21 head coach is delighted to have him on board.
“I think it is great,” said Sbragia. “The players will be looking to impress him. He is thinking about the players that are there and he is seeing them first hand. That’s important as he will get to know them on the training ground. From my point of view, it’s fantastic.
“He is there until the Friday. He might miss the odd day or afternoon but he will be there all week. I think in general Gordon is coming to see what we do, how we prepare and if it is similar to the A squad, and to see what talent we have in the squad.
“We have a great communication pathway. We talk very regularly about things that are going on between the 21s and the 19s and the 17s. We are fortunate enough we are able to see them all, it’s great. We chatted about it and he wants to come and spend time with the 21s. He did that with Iceland and he had a chat before the game. It is really important that your national manager there looking at who is coming through and asking questions about it. We obviously do the same lower down as well.
“I’ll still pick the team and we’ll decide the tactics. We’ve watched Ukraine twice.
“From my point of view it’s great for Gordon to come.”
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