It perhaps wasn’t quite a Thibaut Courtois moment, but Stephen Kenny will doubtless have relished victory over a country in which very little respect is put on his name.
The Ireland manager, a legend for his domestic endeavors’ on his own island, is not remembered with any great reverence in the only other place he has ever been employed.
Having led his Dunfermline team to the bottom of the Premier table via a random Scottish Cup final appearance, he is generally thought of in Scotland as a tidier Ebbe Skovdahl.
His work with Ireland’s national team has, until now, tended to support the Scotsman’s view of Kenny’s abilities more than those of the denizens of Dublin, Derry and Dundalk.
And so in that inevitably mischievous way football has, it was almost a racing certainty that the beleaguered Ireland boss would boost his fortunes by masterminding a pasting of his Scottish visitors, albeit that he was significantly aided in the pursuit by a truly dreadful performance by Steve Clarke and his men.
Clarke, by contrast, now finds himself veering into the pressure zone for the first time in his tenure.
He may have expected a longer honeymoon after leading his nation to its first finals of the century and then into the playoffs for the World Cup, but the limp and unthreatening nature of this defeat – on the heels of a similar outclassing at the hands of Ukraine, each of them at least partly caused by what looked on the surface to be tactical mistakes – leaves Scotland in the familiar position of wondering anxiously what the next campaign will hold.
Nations League placings determining seedings for the Euro 2024 qualifiers, it is important Clarke gets back on track quickly to give himself the best chance of ensuring this blip is temporary.
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