Artem Frankov, a well-known journalist and editor-in-chief of Futbol magazine, prepared a forecast for the Nations League match between Scotland and Ukraine.
"The Scottish national team is very familiar to us from the June World Cup qualification playoff match, which Ukraine confidently won 3:1 at the same place in Glasgow (Yarmolenko, Zinchenko, Dovbyk - McGregor). Actually, this League of Nations match was supposed to take place then, but was moved to September due to Russian aggression against our country. Then everything shifted...
Compared to that match, the Scots are primarily missing the left winger, Liverpool defender Andrew Robertson. Fortunately for the home side, they have a ready-made replacement in Kieran Tierney from Arsenal's first-team squad, who is looking great (both as a player and a team) at the moment. It is not for nothing that they say that the six best players in the Scottish national team are left backs and only then do the rest start.
Serious changes will also affect the center of defense, where Grant Hanley from Norwich dropped out due to injury, and Leeds veteran Liam Cooper was no longer called up. However, there is a ready-made replacement in the form of Jack Hendry from Cremonese and Scott McKenna from Nottingham Forest. It is possible and even very likely that, according to the 3-5-2 scheme, the head coach of the Scots, Steve Clarke, will once again drag one of the nominal midfielders into the center of the defense - in June, Scott McTominay from Manchester United played there. Fortunately for them, the British have a good choice and in the center of the field - McGinn, Gilmore, McGregor, Turnbull.
Attack was and remains a problem for opponents - there hasn't been a high level forward in Scottish football for a long time, not since Kenny Dalglish. What to talk about, if in "Celtic" the Japanese and an Israeli play in front, in "Rangers" - a Colombian and others!
In a word, the Scottish national team was completely within the power of our footballers and, I believe, remained so. It is unlikely that anything has changed much since that time - for example, Roman Yaremchuk was both in the Benfica reserve and remained in it in Brugge. Probably, Oleksandr Petrakov will trust him from the very first minutes, and not Artem Dovbyk from Dnipro-1. The same story with Ruslan Malinovsky, who appeared in the last match for Atalanta only in the 88th minute. Unless it is difficult to assess the condition of the undisputed leader of the Ukrainian national team Andriy Yarmolenko, who changed West Ham to Al Ain from the UAE in the summer. We are not looking at the championship there...
The participation in the match of Mykolenko and Kovalenko, who missed Tuesday's training session at Hampden Park in Glasgow due to micro-injuries, is extremely unlikely. They will be counted on in the future, but for now they have joined the absent Zinchenko, Shaparenko, Bushchan and Sobol (we will not write a strange story about his departure for Brugge, let the team figure it out). Of course, the first thing to regret is the absence of the leader of the national team Oleksandr Zinchenko, the absence of Vitaliy Mykolenko will certainly be a loss, especially since there is no Sobol to replace him, and the position of the left defender is somewhat sagging. However, there is Bogdan Mykhailichenko, who regularly plays for Shakhtar at least in the championship of Ukraine. The versatile Matvienko can also play on the left.
Trubin (Lunin) — Karavaev, Zabarny, Matvienko, Mykhailichenko — Stepanenko, Sydorchuk (Pikhalyonok) — Yarmolenko, Malinovsky (Pikhalyonok), Tsygankov — Yaremchuk (Dovbyk) — isn't that right, gentlemen?
It remains to note that Ukraine is now leading the group with 7 points, ahead of the Scots by one point. At the same time, both teams spent less time per match than competitors from Ireland and Armenia. This means that in order to keep the first place and enter the "A" division, the Ukrainian national team needs to score at least three points in a two-match confrontation with the Scots (the return match is in six days) and preferably beat the Armenians in between. Not easy, but quite doable. However, the schedules will be clarified during the matches. It's not cool, but a draw suits us, although it's dangerous to play on it - sorry for turning on "Captain Obvious"!
Pay attention to the odds: the bookmakers consider Ukraine to be a small but favorite for the match - the quotation for the victory of the guests is the same as for the success of the home team!
My bet: both will score at 2.05," Frankov said.