CLARKE HAS TO FIND A GOLD 9

Three strikers but one needs to seriously step up in time for Germany or boss will need to rely on horses for courses plan

HE was being more than a little bit facetious. Of course he was.

But when Steve Clarke said some people may choose to look negatively upon a run of six games without a Scotland win, the national manager was also spot on. Of course they will.

If he was being brutally honest with himself, Clarke would admit that this is hardly the kind of run he would've wished to embark on, now that he's getting so close to leading his squad to Germany this summer.

The very last thing he needs at this moment in time is to turn up at a tournament and attempt to mix it with the big boys, having suddenly been overcome by an inferiority complex on the way there.

But, while managing a national team is one thing, very often managing the country's expectations can prove to be quite another.

And in that regard, perhaps what happened in Amsterdam on Friday night, when Scotland found themselves on the end of a four-goal thumping from a dangerous, accomplished Dutch side, may have come at an ideal moment - as bruising and unwanted as this latest sore face will have been.

The lop-sided nature of the scoreline certainly serves as a timely reminder of what Clarke and his players are about to come up against this summer and the cruel reality of life back in the fast lane, going in against the game's real top operators.

If the nation had been in danger of getting ahead of itself in the build up to a second successive Euros, this was a reminder of the levels at which Scotland are now being asked to perform and the pitfalls which tend to come with it.

And yet when Clarke sat down with his coaching staff to analyse the action over the weekend, he would have had every reason to convince himself that this was a freakishly unfair result on a night which unravelled and very quickly got away from his players.

Because for more than an hour Clarke's side was, by a distance, the best team on the pitch.