CALLUM McGREGOR was the lucky one – he missed Scotland’s sixth game without a win as Steve Clarke’s side collapsed to an embarrassing 4-0 loss in Amsterdam last night.
The international squad are gearing up for the Euro 24 Finals in Germany in the summer, but shot themselves spectacularly in the foot with a procession of awful misses against the Netherlands.
The Scots have now conceded EIGHTEEN goals in their six in a woe and injured Celtic skipper McGregor was forced to watch the latest struggle by his country’s team-mates as they nosedived to defeat following a bewildering display of inept finishing.
HIT AND MISS…Lawrence Shankland blasts the ball onto the crossbar with just the keeper to beat.
His ex-Hoops colleague Ryan Christie had a close-range effort pushed onto the woodwork in the first-half and the midfielder contributed to the mesmerising array of misses with a miscued header after the interval that sailed harmlessly wide of the post.
Scott McTominay, usually a stalwart for the Scots, also headed past from a superb position and John McGinn was off target with a couple of shots which should have worked the opposite netminder.
The most mystifying failure was delivered by Lawrence Shankland when he was through on the exposed keeper with the chance to make it 1-1. Alarmingly, the Hearts man leaned back as he struck his shot and the ball soared high before nicking the top of the crossbar and sailing to safety.
That x-certificate howler summed up a Scotland side that had 13 attempts on goal – the same as their opponents – with only two on target.
DUTCH OF CLASS…ex-Celt Virgil van Dijk with Georginio Wijnaldum and Mpehis Dupay after the Netherlands’ second goal.
The first one that counted for the hosts, with former Celts Virgil van Dijk and Jeremie Frimpong in the line-up, arrived five minutes from the interval when a long-range drive from Tijani Reijinders eluded the flapping hands of Angus Gunn.
Georginio Wijnaldum was left unmarked to head in No.2 in the 72nd minute and Anthony Ralston made his appearance two minutes later as he replaced Nathan Patterson. Greg Taylor remained on the bench throughout the evening.
Two goals in the final six minutes flattened the visitors when Wout Weghorst and Donyell Malen scored simple efforts.
Looking at the worrying failure of his back lot to keep rivals at bay, a gutted boss Clarke said: “It’s a lot of goals and if you concede that many you are not going to win games.
“The scoreline, 4-0, you can’t hide. It’s painful.
“The players are suffering and I am suffering. But don’t forget there was a lot of good stuff in the game.
END GAME…Steve Clarke chats to victorious Dutch boss Ronald Koeman after the 4-0 loss.
“We were very competitive with a good Dutch team for 70 minutes. I will probably spend a long time looking at that period because that is what we have to build on.”
Clarke, speaking to the Scottish Sun, added: “We had the same amount of shots as the Netherlands.
Scotland now face Northern Ireland at Hampden on Tuesday night.
