Gordon Strachan admitted last night that his side will have to perform a lot better against Slovenia on Sunday to have any chance of a result following a disappointing draw with Canada at Easter Road.

The Scots were poor on the night in difficult conditions in the capital, and failed to beat their opponents for the first time in their sixth meeting.

The national coach blamed the ring-rust of his players who aren’t playing regularly for their clubs, using one of his frequent golfing analogies to explain away the below par showing on the night.

“It will need to be better on Sunday, unless we are very lucky,” Strachan said. “We are not going to try and take luck into it, so we have to be better.

“It helped me a lot tonight. I’m sure a lot of players would have liked to play better but that’s the way it is. We just have to deal with that and use the information we collected tonight for the game on Sunday.

“It’s very hard to play at international level when you are not firing on all cylinders in your club game. But we needed to find that out.

“I felt a lot of players found it hard. Using a golfing analogy, it’s very hard to take two months off and then play in the Masters when the conditions are not the easiest.

“It wasn’t the easiest pitch in the world to play on tonight. To try and find your form in an international match on a night like this was hard.

“You could see our rust in the first 10 or 15 minutes. That spooked us for a bit. We could have been braver with passes through people and braver to receive it. But when you’ve not played a lot of games, it’s very hard to just switch on and do that.

“It was one our better decisions to have the game. It’s cleared up a lot of things and helped a lot of players. But it’s helped the coaching staff in particular to where we are going on Sunday.

“We learned quite a few things tonight. It wasn’t a great night, it won’t be memorable in anyone’s mind at the end of their career.

“But it is invaluable for me just now to use that information we collected tonight for Sunday, that’s for sure.”

The Scots were watched on the night by a sparse crowd of just over 9000, with those who did bother to attend booing their team off at the end after they failed to heat things up on a bitterly cold Edinburgh night.

Strachan though took some crumbs of comfort from the performance, and he says that it has given him some clarity over some decisions that are yet to be made in his head ahead of the crunch match with Slovenia.

“I thought Charlie Mulgrew was OK, Ikechi Anya did fine, Tom Cairney got his debut, Andy Robertson did alright coming on, Barry Bannan’s touch was OK,” he said.

“The professionalism of Darren Fletcher kept us going at times. Some of them found it difficult.

“I wouldn’t say it has made decisions about Sunday easier, but it has made them clearer.”

Strachan has been dealt a blow in his preparations for that match as Bournemouth’s Ryan Fraser has picked up a knee injury in training and is unlikely to feature.