GARY KEOWN: Steve Clarke needs to stop this piffle about protecting Ben Doak and just make sure his team don’t bottle it like they did at the Euros

Can Steve Clarke stop this piffle about having to make sure Ben Doak is protected?

He is not the Sumatran rhino, whose love lives and reproduction stats are so moribund they make Giant Pandas appear the most incorrigible swordsmen, or the North Atlantic right whale, the survival rates of which rival those of your average Hibs manager.  

Yes, Doak is a rare species, all right, a Scottish winger with pace to burn and the ability to get backsides off seats. However, the youngster finds more than enough raw meat to survive and prosper in the Darwinian habitat of professional football in the form of opposition left-backs.

On Friday night at Hampden, it was Manchester City’s Josko Gvardiol who was the quarry. Doak made him look like the most injudicious spend of umpteen tens of millions of pounds since the Scottish Government handed out that contract to build the Glen Sannox.

Indeed, for one night only, the Glen Sannox, still to take to the waters, looked positively mobile and functional compared to the highly rated Croatian.

Doak gave him a right royal roasting and it came as no surprise that the goal which gave Scotland victory over Luka Modric and co to keep alive unlikely Nations League hopes — and ambitions of being seeded for next month’s World Cup draw — came from the one-time Celtic youth skipping past him to the bye-line and firing in a cross.

Scotland head coach Steve Clarke has been cautious with young Liverpool winger Doak

When national coach Clarke, clearly happy at ending a nightmare run of games without a victory, was asked about the 19-year-old, though, he went all Mogadon Man again.

‘That’s a contribution from a young player that we need to protect and look after, but realise that he’s good for now and, hopefully, for a long time in the future,’ he remarked.

It was the same before the match when discussing the Liverpool man, currently on loan at Middlesbrough.

‘You still have to understand he’s a young player making his way in the game,’ said Clarke. ‘He is doing very well under a really good manager, Michael Carrick, who’s teaching Ben the game — but that’s at English Championship level.

‘When you’re playing for your country against top teams, it is a different level again. You have to be aware that Ben will improve at this level as well, so we have to give him time.’

Jeez-Oh. Can we not just enjoy this guy? Just get excited about him. It’s been a helluva year following Scotland. We know he’s raw and lacks experience and doesn’t always make the right runs, doesn’t always deliver the killer ball. No one is dressing him up as the new Messi.

But he brings the freshness and difference the national side so badly needed after the crushing anti-climax of the European Championship in the summer. He’s the most likely game changer we’ve got. And he’s already rekindling interest in Scotland that was on the wane.

Take Friday, and getting home from Hampden to an exultant nine-year-old at the front door, grinning from ear to ear, cock-a-hoop because ‘L’il Bro’ — which Doak has been christened — ran riot and set up John McGinn’s goal.

 Doak battles with Josko Gvardiol at Hampden during Scotland’s 1-0 victory over Croatia

Aston Villa’s John McGinn came off the bench to score the winning goal for Scotland

The wee fella became entranced by Doak after watching him start in the 2-1 loss to the Croats in Zagreb last month. He now thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread. Or Xbox gift cards.

And who can blame him? Or any other kid feeling that way? It was impossible to listen to Doak post-match — going about how doesn’t see faces, just shirts, when lining up against some of the best-known players in world football and talking about wanting to ‘cause carnage’ — and not lap it up.

How heartbreaking it is that he was injured for the Euros, because it is exactly that kind of gallusness and belief we missed so badly during the slow, creeping horror of those nine ghastly days in June.

It is unthinkable he won’t start in Warsaw against Poland on Monday night in a match in which victory will, at the very least, offer a third-place play-off spot and may even see us finish second in Group A1, entering the Nations League quarter-finals and becoming a Pot 1 seed for next month’s World Cup draw, providing Portugal see off Croatia in Zagreb.

Doak is hardly a child. At 19, it’s time to be proving your mettle. And the experience he is now getting every week with Middlesbrough in the Championship is clearly doing him good.

It is a rough, physical league full of athletes and hammerthrowers and it’s clearly giving the kind of resilience that allowed him to deal with some rough-house treatment from Gvardiol early-doors and still take him to the cleaners.

Clarke needs to go for broke against Poland. He is still only at the very beginning of what might prove to be a redemption arc after Euro 2024, one which cannot be completed until he gets back to a major finals and shows that such events with such examination and expectation do not leave him and his team looking like they have been suffocated by fear.

He had a similar test against an ordinary Hungary side in the summer and flunked it. He stuck with a back five even though Kieran Tierney was out. Sat off. Waited until 76 minutes to shake things up when it was clear in the first half we were getting nowhere. There was no energy. No confidence.

