Clarke said: “Two away games, you’re probably looking at them and thinking that four points would be the minimum that we’d want to take for the games – we managed to get the four points.<\/p>\n
“It gives us a good platform going into two home games and obviously the two home games are important as well.<\/p>\n
“But then you go to November, there’s two more games and they’re going to be important. So the whole process is truncated in a short period of time, but we understand what we have to do.”<\/p>\n
There is no room in Clarke’s squad for in-form Hearts striker Lawrence Shankland, or Oli Burke, who netted a hat-trick for Union Berlin against Eintrecht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Clarke said he monitored both players’ recent form but preferred to go with the players who helped Scotland perform well in the opening two matches of the group.<\/p>\n
“I think about all these players,” he said. “Because I tend to pick the same players more often than not, people think that I don’t look outside, I don’t look at other options. <\/p>\n
“I’m always looking at other options because you never know when you’re going to get injuries, suspensions and when you’re going to have to call people into your squad.<\/p>\n
“I just felt that the players I had in the last camp did well in the camp, did well in the games and they’ve done well for their clubs in between, so I didn’t see too much reason to change.”<\/p>\n
Greece, who beat Belarus then lost to Denmark in Athens, have good memories of their last trip to Hampden.<\/p>\n
Trailing 1-0 from the first leg of a Nations League play-off in March, the visitors ran out comfortable 3-0 winners in what was Gordon’s most recent international appearance.<\/p>\n
With Clarke opting for a smaller squad, there is no room for Shankland, Burke or Middlesbrough forward Tommy Conway.<\/p>\n
Anthony Ralston, who withdrew from the previous squad along with fellow Celtic full-back Kieran Tierney, returns after making his club return at the weekend after a month out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clarke said: “Two away games, you’re probably looking at them and thinking that four points would be the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":266658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[221,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-266657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115293609440344814","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}