It's not just the Arsenal players selected for the World Cup that are in action during this international window.
Kieran Tierney, unlike his Gunners teammates Bukayo Saka, Benjamin White, Granit Xhaka, Thomas Partey, Aaron Ramsdale, Takehiro Tomiyasu, William Saliba, Matt Turner, Gabriel Jesus and Gabriel Martinelli, will not be in Qatar for football's biggest tournament due to Scotland's failure to qualify.
However, the Arsenal left-back did get a run out for his national side on Wednesday evening as he played the full 90 minutes of their 2-1 defeat at the hands of Turkey and received a 6/10 match rating from the Daily Record who questioned whether he and Liverpool's Andrew Robertson can play together in the same side.
READ MORE: Full list of Arsenal players going to Qatar 2022 World Cup including Thomas Partey decision
Blessed with two of the best left-backs in Europe brought up quite a conundrum for Steve Clarke, one that he solved at last summer's European Championships by deciding to switch from a back four to a back three in order to accommodate the pair in his strongest starting line-up.
And despite needing to convince Tierney that he was the perfect option to play in somewhat of a new role, the Scotland manager recently revealed his belief that the 25-year-old is 'the best overlapping centre-back in the world'.
"The personnel we had – we had two of the best left-backs in world football, Tierney and Robertson, and had to figure out how to get them in the team," Clarke said on the High Performance Podcast earlier in the year. "At that moment I didn’t think the centre-back options were great, so let’s pick three and see if that makes it better!
"My idea was that Tierney could play centre-back and I had this mad idea that Scott McTominay could play as one of the others. I had good midfield players and I wanted to get three or four into the team but had nothing great up front really. I had a really good conversation with Tierney to tell him he was going to be the best left-sided centre-back that Scotland had ever had.
"But I think he always felt that he was a better left-back than Andy Robertson. Every player thinks they’re better than the immediate competition and if you compare them, there isn’t a cigarette paper between them. I had to persuade Kieran that he was better than Andy and that’s why I trusted him to play left centre-back and not Andy. Now, that’s probably not strictly true but that’s how I had to sell it to Kieran.
"Now we've got the best overlapping centre-back in world football. It works. Selling that position to Kieran was important and it was a really good conversation, he asked a lot of really good questions. I told him I loved him and I wanted him to play there."
Operating as a left-side central defender in a back three is nothing new to Tierney as it's a role he has played several times for Arsenal following the appointment of Mikel Arteta. Most notably he played there as the Gunners beat both Manchester City and Chelsea to win the FA Cup in 2020.
So for the Spaniard to benefit from having 'the best overlapping centre-back in the world' he would have to ditch his favoured 4-3-3 system and return to a 3-4-3 formation that would see Tierney on the left-side of three central defenders alongside William Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes.
Whilst it would be a major surprise if Arteta made a sudden change at this stage of the season, Tierney's role for Scotland may serve as a timely reminder for later in the campaign as he could repeat the trick to avoid a team selection dilemma involving Oleksandr Zinchenko who has been the first-choice left-back when fit and available for selection.
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