JAMES McARTHUR believes Scotland can take inspiration from Leicester City's unlikely Barclays Premier League charge to pip historic rivals England to top spot in World Cup qualifying Group F. Gordon Strachan's side were seeded third in a group which also contains Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania and Malta, with only the group winners guaranteed to qualify. By the time the finals in Russia tick round it will be 20 years since Scotland last reached a major finals but the Crystal Palace midfielder, fresh from running Manchester United close in the FA Cup final last weekend, doesn't subscribe to the theory that everyone else is merely making up the numbers behind Roy Hodgson's side.

"We are trying to win the group," said McArthur. "If you have not got ambition to come first in anything you do then there is no use being here. It is going to be hard to qualify automatically but why not? You just need to look at Leicester. Anything is possible in life, not just football. So we will be going in, hoping we can start well and create that momentum which will be hard to break."

While the campaign kicks off with an away match in Malta in September, Scotland's ambitions will become clearer after the meeting with England at Wembley in November. "They [England] are obviously good players but I keep going back to us as well," he added. "You can always think 'oh God, they're great, they're this, they're that'. But we are a good side, we have got good players who can hurt anyone. We have got a good base, and a great manager who can take us to that next level of qualifying. We need to look at what we are good at as well."

As painful as it will be to sit at home and watch while the rest of the home nations strut their stuff at Euro 2016 this summer - his good pal James McCarthy, for instance, will be there for the Republic of Ireland - the former Hamilton midfielder feels the previous campaign showed that Scotland weren't too far away.

“If I’m being honest, I thought the last campaign was good," he said. "We were in a good position and just the last couple of games has let us down, mainly Georgia. That is the one that we really feel disappointed about. We feel like we let the country down. But before then, everything was upbeat. If we do the same, as the manager is saying, this time as we did last time, then I believe we can get there. There were a couple of games that let ourselves down but we've got a chance to rectify that with this next campaign. We need to concentrate on every single moment, every single game and make sure we do everything to the best of our ability."

While some might view end-of-season friendlies such as Scotland's against Italy and France as a distraction at the end of a long-hard campaign, there is no disguising McArthur's enthusiasm for the fixtures. His season thought to be over when he sustained an ankle ligament injury in February, he has returned ahead of schedule.

“Obviously, the FA Cup Final was disappointing, but you need to move on quickly in football," said McArthur. “I now have two very good games to try and move on. It is a positive end to the season. Had you asked me six weeks before the final that I would have played four, five or six games, I would have bitten your hand. The physio team were brilliant, pushed me every day and just to get back playing was great."