Scotland boss Steve Clarke says players are ready to book World Cup place against Denmark

Scotland head coach Steve Clarke says his players are ready to deliver against Denmark and understand the magnitude of their World Cup task.

In the final group game at Hampden on Tuesday, a win over the Danes will end a long absence from the World Cup and put Scotland in next year’s finals. Any other result would mean the play-offs and two potentially tricky challenges.

After Belarus’ draw in Copenhagen on Saturday threw Scotland a lifeline following the defeat to Greece, Clarke has been working to ensure his squad are ready for the decisive match at the national stadium, and he says they will be in the right frame of mind even if the Tartan Army is gripped by nerves.

“The players have got a job to do,” Clarke said at his pre-match media conference. “If they’re not nervous or excited by the challenge ahead, they wouldn’t be at this level.

“They understand the magnitude of the game and what it means. They just have to prepare for a game of football and make sure they’re focused on how we want to play.

“They’re focused on what Denmark might do. That’s our job as a coaching staff, to give them the ideas.Then when they cross the white line, they have to go out and play.

“If they go out and play, as they can play, then I believe they’re good enough to get the result that we need.”

Clarke, who confirmed that injured midfielder Billy Gilmour will miss the game, made it clear that he always expected direct qualification to come down to the final game, and pointed out that Scotland had already upset the odds to be in this position.

“We play the pot one team,” he said. “Denmark will be hurting because they’ve missed an opportunity to win the group already.

“People can speculate and think that other bodies are looking after us, we have to look after ourselves.

“Listen, we always thought that when the draw was made, that if we could get it down to the final game here at Hampden, that would be an achievement because we would then have had to finish above our seeding.

“We have done that. We were drawn as a pot three team, but already in second place.

“We want to go one step further and finish the top of the group.”

The head coach played down any suggestion he might make a raft of changes to freshen up his side, having said after a previous trip to Greece that he maybe should have freshened things up. Clarke said that the training camp in Turkey had made a difference, and other changes meant his players were “ready to go”.

“The way we prepared for this game is slightly different to how we prepared for the last game,” he said. “The lads seem to be in a much better place this time than they were when they came back.

“Obviously we got the long flight out of the way early last week, which is a big thing.It wasn’t back-to-back long flights, it was just one long flight back.

“There was a good recovery session in the hotel yesterday and a really good training session this morning where everybody was focused and included as you would expect.

“We’re ready to go.”