Shoot for the Stars

We’re coming to the end of another Nations League campaign and Scotland are in the unusual situation of looking down rather than up. In the three previous campaigns we’ve been promoted twice, and let a promotion slip away in the other. But this is League A now, and Scotland are at risk of dropping back to League B if they don’t pick up a decent amount of points across these final two games.

The good news is that the granny’s aff. Scotland’s point in the goalless draw at home to man baby Cristiano Ronaldo and co last time out gave us our first point…

After losing 3-2 at home to Poland…

2-1 away to Portugal…

And 2-1 away to Croatia.

That has slightly changed the permutations ahead of us, but not as much as we would have hoped given the other game that night was also a draw.

Let’s start out with the shoot for the stars one. Scotland can still finish second, something that would mean we’d make the quarter finals of the Nations League and ensure we were seeded for the World Cup draw next month.

For that to happen, Scotland need to win, preferably by more than one goal tonight. Do that, and we’d have the better head to head over Croatia. Win by just a goal, and it would come down to goal difference if we finish level with them. To make that goal difference up and go in our favour, we’d have to either beat Poland by two or more or hope Portugal can beat Croatia by two or more. It’s been a very tight group, where almost every win has only been by a single goal.

The simple part of this is that we need to win both tonight at home against Croatia and away to Poland next week. Fail to win both, and we can’t match Croatia’s points tally. We already can’t catch Portugal, so that would be the end of the second place dream. We also need Croatia not to take anything from Portugal in their last game. If they do that, they’ll be out of our reach no matter what we do.

Oh, and there is also a weird scenario here where Croatia, Scotland and Poland all finish on seven points. That’s where we win both games whilst Portugal lose to Poland but beat Croatia. The bad news is that what happens in that scenario is the Portugal results are ignored, and Croatia finish second on account of picking up 7 points from ourselves and Poland where we would only have picked up 6. Poland would only have picked up 4 though, so they’d be the team to get relegated and we’d have a playoff to contend.

So second is doable, and given what we know we’re capable of doing, we shouldn’t be thinking it’s not. The best we can do is try to win tonight, preferably by two or more, and see if it’s even still a possibility after a second win in Poland next week. If Croatia do take something off Portugal, or even Poland beat Portugal and we miss out on that three team head to head scenario, so be it.

The other part of this is that if we can’t get second spot then we really want to try and finish third so that we give ourselves the chance of avoiding relegation in the newly introduced playoff against a second place team from League B.

Tonight doesn’t really make that easier, but if we don’t win then it might get harder or even impossible. If Poland lose away to Portugal tonight then we’ll still have that chance regardless of what happens at Hampden tonight. But even if we do win tonight in that scenario, we’ll still have to beat them in Poland next week – a draw would see us finish level on points and they’d be ahead of us on the head to head.

Monday’s game is arguably the more important one of the two, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try and do what we can tonight. We can’t say for sure what Poland will do, and if they take more points than we do tonight then we can’t catch them and it’s all over. If we lose and they don’t, they’ll be at least four points ahead of us. If we draw and they win, they’ll be five points ahead of us – although we could then still catch Croatia but it would need Portugal to do us that same favour mentioned earlier.

Ideally even for the third place scenarios we want to avoid complicating matters next week and get ourselves into a position where just winning the game in Poland will do the job. Goal difference and head to head is not something we want to tie ourselves up with, although the good news currently is the only game that was won by more than a goal was Portugal’s 3-1 win in Poland. So if it does come to goal difference, there’s a good chance it goes in our favour anyway – unless we really mess it up tonight. Portugal could also do us a favour in that regard tonight and stretch it a bit further. If we lose tonight but Poland lose by the same or more, all we need to do is win on Monday. But then if we lose to Croatia, we’re not exactly going into that final game in the best of form.

Remember, despite the good result at home to Portugal last time out, we are still on a horrible run of results. Since we beat Cyprus away from home last September, we’ve played sixteen games and won just one – the friendly against Gibraltar in June. Draws against Georgia and Norway didn’t matter as we’d already qualified, the draw against Finland was a friendly before the Euros, the draw against Switzerland was our only point in Germany, and all the others were defeats in high profile friendlies (and one against Northern Ireland), the other two Euros matches, and the first three Nations League games.

So what we’re looking for now is to reverse that trend and get back to the kind of form we were in when we won that Cyprus game. That was our fifth win in a row in the qualifying group and a ninth competitive match undefeated dating back to the previous Nations League campaign.

We do still have a decent record against Croatia. They may have won the last two meetings of the sides – last month’s match following on from the Euro 2020 meeting at Hampden that sent us crashing out of the group stage…

But prior to that they had never beaten us!

Of the three games in Scotland prior to Euro 2020, we had drawn the first two and won the third. The first came in World Cup 2002 qualifying where a goalless draw in September 2001 was played out at Hampden.

The next meeting was a friendly in March 2008, Kenny Miller cancelling out Niko Kranjcar’s opener.

And then there was the World Cup 2014 qualifier, where Scotland won 2-0 in October 2013 in a game that didn’t really mean much but did mean we did the double over the Croatians in that campaign. Robert Snodgrass, who got the only goal in the game in Croatia, was again on the scoresheet, this time joined by Steven Naismith.

As noted earlier, Croatia are currently second in the group and will be looking to try and secure that spot tonight with a win. If they do that, they’ll most likely be out of reach of Poland as well as ourselves. Even a defeat wouldn’t be a disaster if Portugal also beat Poland due to the head to head. Although they would then need to try and get something from Portugal as we could still catch them. What is certain though is that Croatia cannot finish bottom at this point as both Scotland and Poland can’t overtake them – only one can still do that.

Croatia started out the campaign with a 2-1 defeat away to Portugal, but then beat Poland 1-0 at home, before beating us 2-1 at home as mentioned earlier, and then having a 3-3 draw away to Poland last time out. They rather binned that though, as they had been 3-1 up after just 26 minutes.

You’ll mostly have to believe me about that because the TV rights issue with this campaign have made it stupidly difficult to get highlights of anything online that isn’t directly involving us.

So, we could be anything from still in with a shout of second place to done and dusted and relegated to League B by the end of the game tonight. That’s quite a wild swing, especially with all the other nuances like losing but still being in with a chance of third or winning but having no chance. And of course that three team head to head thing.

For now, let’s focus on trying to beat Croatia. Get the win, preferably by a couple, and we’ll come back to all of this again on Monday in Poland.

Good luck to Scotland tonight!