Early on at the Cologne Stadium, on a night when Scotland carried out a kind of mini‑exorcism, packing away the horrors of Munich via a 1-1 draw with Switzerland, it seemed as though Steve Clarke’s team had a basic textural problem.
Billy Gilmour is their best passer, the setter of the midfield patterns. At the same time Gilmour wants to play football in a way that, frankly, doesn’t suit the players at the back, who looked at times bullied and harried by their own midfield playmaker, more concerned by being asked to pass the ball than they were by having to mark the Swiss attack.
