Scotland's assistant coach Terry Butcher knows that Saturday will be a bit of a challenge and an intimidating night for the likes of Christophe Berra and Darren Barr awaits if they get the chance to be striped for action. Manager George Burley is still adjusting his plans following the inevitable call-offs after the league fixtures at the weekend. Kirk Broadfoot, Davie Weir and Derby midfielder Kris Commons have all dropped out of the squad through injury while Stephen McManus is rated as highly unlikely to recover in time from the ankle injury which kept him out of Celtic's weekend trip to Tannadice. This last bit of bad news may be a bit of good news as far a Berra or Barr are concerned as one of the pair will be called upon to partner Gary Caldwell at the heart of the Scotland defence. The Inverness boss has confidence in both Berra and Barr despite the duo being inexperienced at international level as they have only four caps between them. He said: "Both players are very good. I've had first-hand experience of Darren Barr, he has been in the Falkirk side which has beaten us twice in recent weeks. Christophe Berra is thoroughly enjoying his time at Wolves and doing well in a very good standard of football. Sooner or later they will get their chance but it is pretty intimidating when you think of it, playing in the Amsterdam ArenA against Holland with the strike power they have at their disposal. But at this level you will come up against very good players. Those two lads have been in the squad for a while now. They simply have to take their chance if they're given it. If they're not ready to do that now, they never will be. Of course it will be daunting. But I remember when the England manager, Ron Greenwood, put me in the team for the first match of the World Cup against France in 1982 and that was a surprise. I had only played three or four times before. Although it seemed a bit scary beforehand, when you get on the field, instinct takes over. I'm sure whoever is playing in defence for us against Holland will be the same." Manager Burley is still mulling over just who to name in the right-back slot between Steven Whittaker and Alan Hutton. The Spurs man has just come back from a foot injury picked up playing for Scotland against Argentina in a friendly in November. He has not made it back into the Spurs first team just yet and and joined up with the squad after playing for Spurs reserves on Tuesday night. Butcher appears to favour going for Hutton to start the game. He said: "Alan is desperate to play after playing 71 minutes of the reserve game for Spurs. Ideally he would have liked to play more games but sometimes when you come back after a long injury then you run on adrenaline alone. But it is very foolish to say we will save people for the Iceland game because we want to go to Amsterdam and give a good account of ourselves." | |||
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