GORDON Strachan today 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 the 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.”
Strachan praised his players for the tenacity they showed against some of the English Premier League's top players and expressed hope they can build on the gutsy display in their remaining games.
“Look at what we played against on Saturday,” he said. “Take their centre backs compared to ours. One (Christophe Berra) has just signed for Hearts. No disrespect to Hearts, but they are fifth in the Premiership. One (Mulgrew) is in League One in England, not even the Championship.
“‘Kech (Ikechi Anya) isn’t getting a game anywhere. Snoddy (Robert Snodgrass) hasn’t played in many games at the end of the season. But this lot you can see they are playing for league titles, cup finals, everything. It must be scary for them, these guys that have not had many games either. To dig out something like that is great.
"We still have to improve a lot as a whole, Scottish players. What you can’t say, though, is can you improve on your work rate?
"Unless you stand out there in that tunnel with these guys and then get knocked down you don’t know what it’s like. It’s like in rugby when you come up against a pack and that pack keeps knocking you back. It drains you. That’s what happened with these guys. It drains you. But they kept finding an energy from somewhere.
“We had a moment on Saturday that a lot of us in football won’t forget. We will remember the noise after the second goal forever. It could have been the best ever. When you leave the game if you can leave memorable moments then you have given something to the game.”
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 here