THE only blight on Gordon Strachan's day was the early injury to Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink, a strain of the adductor muscle in his groin, which is going to keep the big Dutchman out of action for a little while.
Strachan couldn't give a timescale of recovery but the slightly pained expression on his face would indicate that at the very least Vennegoor of Hesselink will struggle to play any part in the trip to Old Trafford for the Champions League tie on Octo
ber 21. "It's not good news," said Strachan. "It's the one downside of the day."
According to Strachan, Vennegoor of Hesselink is still in the dark about how he injured himself. He went into a tackle with Brian Easton inside the first minute of the match and fell in a heap afterwards. After a few minutes of treatment on the pitch he was replaced by Georgios Samaras. If Strachan was perturbed at that point then the same could be said of his counterpart, Billy Reid. In a piece of gallows humour later on he said: "Big Jan comes off and they bring on Samaras and I'm thinking 'ah, here we go'."
"Jan doesn't know how it happened," said Strachan. "I thought it was his knee first of all so I'm glad it's not. He was carrying a wee niggle beforehand but it's not the same thing, it's not the niggle." Strachan will wait for the scan in the coming days.
As for the rest of the day? "I'm more than satisfied," he said. "The attitude could have been a problem today. It was wet and windy and we had a European tie midweek. But to start the way we did, with all that energy, was fantastic."
Reid pulled no punches in assessing his own day. "Being honest, it could have been more than four. We didn't do ourselves justice. The players are gutted. There's three or four of them better than that. Three or four stood up and they're absolutely gutted in the dressing room.
"It was our first real going-over of the season and I include last week's 4-1 against Falkirk in that.
"We'll just have to pick ourselves up and get on with it now."
The full article contains 381 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