The young winger also helped to keep Ballon d’Or winner Luka Modric quiet at Hampden Park

Striker Tommy Conway is worth a run in the Scotland team despite a quiet game against Croatia

James Forrest ended up spending the whole tournament plonked on the bench and the team finished the tournament having managed just 16 attempts on goal, with three on target, and seven corners from three fixtures. Clarke, in truth, should have walked.

That kind of monumental bottle job certainly can’t happen again now we have another game with rather a lot hanging on it. Sure, there are evident weaknesses in the national squad. Quandaries to deal with. Yet, the win over Croatia offered important pointers.

Craig Gordon did fine and the defence managed a clean sheet, so, if Grant Hanley is okay, let’s stick with the same back four.

Up top, Tommy Conway had a tough time in his first start against a Croatia side that kept things organised until losing Petar Sucic to a second yellow. However, aged 22 and with five goals for Middlesbrough, he will learn from being thrown back into the fire and that’s what we want in a position where we desperately need someone younger to develop and come through.

Lawrence Shankland, after all, couldn’t hit a cow on the back end with a banjo at the moment. Lyndon Dykes, meanwhile, has managed only one goal since joining League One Birmingham City — in the EFL Trophy against Fulham’s Under-21s — and got just the last two minutes off the bench in their 1-1 home draw with Northampton last weekend.

Midfield, as always, is the one area you feel comfortable with. But if Clarke feels McGinn’s strike against Croatia has earned a return to the first XI, it’s no problem.

Napoli team-mates Billy Gilmour and Scott McTominay can work as the two deeper-lying midfielders, the way they did to such brilliant effect against the Netherlands in March until Gilmour went off and the roof fell in, and McGinn can operate further forward.

With Ryan Christie, who should have been more involved in the Euros, on the left, there is plenty of danger there. But it’s ‘L’il Bro’ we all want to see going at defenders and hitting the bye-line like some old throwback to better days. No protection. No caution. Just more of that glorious carnage he tells us he loves, please.

The red card to Petar Sucic changed the game after Croatia had remained organised until that point

SNP freeloaders get a lot out of football… but what does football get out of them?

Having worked under the misapprehension that they are only interested in ruining the finer things in life such as fags, drink and log fires, it must give the common man great encouragement to see how keen our glorious leaders have suddenly become on football.

First Minister John Swinney, Sports Minister Maree Todd and Air Miles Angus Robertson – plus 12 officials – spent a reported £24,000 of taxpayers’ money watching Scotland at Euro 2024.

Meanwhile, Health bod Neil Gray, while not surfing for Oasis tickets at Alzheimers conferences, rolls around in limousines we pay for, going to Aberdeen games.

Splendid. Let’s hope we see the positive effects of all the hugely important government business they have been conducting on these days out quite soon.

After all, the SNP could do with addressing a rather chequered history with the national game. A history that has often given the impression they don’t like it very much.

They brought in the stupid, unworkable Offensive Behaviour at Football Act that eventually had to be repealed.

Michael Matheson, as Justice Secretary, once threatened to withdraw SFA funding and enforce ‘Strict Liability’ if bad behaviour went unchallenged. Whether that extended to running up an £11,000 bill streaming Celtic games on your holidays and charging it to the work is unclear.

During Covid, the SFA and SPFL stated that keeping supporters out of stadiums was ‘political rather than clinical’. And let’s not forget Humza Yousaf getting on his high horse about some random video showing Rangers players supposedly singing sectarian songs – even though everyone and their auntie knew it was a fake. Over and above all that, we’ve got sports facilities being shuttered throughout the country and football pitches being unavailable or costing an absolute fortune to hire.

Yes, the SNP’s high heid yins are getting rather a lot out of football these days. Less clear is what football gets out of them.

Health Secretary Neil Gray used government limousines to travel to Aberdeen games

Kenneth Vargas told journalists in Costa Rica he wants to play at a higher level than Hearts

Vargas should be quiet and let his football do the talking

How droll to see Hearts attacker Kenneth Vargas trundle out the old chestnut about being ‘misinterpreted’ while away on international duty with Costa Rica and talking about fancying a move somewhere better.

There have been more versions of this mortifying old drama down the years than ‘West Side Story’. How could anyone believe, in this day and age of interwebs and Starlink and all the rest of it, that dangling yourself out there for any takers wouldn’t get back to the bozos who pay your actual wages from week to week?

At least Vargas wasn’t daft enough to deny he said he’d like to play against ‘better-level players’. It’s just that he didn’t mean he wants to do it right now, silly – even though there were supposed quotes about a release clause in his contract that can be exercised in January.

Instead, he’s going to give his ‘heart and soul’ to Tynecastle, which he regards as a home rather than a club. Yeuchh!! Pass the sick bag.

Listen, Sonny Jim, you’re part of a team that got Steven Naismith the sack and is second-bottom of the Premiership. Better to sort all that out, keep your trap shut and let the rest take care of itself, don’t you think?