Barry Ferguson insists Scotland must return to making themselves hard to beat – even if it means adopting a more limited game-plan.

The former Scotland skipper believes the national team turned in a ‘good’ 
performance in going down 3-0 to England on Friday and believes the players ‘gave everything’.

And he has backed Gordon Strachan to stay on as manager, despite the Scots now sitting fifth in World Cup qualifying Group F with just four points from four matches.

However, the former Rangers and Blackburn Rovers midfielder reckons a change in tack is needed if Scotland are to have hope of qualifying for a major tournament again.

Ferguson won the first of his 45 caps just after Scotland’s last appearance at the World Cup in 1998 and narrowly missed out on making it to a Championship finals in his 11 years as an international player.

But he cites the near three years spent under Walter Smith and Alex McLeish as the ideal recipe for future success.

The 38-year-old explained: “We were probably horrible on the eye to watch. But we won games of football.

“We were very hard to beat. It wasn’t great to watch but we knew how to get a result. That’s the problem with this team, they don’t know how to win ugly. We were 4-5-1, and even at Hampden we never went for a team, we sat in and hit them on the counter.”

Meanwhile, Ferguson has warned  John McGinn that playing in the Championship is harming his international chances.

The Hibs midfielder has been a regular in Gordon Strachan’s squads since receiving his first call-up for the friendly against Denmark in March.

A man-of-the-match performance in the 1-0 victory showed he was not overawed by the step-up from club football to the international scene.

However, the 22-year-old has only a 14-minute cameo in last month’s 3-0 defeat to Slovakia to his name since then and was not even among the substitutes for the England tie.

Ferguson is a fan of McGinn and firmly believes he has a bright future ahead of him in a Scotland jersey.

But he fears playing below the Scottish top-flight is stifling his development at international level.

He told Radio Scotland: “The problem with McGinn is he’s playing in the Championship. I think if he was playing in the Premiership he probably would be in the team.

“There is certainly a difference in quality in the leagues. But for me McGinn will be a future Scotland player.”