Steve Clarke assembles team of informal but high-calibre advisors as he prepares to name first Scotland squad

Steve Clarke will name his first squad as Scotland manager on Tuesday for the crucial Euro 2020 qualifiers at home to Cyprus on June 8 and away to Belgium on June 11. But even before making his debut appearance as successor to Alex McLeish, he had already begun to assemble a team of informal but high-calibre advisors, well known to the Tartan Army – none more so than a certain former striker by name of Dalglish.

“I spoke to Kenny straight away,” Clarke said.  “And his first words were ‘What have you done?’ Just before I did my press conference, I got a little message from Alex McLeish and I’ve heard from Michael O’Neill plus a lot of people I want to speak to over the coming weeks and months.

“I’m going to blunder my way through this first camp myself, but Michael wants to have a chat and I’d like to sit down at some stage with Walter Smith, who did very well with the national team. I’ll speak to Alex - he's a great guy - and Gordon Strachan.

“I also know Dan Ashworth, who’s just left the England set-up to go to Brighton, and I’ll sit down with him and find out what they did with the English team, because their young sides are doing fantastically well. They've got a great pathway.

“I’ll try to get a chat with Gareth Southgate - I know him well - and try to steal some of his secrets because his team have also done pretty well recently, haven’t they?”

Clarke’s transition to the international scene was both helped and hindered by his success with at Rugby Park, where he took Kilmarnock from the bottom of the Scottish Premiership table in November 2017 to third place this season, with their highest points total since winning the title in 1965 and qualification for Europe for the first time since 2001. “I had more or less decided to try to get a job in England and spend more time with my family, which is very important to me,” he said.

“The Scotland job materialised with a phone call – ‘would you be interested, blah blah blah’ - and suddenly I had another thing to put in my head and think about. I thought ‘yeah’. It’s an honour to be manager of your country and it would give me the possibility of being there for the family dramas, the little things that you miss.

“I’m going to find a way to do the job properly, to keep in touch with the players between camps, to make sure that they know I am with them when they are playing for their club - and make them aware that, when they come here, it will be like a club environment to try and get the best out of them.”

The widespread welcome for Clarke’s appointment was a relief to the Scottish Football Association, who had been pilloried for failing to secure either Michael O’Neill or Walter Smith to replace Gordon Strachan in late 2017. The responsibilities involved, though, came as a surprise to Clarke’s father.

“My dad has even less emotion than me,” Clarke said. “He doesn’t show it very much but I know he is chuffed to bits. I sat down with him and told him I was going to take the Scotland job.

“He asked what I was going to do now. I told him I needed to go and pick a squad and he said, ‘You get to pick the squad!’

“In days gone by it would be done by the selection committee, so he’s chuffed that I get to pick the players. Mind you, my dad says about modern football that ‘all they do is pass it sideways and backwards’.

“It was the job I wanted to do and the right time in my career to do it. I don't envisage myself being am manager who’s working when he goes into his 70s, I want to enjoy some time before we move on.

“When I went to Kilmarnock, it could have been a career-stopper if we didn’t do well, but it’s gone fantastically well. I have another chance now and I promise you this won’t be a career-stopper either.”