Steve Clarke may have tried his best, in the heat of the post-match press conference battle, to indulge in a bit of textbook deflection, writes Keith Jackson from America. But he was pulling the World Cup wool over the eyes of absolutely no-one. The fact of the matter is that the Scotland manager had some unenviable tough choices to make ahead of his side's meeting with Morocco in Boston on Friday night. And, not for the first time, the decisions he made may have done little to boost his approval ratings among the more hard to please sections of the Tartan Army and those malcontents who make a habit of clubbing him over the head.
That's very probably why he bristled so noticeably in his seat when he was asked about the difference Ben Gannon-Doak made to his team after the winger was thrown on from the bench in the second half of the loss which has placed Scotland's place at this tournament in serious peril. Clarke saw it with his own eyes. He's far from daft.
Having fielded a team which could muster no obvious out ball and which struggled to get across the half way line throughout an alarmingly disjointed first half, Gannon-Doak's blistering pace posed the Africans with the kind of questions that suddenly forced them onto the backfoot. Just as Clarke knew that he would. But it was the manager who left the Bournemouth winger out from the start in order to accommodate Kieran Tierney on the left of a five-man midfield, in a move designed to stifle the threat of PSG right back Achraf Hakimi. It was belt and braces stuff between Tierney and skipper Andy Robertson. A classic double bagger.
And it was also a huge call from the man in charge of finding the appropriate balance between attempting to defuse the threat of the opposition and giving them some explosive issues of their own with which to have to deal. Gannon-Doak did exactly that after replacing Tierney in the second half. And that's an inconvenient truth with which Clarke would rather not have been confronted when he faced questions here in Boston late on Saturday night.
It was put to him that Gannon-Doak's cameo helped to shift both the balance and momentum of the match. Clarke was also asked, with that in contribution in mind, if the 20-year-old might have played his way back into Scotland's starting line-up for the final Group C blockbuster against Brazil in Miami on Wednesday night. His somewhat prickly answer, although delivered in jest, offered a little peak behind Clarke's own curtains. In other words, he was only half joking.
He said: 'Is he your love child?' 'No, but I think he's a good player,' came the response. Clarke went on: 'He is a terrific player. It took him a little bit of time to get into the game but once he gets in there you know Ben is going to give you that little bit of unpredictability off the bench. He gives us a threat which is different. My choice at the start was obviously to try to close their good side on the right. I thought Kieran Tierney was really terrific until he just cramped up a little bit. Ben gives us something different - we know that - and obviously next week is a different game and probably a different approach. Let's see who I pick!'
And Clarke insists his sole focus will be on getting the result that Scotland need against Brazil to progress under their own steam in Group C rather than relying on handouts from god only knows where. Asked about what the possible permutations and the vagaries of goal difference might do to affect the mindset of his team he said: 'Absolutely nothing because we want to win the game and if we can't win the game then we don't want to lose it. That's the focus we will have in the next five days before we get ourselves down to Miami with the heat and the humidity where we will take on another top side from the world's top ten.'
Clarke was rightly miffed by the erratic decision-making of Uzbekistan ref Ilgiz Tantashevo, who waved aside two strong-looking penalty claims for John McGinn and Scott McTominay. Tantashevo also chose not to red card Moroccan defender Issa Diop brought down Che Adams and prevented the striker with a clear run at goal. When Clarke was asked about the double penalty claim he said: 'Everyone in the flash interview area was asking me about the Scott McTominay one and that's the only one I didn't watch back because I don't get much time before I come out and speak to you guys. I thought the John McGinn one was 50-50. Some would give it and I think if the referee had then it wouldn't have been overturned by VAR. So I can only speak on that one. But I was a little bit 50-50 as well when Che Adams was brought down by the last man with a chance to go through. He would have had the chance to go through one on one with the goalkeeper but he gets brought down. Again, the referee chooses yellow and VAR backs the referee but listen, there's nothing we can do about that.'
Scotland got off to a nightmarish start, conceding an opening goal after just 70 seconds when Grant Hanley was guilty of allowing dangerman Ismael Saibari to slam home past Angus Gunn. Asked what he was thinking at that stage Clarke answered: 'I wish we could start again! That would have been the first thing. We lost a poor goal because we tried to step up. You've got to track the runners early in the game because that's when they are full of energy and invention. Yeah, we didn't defend it well. That's why we went one-nil down. But I thought we picked ourselves up in the first half to be fair. OK, it maybe took us ten minutes to get back into the game because obviously when you suffer a set-back like that weaker teams would have crumbled against that quality of opposition. But we got ourselves back in the game and started moving the ball about a little bit better. And I thought in the second part of the first half, after the hydration break, we were good. We built good momentum going into half time and in the second half we had a right go. I'm proud of the players but obviously they are all devastated and disappointed that we didn't get the result that we wanted to carry on in this tournament for as long as we can.'
The national boss admits his players will need time to get over the crushing sense of disappointment before turning their attention to the Brazilians. He said: 'First of all you have to let the players suffer a little bit over the next 48 hours because that's what they will do. They don't like losing against anybody. So we'll rest, recover and get ready to go again but the games don't get much easier.'
