Steve Clarke will not save himself blaming clubs like Celtic for his situation.

Regular readers will be well aware that I’ve grown increasingly bored, disillusioned, and frustrated with Steve Clarke as the national coach. You’ll also know that I wrote yesterday about how he’s essentially in the last-chance saloon. Clarke should be expected to bring in four points from these next two games if he wants to keep his job.

Yesterday, in his pre-match press conference, he faced a friendly, largely compliant media to share his thoughts on the upcoming game and his current position. But during that appearance, Clarke essentially implied that the real problem lies with others: the chairman, club managers, and the fact that there are so few truly skilled Scottish players emerging through the ranks these days.

As with many things when it comes to Clarke, I have some sympathy with this view—up to a point. I’ve written extensively, and we’ve all discussed, how Scottish football isn’t producing enough quality young players.

This is a well-known fact, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. Our player development lags significantly behind many European countries, including some with clubs operating on a fraction of our resources. If we’re being honest, something has gone seriously wrong at a systemic level within Scottish football. The SFA and the SPFL appear uninterested in addressing these issues; if they were, we’d already see more determined efforts to change things.

When you consider top clubs forced to play their B sides in the Lowland League due to the absence of a proper reserve competition—and with youth leagues all but decimated—it’s clear where the fault lies. The mindset within Scottish coaching is also to blame, as is the outdated approach to developing players. Even Celtic, our own club, isn’t exempt from criticism here, and I’ve vented about this many times.

So, like I said, I do sympathise with Clarke’s position to an extent. There’s a lot to fix, and it’s high time those running the game stepped up, governed with purpose, and crafted a real plan to pull us out of this mess. On this point, I fully agree with Clarke. Reforming the game is overdue.

But my sympathy stops where Clarke’s subtle insinuation begins—that his struggles as a manager are due to these factors. I reject that entirely.

Clarke should spend less time criticising others and focus on his own shortcomings because he’s not performing his job well enough. The problem isn’t a lack of available talent—it’s that Clarke doesn’t know how to use what talent he has. That’s the crux of it.

And while Scottish football’s structural issues need addressing, fixing them won’t suddenly make Clarke a better manager, nor will they turn around his fortunes. Such systemic changes, should they even happen, are years away. God forbid Clarke is still the national coach by then. These changes may benefit his successors, but right now, in this moment, Clarke needs to improve. He must be more flexible and clear-headed in his approach. I wish he was all these things, rather than so quick to highlight others’ failings.

To put it plainly: Celtic’s manager’s job is to win games for Celtic, as is the case for Clemence at his club, and the Hearts manager at his. The national coach’s job, in turn, is to win games for Scotland—end of story. Lecturing clubs on their own strategies is entirely inappropriate. If he wants to challenge the governing bodies, that’s a different matter, and he may even find allies there, as many of us would back him in that fight.

But clubs will ultimately act in their own best interests. Unless the clubs receive proper support and guidance—and unless there’s a robust system in place for developing top-tier talent—all of this is academic. It’s simply easier and sometimes cheaper for clubs to import players rather than invest heavily in youth development.

There are undoubtedly issues bigger than Steve Clarke alone. But it’s also undeniable that Clarke himself has become part of the problem. The only thing I want to hear from him at this point is a commitment to solving our immediate challenges and working relentlessly to do so. Otherwise, he should be on his way.