\n<\/p>\n
Scotland will face Bolivia for the first time but Clarke was faced with more questions about group rivals Haiti, following their 4-0 thumping of New Zealand on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
He was quick to highlight that some fans \u201chave a terrible habit of looking at these nations and thinking they are not very good or looking at where they are ranked in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey play in a different section of the world, so maybe in their section they’re really good,\u201c said Clarke. \u201cThey were much better than New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“I was never under any illusion that it was going to be a tough game. It’s probably nice that some people got to see how they played, because they now know it’s going to be a difficult game for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is why Clarke – who outlined his priorities for Saturday as \u201cno injuries, performance, result\u201d – was quick to stress that this weekend’s game would be a \u201cstraightforward selection\u201c with the main event looming large.<\/p>\n
He added there are no “major” injury concerns, just a few players with “little grumbling things”.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome players need minutes,\u201d the head coach said. \u201cI need to see one or two players in positions on the pitch and then we’ve got a week to prepare for the first game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s no trying to protect players or whatever, injuries, unfortunately, are part and parcel of football. We don’t expect any, but you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scotland will face Bolivia for the first time but Clarke was faced with more questions about group rivals Haiti, following…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}