Liam Cooper injury scare as Scotland boss Steve Clarke turns the air blue

Scotland manager Steve Clarke is hopeful Liam Cooper will quickly shake off a knee injury which forced him to come off in Monday night’s friendly with Gibraltar.

The Scots laboured to a 2-0 victory over the minnows in their Euro 2024 warm-up game in the Estadio Algarve in Faro. Second-half goals from Ryan Christie and Che Adams earned Scotland the win after they missed a host of chances.

Clarke is already without Nathan Patterson, Aaron Hickey and Lewis Ferguson, while Stuart Armstrong, Scott McTominay, Ben Doak and John Souttar are all nursing injuries – and Lyndon Dykes was forced to withdraw from the squad after picking up and ankle injury. So seeing Leeds United defender Cooper limp off in the second half was the last thing the Scotland boss needed.

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Cooper played down Clarke’s fears to a major extent with his initial prognosis and the manager is confident the Whites stalwart will be fine for the tournament.

“I s*** myself,” Clarke said. “You get a collision and you get some who try to pull the wool over the referee’s eyes, but Liam doesn’t stay down very often. I was trying to get a message down – obviously I watched the game from higher up – I was trying to get a message down to the bench saying ‘any doubt, get him off’. That’s what we did.

“I spoke to him straight after the game, it looks like a knee-on-knee collision, sore for a couple of days. Fingers crossed it should be fine.”

Clarke is still considering whether to call up another forward after Dykes was ruled out over the weekend. Bristol City striker Tommy Conway sent a reminder of his finishing ability with a headed goal in Scotland Under-21s’ 2-1 friendly defeat in Turkey.

“It was nice that Tommy scored,” said Clarke. “He is a good boy, Tommy, and he is certainly in my mind. I’ve still got to sit down with John (Carver), James (Morrison) and Austin (MacPhee) and Chris Woods and just have a little chat through and try to come up with something that will help us now going into this tournament.

“Can we replace Lyndon like for like? No. Would it have been a better performance with Lyndon in the team? Probably no, because they dealt very, very well with high balls into the box. They defended the box really well. So we just need to find a little bit more craft from certain players on the pitch to unpick that type of defence.”