Steve Clarke has admitted that Scotland’s 4-1 win over Armenia in the UEFA Nations League does not turn their June campaign into a success.
The Scotland boss praised his side for overcoming fatigue to beat Armenia – who ended up with nine men – on Tuesday evening.
Clarke believes his team still have a “realistic chance” of finishing top of their Nations League group even after losing 3-0 to the Republic of Ireland over the weekend.
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Scotland have six points at the halfway stage but face a double-header against World Cup play-off conquerors Ukraine either side of a Hampden clash with the Republic of Ireland in September.
Looking back at the four-game programme, Clarke said: “It was a difficult schedule for the players. It was difficult, but we haven’t made excuses until now.
“There’s no excuses for the two games that we lost. Two wins against Armenia are not going to make this international camp a good camp, because it wasn’t.
“We failed on our primary objective – to get to the World Cup. We failed on that and we had a really bad performance in Dublin, which put us on the back foot again. It’s nice to bounce back but there is work to do.”
“Very happy with those finishes, and more importantly very happy with the win.”
After adding two goals to his Scotland tally this evening, Stuart Armstrong emphasised the importance of ending this Scotland camp with a positive result in Armenia.#ARMSCO pic.twitter.com/8fu7qwrTdY
— Scotland National Team (@ScotlandNT) June 14, 2022
Scotland had work to do after six minutes in Yerevan when they fell behind following Grant Hanley’s mistake.
Stuart Armstrong quickly levelled but Scotland looked vulnerable at the back until settling down around the half-hour mark.
The odds went in their favour just before the break when Arman Hovhannisyan was shown two yellow cards for fouling Nathan Patterson and headbutting John McGinn inside five seconds.
The visitors hammered home their numerical advantage with goals from Armstrong, John McGinn and Che Adams in the following 10 minutes of action.
Clarke, who revealed missing defenders Andy Robertson, John Souttar and Scott McKenna were “nowhere near” making the 2,500-mile trip, said: “We started the game slowly, there was a reaction to the long journey and the flight.
“There’s a lot of fatigue in the players’ legs that we haven’t really spoken about too…
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