Win or be Pole-Axed

If you heard someone in the East Stand of Hampden Park on Friday night going absolutely mad and screaming “we need a second goal”, chances are that was me. It felt like I was the only one in the stadium – either in the stands, on the pitch or even in the dugout – that seemed to understand the difference between 1-0 and 2-0.

The odd quirk of our current position is that to finish in third place it didn’t actually matter all that much what we did against Croatia. The 1-0 win courtesy of the boot of John McGinn is certainly nice…

And gives us a morale boost after a horrible series of results, but even if we’d conceded a late equaliser for 1-1 we would still be going into the final game knowing that we need to beat Poland in Warsaw tonight.

Them being pumped 5-1 by Portugal as we were taking on Croatia actually made it even more irrelevant.

We could have narrowly lost to Croatia and still gone into tonight’s game knowing that any win will be enough to see us finish above Poland in the group. Any win levels out the head to head as they only won by a single goal at Hampden, and goal difference would then go in our favour.

But we did win, so it won’t come to that. Win tonight, and we finish three points ahead of Poland. Draw tonight and we finish level on points with them but their 3-2 win at Hampden gives them the edge on the head to head. Lose tonight and we finish three points behind Poland and bottom of the group.

Given Poland already lost and drew with Croatia, second place is already beyond them on the head to head. They can win tonight and Croatia can lose and they’ll still only be third. So Poland just need to not lose tonight and they’ll achieve the best they can – third place.

But when I was going tonto in the stand, I wasn’t thinking about third place. As I’ve hopefully just demonstrated, that’s a simple equation for us now. I was thinking about second place.

Our head to head with Croatia is now level. They beat us 2-1 in Zagreb, we won 1-0 at Hampden. 2-2, and away goals don’t count unfortunately or we’d have the edge. Had we scored that second goal against the ten men on Friday night however, we’d now have the better of the head to head and we’d be going into tonight know that the win we already need for third place would actually get us second place if Croatia lose to Portugal in the other game.

But that second goal didn’t come, instead the team protected what they had. As such, the permutations are just that bit more complicated, and hopefully that doesn’t come back to bite us. Especially in a tight group such as this one.

There is a scenario, in fact, where if Portugal were to win 1-0 and Scotland were to win 2-1, then we would be tied with Croatia on the first SEVEN tie breaking criteria – EIGHT if you could the points themselves! We’d both be on seven points, we’d both have picked up three points against each other, we’d both have a zero goal difference against each other, we both scored two goals against each other, we’d both have a -1 goal difference in the group overall, we’d both have scored seven goals in the six games, we’d both have scored four away goals in the group (why away goals count at this stage but not in the head to head is anyone’s guess but that’s UEFA for you), we’d both have won two games in the group…

But crucially we’d have won an away game where Croatia hadn’t.

Now, as you can probably see, we can still get tripped up here before it gets that far. The first three criteria won’t change now as we’ve played both games against Croatia. The goal difference is the one that is probably most important here. In low scoring scenarios, we need a three goals swing in our favour for that to be the criteria where we’d finish ahead of them. Two of those three will come if we win and Croatia lose – because if either one of those doesn’t happen then we’re not finishing level on points and this is all moot. So either we need to win by two or more, or Portugal do.

If the goal difference is the same because we won by one and they lost by one, then it’s going to come down to those goals scored. We’re behind them on that matter right now, we need to score two more than they do just to be level with them. But that weirdly swings in our favour because if we score three, and they only score one, then the away goals criteria goes in our favour. So Croatia losing 2-1 and us winning 3-2 would also see us finish second!

But if Croatia lose 2-1 and we win 2-1, it’s not enough on the goals scored and Croatia would be the team that finish second ahead of us. See how tight this is? We really need to be winning by two, that eliminates the issue as the only way Croatia would stop us then is to not lose.

We have a few problems there though too. For one thing, Portugal have already topped the group and sent some star players home. Not that I thought for a second Mr Huffy-Pants was going to try and do Scotland a favour anyway, given his reaction at Hampden. In fact, him going up the road after Portugal winning the group with a game to spare is pretty much in keeping with his attitude, isn’t it?

To be fair, Portugal have done their bit. They don’t owe us or anyone else in the group anything. All we can hope is that their fringe players can use this as a chance to stake their own claim on a place in the team next year. Remember how Portugal dropped Mr Huffy-Pants for a game in the World Cup in 2022 and replaced him with Goncalo Ramos and then they beat Switzerland 6-1 with Goncalo Ramos getting a hat trick? That would be nice again, thanks.

Chances are though, Croatia will get the draw they need to clinch second spot. Especially with the home crowd behind them.

