Steven Naismith believes he has done enough to keep hold of the Scotland starting shirt after netting a late consolation against Portugal last night. The Hearts striker netted with the last meaningful kick of the ball and expects that he has done enough to keep himself in the team.

Naismith leapfrogged Celtic striker Leigh Griffiths and he expects to keep his shirt for next month's Nations League game against Israel.

“It was great to get on the scoresheet,” he said. “As you get older you feel as if you need to keep contributing. Younger prospects if they don’t have a good game you know they will still be around but as you get older you need to keep producing. “I won us the penalty against Israel and I was on the scoresheet tonight.” And the former Rangers forward has warned Scotland that they need to eliminate the sloppy goals if they are to make any progress as a team.

“The feeling is exactly the same as Belgium, you come away thinking we did ok – but individual mistakes cost you at this level and the same thing has happened again," he said.

“The fortunate thing with those two games is they were friendlies, but we need to cut them out. It’s as simple as that.

“Coming on the back of the Israel game it’s not a great ending to the month but international football is like that, last month everything was great.

“But if you look over the last four games we have had three decent performances and one bad one which has cost us and it turns the group into a two-game group.

“Now we need to make sure we do our job next month and come out on top of the group. That’s what we have to focus on."