Mislaid papers reveal Serbia’s Hampden tactics for Scotland clash

By ANTHONY BROWN
Published on Saturday 8 September 2012 01:02

SERBIA plan to overload Scotland’s left-back area at Hampden today, if a tactics sheet seen lying on the turf as they trained at the national stadium yesterday is anything to go by.

A booklet appearing to contain instructions for this afternoon’s clash with Craig Levein’s men was strewn on the grass, allowing an opportunist photographer a sneaky shot of how Sinisa Mihajlovic’s team intend to go about their business.

The visible page suggests the Serbs plan to pack their right flank with extra bodies, presumably in the hope that they can expose the Scotland left-back area, which has been severely depleted by injuries to Phil Bardsley, Lee Wallace, Danny Fox, Charlie Mulgrew and Steven Whittaker.

Huddersfield Town’s Paul Dixon, effectively Levein’s sixth-choice left-back, is expected to be handed a baptism-of-fire debut, and it’s clear the visitors sense a weakness in this particular area of the team. The diagram shows four red dots – signifying Serbian players – in a circle on the right side of the pitch, with three of them surrounding two blue dots. The instructions, written in Italian, also suggest something along the lines of numerical superiority.

Mihajlovic is known to be a wily operator, so it could turn out merely to be a stunt to pull the wool over Levein’s eyes. Either way, Scotland can’t say they weren’t warned.

Taken from the Scotsman