Newcastle United’s Matt Ritchie seemingly won’t be featuring for Scotland any time soon.
Scotland boss Steve Clarke has told The Telegraph that you can drawn your own conclusions from Newcastle United’s Matt Ritchie omission from his squad.
The first international break of the season is almost upon us, with players heading off to play for their counties after this weekend’s games.
Scotland have games against Russia and Belgium coming up in September, and Clarke announced his squad for the games yesterday.
Clarke does have some great talent at his disposal in Ryan Christie, John McGinn, James Forrest and Callum McGregor, but some other names have been left out.
One of them is Newcastle winger Ritchie, whose international career looks to be over barring a surprise U-turn later this year.
The 29-year-old has picked up just two caps since the end of 2016, pulling out of the squad on a number of occasions due to injury or fear of making a knock worse.
Ritchie withdrew himself from consideration under Alex McLeish, and it now seems that replacement Clarke isn’t about to push for that decision to be reversed even though he admitted to The Chronicle earlier this year that he would like Ritchie in his side.
Clarke – a former Newcastle coach himself – has offered a thinly-veiled, suggesting that Ritchie’s future is clear given that he isn’t on the squad, hinting that he won’t be back in the side any time soon, and that may be a boost for Newcastle in terms of his fitness and availability.
“There’s been a number of players like that,” said Clarke. “I would rather not name them. Obviously, he is not in this squad – you can draw your own conclusions from that.” he added.
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