If we are being honest, the Clarke era got off to a shaky start. <\/p>\n
It took an Oliver Burke goal in the 89th minute in front of only 30,000 fans at Hampden to see off Cyprus in a tense European qualifier. <\/p>\n
Despite the passing of six years, a glance at that line up still shows some familiarity to the current squad. <\/p>\n
Scott McKenna, Andy Robertson, Kenny McLean and John McGinn all started. A fresh-faced 22-year-old Scott McTominay had to settle for a spot on the bench.<\/p>\n
According to Transfermarkt, Clarke’s starting XI had a squad value of \u00a370m, with a bench of \u00a340m. Fast forward to now, the team which started against Greece in March had an purported value of \u00a3130m, with the substitutes totting up to \u00a360m. <\/p>\n
What does these estimates indicate? Simply, the quality of player at the former Kilmarnock manager’s disposal has significantly approved during his time in office.<\/p>\n
“The squad’s always evolved,” Clarke told Match of the Day’s Kelly Cates. <\/p>\n
“If I look at my very first squad, I think I’ve got six or seven players, maybe eight, that are still involved in the international scene. <\/p>\n
“So, there has been an evolution of the squad even going into the last set of matches this summer, I tried to introduce a few more younger players because you try to get depth within your squad.<\/p>\n
“Is this the best squad that we’ve had? We’ll find out when we get to the games.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If we are being honest, the Clarke era got off to a shaky start. It took an Oliver…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-370656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-scotland","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115085798715272758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}