Steve Clarke insists his team were not overawed by the occasion of taking on England at Hampden.
Scotland were totally outclassed by Gareth Southgate’s side at the national stadium tonight, with the visitors running out easy 3-1 winners.
There has been a massive improvement from the Scots in 2023, going unbeaten for almost a year until this friendly match, and topping their qualification group for the European Championships.
Optimism heading into the future and Germany 2024 remains, but Clarke was keen to stress that some have been getting too carried away with Scotland’s current level because of their incredible form.
Asked if facing England spooked his players, the manager firmly replied: “Nope, absolutely not. I thought England started the game really well like the top side that they are. We’re looking to get to that level. We know we’re not there. Some people have maybe got a little bit carried away. But we understand where we are. We’re trying to develop, we’re trying to get better.
“We feel like we’ve done that. One of the good things about us is when we’ve had a little bit of adversity we’ve always come back a little bit stronger, so I’m hoping that’s the case.
“In the first half we didn’t really get started and England started great. They dominated the ball, we couldn’t get a hold of it. I thought second half we did a little bit better, we showed a greater intensity.
“When it goes 2-1, we had a chance to get into the game. I made some more positive changes to try make it 2-2. England score another one so from there it was always going to be difficult to get back in.
“We’ve got good players, Andy (Robertson) is one of them. He made a mistake for the second goal, that happens in football. He recovered well and played well in the second half, driving us forwards.
“What he’s doing on the right wing I haven’t quite worked out yet, but it shows you that we are capable of scoring goals against top teams. We have to take that moving forward. We’ll take it to Spain next month because we’ve got a tough game there.
“When you play against a side that is as good as England or Spain then you have to get everything 100 per cent correct. We didn’t do that tonight and that’s why we lost the game.”
