Will Clarke get ‘patience’ & ‘bravery’ amid Scotland slump?

No Scotland head coach has gone through what Steve Clarke is enduring right now.

A run of eight competitive games without victory is the worst in the nation’s history. Including friendlies, it’s one win in 14 attempts.

To turn it around, Scotland and Clarke need three things. Patience, bravery, and trust.

Patience must come from the fans. That’s according to Pat Nevin, the former Scotland winger, who admits it’s probably the hardest thing for Clarke to come by.

“We’ve got fairly patient supporters,” Nevin told BBC Scotland. “They understand the limitations of Scotland a lot of the time and have done for generations. That’s the hard one and I understand why some people lose patience.”

The bravery, says Nevin, must come from the Scottish FA board to stick by their man, even if this slump continues – which it very well might, given Scotland’s next four games (Croatia away, Portugal home, Croatia home, Poland away).

“They need to stand back and realise the basics are there,” Nevin added. “We’ve got a good coach who gets the best that he possibly can do from the group.

“I get the feeling they will [back Clarke]. They really enjoyed the fact that they got those two Euros in a row. Okay, we didn’t do so well when we got there but it is all about getting there. I think he deserves it and I think they’ll think that too.”

Finally, Clarke needs the trust of his players. Stephen McGinn, brother of Scotland star John, is certain the head coach has that.

“From within the camp, the guys have total trust in Clarke,” McGinn said. “They enjoy it. There’s been times over the last 20 years of being a Scotland fan where I’ve looked at a squad and I thought, ‘You’re disjointed, you don’t like the staff, you don’t like each other, you don’t like going’.

“We don’t have that. We need to be careful with the narrative of really pushing it and getting rid of a manager that we all know deep down can get us to a major tournament.”

Maybe there’s a fourth thing Clarke would ask for, too. Context.

In this dreadful run of 14 games, six have been friendlies and two were dead-rubber qualifiers, while three came at the Euros.

Three of those friendlies took place against England, France and the Netherlands. Wins in those games would have been nice, but also wouldn’t have been held under the same microscope with which these defeats are now examined.