THERE may well be reasons behind Scotland’s below-par performance against Ukraine, but there are no excuses. Least of all the timing of the game, coming as it did at the end of a long, hard season.
That’s the view of defender Grant Hanley, who like his teammates, was at a loss to explain just why Steve Clarke’s side fell so short of the standards they had set themselves during a largely impressive qualification campaign to that point.
“I don’t think we’ll make any excuses like that, Hanley said. “We’re professionals and we prepare as professionals.
“I certainly won’t be making any excuses personally like that. It is what it is, we didn’t perform to the level we wanted.
“It's very disappointing for us. It’s really hard to speak about it and it’s obviously still quite raw.
“We’re disappointed we never really got going in the game until a wee bit of a spell later on. But even then at 2-1 we never really felt like we were building the pressure and really forced them.
“It’s football and that happens and at this level especially – but any level – if you don’t really turn up and don’t have one of your good nights then you’re going to struggle.
“It felt like that’s what happened to us on Wednesday night. We never got it right, we weren’t quite at it for whatever reason.
“That’s the reason the game went the way it did.”
The challenge now for this beleaguered group is to get themselves lifted for the Nations League fixture against Armenia next week, no easy task given the level of their disappointment. Hanley is hoping to channel their frustration into something constructive though, and use it to fuel their next tilt at a major tournament.
“Of course,” he said. “Football moves quickly and you’ve got to move with it otherwise you get left behind.
“We’ve got a squad in the dressing capable of qualifying for major tournaments. We’ll let this one sink in, dust ourselves down and we’ll go again.
“Obviously the World Cup has gone but the next one is the Euros so that’ll be our focus.
“We’re professionals so it’s up to us to recover from this and be ready again for the next game, which we will be.”