But, we can’t think like that. We have a game to win, preferably by a couple of goals. That should be our aim tonight, and anything more than that is a bonus. By all means, if Croatia are winning and we’re only winning by a goal, then protect the win and don’t lose the third spot. But if there’s even a chance that a goal in Croatia could swing second spot our way, we want to be taking it.

I hope Steve Clarke has this all worked out this time, and we don’t end up once again protecting something when we should be going for it!

Let’s remember what’s at stake here. A top two finish in the Nations League means making the quarter finals of the tournament next year. It means no relegation or relegation playoff and League A football is secure for the next Nations League. It also means being a pot one seed for next month’s World Cup draw. That itself could be a real boost for us next year.

Compare that with finishing third, or even fourth. We’ll likely be a pot three seed in that World Cup draw, and only the top team in the group will qualify with the second place team going into a complicated playoff. Fourth place would mean a definitely return to League B next time out, and third place would mean a relegation playoff against a second place League B team next year to try and avoid relegation. Third is definitely better than fourth, but only a little.

Although, I should say we’re not too far away from a second pot seeding in the World Cup qualifiers. A win tonight might just be enough to give us that, even if we can’t make it up to second. So even that might make a difference tonight. There are so many reasons to win tonight, as you can see.

So, what about tonight’s game? Well, we’re going into this game steadily improving.

We started out with a 3-2 defeat to Poland at Hampden.

Then we went to Portugal, took the lead, gave a good account of ourselves, but came away with nothing as the hosts turned it around to win 2-1.

Last month we started away to Croatia, took the lead, gave a good account of oursevles, but came away with nothing as the hosts turned it around to win 2-1.

But since that annoying double heartache, we’ve had the goalless draw at home to Portugal…

And then on Friday night as mentioned earlier we beat Croatia 1-0, our first competitive victory since the win away to Cyprus last September. Back to back clean sheets as well!

Poland, on the other hand, haven’t fared too well since their win over us. A few days after that, lost 1-0 away to Croatia…

Then last month they lost 3-1 at home to Portugal in what was previously the only game won by more than a goal in this group…

Before drawing 3-3 at home against Croatia. I finally found footage of this one!

Then on Friday night they were hammered 5-1 away to Portugal, which as I mentioned earlier is what gives us the goal difference advantage tonight.

The good news is that we’ve won in Poland before. Most recently, Scott Brown scored the only goal of the game in a friendly win in March 2014.

Scotland also won way back in June 1958, with Bobby Collins getting both of Scotland’s goals that day. Gerard Cieslik with the Polish consolation.

Oddly, that’s the only two times that Scotland have ever beaten Poland, and they’ve both been in Warsaw. More curiously, we’ve only actually lost in Poland once, in a May 1980 friendly in Poznan. Three of our four defeats have come in Scotland, the defeat in September was Poland’s first win over us since that 1980 game.

The other visits to Poland saw Scotland draw 1-1 in World Cup qualifying in May 1965, Denis Law cancelling out Roman Lentner’s opener…

Then there was a 1-1 draw in Bydgoszcz in a friendly in April 2001, a Scott Booth penalty cancelling out Radoslaw Kaluzny’s opener…

And a 2-2 draw in Euro 2016 qualifying in October 2014. Krzysztof Maczynski gave Poland the lead only for Shaun Maloney to cancel it out a few minutes later. Scotland then took the lead through Steven Naismith, but Arkadiusz Milik levelled the game with 15 minutes remaining.

The bad news is I’ve never seen us beat Poland live in now four attempts and I’m writing this on the train to Warsaw right now! I’ve also never seen my team win when I’ve been on an away trip in Europe.

Although I’ll caveat that by saying that I’ve never been to a Scotland men’s away game before, the only Scotland away game I’ve been to was the women in Sunderland last September (which they lost), and I was there the night David Marshall became a hero… no, not Belgrade, Barcelona! But that was a goalless draw so still not a win and not something that would help us tonight!

Still… first time for everything, right?

For those of you watching on from home, the game is live on YouTube once more. Hopefully this is sorted out properly before the next campaign and it can be broadcast on actual TV. Preferably free to air! Kick off is 7.45pm oor time. Or rather your time, it’s 20.45 local time.

Scotland showed against Poland at Hampden that we can get at them and score goals against them. Scotland showed in the last couple of games that we can defend well and keep clean sheets. We’ve shown positives at some point in all five games of this campaign so far. We ARE good enough for League A. Now we have to work at it and stay there.

If we can combine all the good from the five games into our final game tonight, and cut out the mistakes we made particularly when we last face Poland, there’s no reason we can’t get the win we need to at least finish third and ideally second depending on what happens in Croatia.

Good luck to Scotland tonight!