GORDON Strachan last night insisted his Scotland players can shrug off the bitter disappointment of their 2-2 draw with England and secure a place in the Russia 2018 finals next summer.
The national team were just over a minute away from recording a famous victory over the Auld Enemy at Hampden on Saturday after striker Leigh Griffiths had scored two stunning late free-kicks.
However, opposition captain Harry Kane volleyed home an equaliser in the 93rd minute of the Group F match to secure a point for Gareth Southgate’s side.
The result leaves Scotland in fourth place in their qualifying section with just four games – against Lithuania away, Malta and Slovakia at home and Slovenia away – remaining.
Even finishing second and securing one of the play-off spots available to the eight best placed runners-up in the nine UEFA groups will be a tall order for Scotland now after their latest devastating setback.
But Strachan, whose side take on Lithuania in Vilnius in their next qualifier on September 1 before facing Malta in Glasgow three days later, remains confident that his team can pull it off.
Asked if he thought Scotland could reach the World Cup finals, he said: “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. If I didn’t believe it I think it would rub off on the players. The players can sniff that.
“Listen, we will go for the next one. I am sure Mr McGhee (Scotland assistant manager Mark) will say it’s a must-win game. But I will leave that quote to him.”
Second-placed Slovakia, who are four points ahead of Scotland, and third-placed Slovenia, just a point behind them, still have to play section leaders England at Wembley.
Southgate’s side has now not lost a qualifying match in 35 matches – since a 1-0 defeat to Ukraine away way back in 2009.
Asked if he hoped that England could do Scotland a favour in the remaining matches, Strachan said: “I hope so. That’s 35 games (without defeat in a qualifying match) and it’s the closest they’ve been to losing that record.”
The 60-year-old, whose time as Scotland manager would have come to an end if his side had lost to England at the weekend, revealed the attitude of his players and backing of the supporters have given him optimism for the future.
“I actually get excited when it’s time to get together with them,” he said. “I just love working with them. We have faults, we all know there are faults, but that’s not their fault, that’s the Scottish game.
“What makes me strong is those players and everybody I have met this week. People come up to you and say ‘keep it up, keep it going’. That energises you.”
Strachan singled out Griffiths, who had failed to score at international level in his 12 appearances for his country before Saturday, for special praise for his outstanding personal contribution to the England match.
“To be able to do that when the whole world is watching you after running about for 90 minutes is amazing,” he said. “Some people can do it after 20 minutes when they’re fresh. For him to dig out these two late on was incredible. I actually thought the second one would go in as well, I really did.
“The work he put in in nicking back and getting people was impressive. I asked him to do that. The only problem was in the first half he stayed too far away from us when we got the ball back. Because of that we had to play longer passes.
“But we got that sorted out in the second half. We didn’t see as many of those longer passes in the second half as we did in the first half.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel