WHEN Kenny Miller plays well, so do Scotland. Walter Smith demonstrated as much, cajoling performances that weren't just selfless but contained genuine potency out of the striker during an era when Scotland, just for once, didn't look like a side in transition.
Yesterday, in George Burley's first competitive outing as manager of the national team, Miller was worryingly, disastrously anonymous, a symptom of a Scotland performance as ramshackle and toothless as any we've witnessed since Berti Vogts was in his
pomp.
What makes it worse is that it wasn't the Rangers striker's fault. Miller will run all day, but he has little control over whether he gets the ball played into him in space. Against Macedonia he sprinted into space so often that he looked as if he'd never stop, circling the home penalty area like a demented Duracell bunny in an effort to find the time and space to allow him to be brought into play. Some hope.
Against a three-man defence that should have been there for the taking for a player of Miller's pace, not once did he receive the ball facing goal in a position where he could do any damage. Indeed, Scotland were so laboured that when he did receive the ball it was with his back to goal and a mob of Macedonians in attendance. Mitreski dispossessed him twice, but he was by no means the only one as an encircled Miller coughed up possession time and again.
As his memorable contribution in the recent Old Firm game showed, Miller is a player in form, a player who should have been the spearhead of Scotland's attack. Instead he started as a peripheral figure in the glare of the Skopje sun and failed to make any meaningful contribution to a game that passed him by.
Not that he didn't put himself about. He was there in the box when Darren Fletcher's header came back to him on one of the few occasions when Scotland threatened, but he ballooned the ball harmlessly behind. And he should have had a penalty after the break just seconds before James McFadden was also scythed down and received a yellow card for his protestations. But by the time Miller was replaced with 10 minutes to go, he was a shadow of the player who has scored six goals for Scotland in six starts.
Miller's travails were all the more painfully apparent because his reward-to-effort ratio was in directly inverse proportion to that of his opposite number, Goran Pandev. Sure, the Lazio striker had a contemptible habit of flinging himself to the floor whenever a Scot had the temerity to challenge him, but when Macedonia's talisman wasn't indulging in gamesmanship he produced an effortless masterclass. Pandev looks far older than 25 and ran with all the energy of an arthritic 35-year-old. But when it came to exercising his brain he was streets ahead. Where Miller stayed tight on the last man until the very end, Pandev roamed in search of space. When Scotland's back four stood off the Macedonians in the first half, Pandev played right up on Gary Caldwell, moving into the hole after the break, pulling the Scotland defence out of alignment and directing operations with some aplomb.
Some of his touches were reminiscent of an ageing Gheorghe Hagi at his insoucient best, especially a first-half volley from outside of the box when he had to pause and take a step backwards before twisting his body to fire off a perfectly-timed shot that Caldwell did well to block. His incisive passes put team-mates into space around the Scotland penalty box. Suddenly it's not so difficult to believe that Macedonia held England 0-0 at Old Trafford and Holland 2-2 at home, and beat Croatia 2-0 in Skopje.
If it was a bad day for Miller, he can at least spare a thought for his friend Jenny Watson from Musselburgh. She was one of 1,000 fans with tickets turned away by Macedonian riot police. Hers was a rare silver lining on a very dark cloud.
The full article contains 701 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
