FOR Alex McLeish, finding allies this week might have proved as difficult as finding positives from the most recent international double-header. But one thing that will prove just as hard to find is a player who has worked under him, part or present, who will have a bad word to say about him.

The embattled Scotland boss has taken a pounding over the desperate defeat in Kazakhstan and the laboured win over San Marino, and James Forrest isn’t about to pretend that it was all sweetness and light in the national team camp on the flight back from Rimini.

But what made that all the starker for the Celtic winger was how hugely it contrasted with his previous Scotland camp. Indeed, Forrest believes that the atmosphere fostered by McLeish for the November double-header against Albania and Israel was the best he has experienced over his eight-year, 28-cap Scotland career.

While he credits McLeish for that, he doesn’t believe that the blame for it all falling so flat last week should rest on his manager’s shoulders.

“The last camp for Scotland was the best one I had been involved in,” Forrest said. “The changing room after was like a real club mentality, and I’ve never seen that with a Scotland group before. It was really positive, and then the next camp it just goes right down to the opposite.

“We need to perform better and get better results. I think you have to look more at the group. You can’t just point fingers at one player or staff members, we are all in it together.

“We had a real positive couple of days leading up to the Kazakhstan game, everyone was feeling good, and there was a real positivity among the group. It was a shock to us being two-nil down after 10 minutes, and I don’t think we had any fight to get back into the game. We just didn’t have much in that game, but I wouldn’t point the finger.

“It’s disappointing for everyone, and after the Kazakhstan game, the couple of days leading up to the San Marino game we were all down in the camp. It’s hard to pick everyone up after a performance and a result like that.

“Next time we meet up for Scotland, everyone will want to get round as a group together, get tight, and get some good results.”

Forrest has been adept at reacting well to setbacks, with he and his Celtic teammates bouncing back from the defeat to Rangers in December by stringing together a run that has taken them 10 points clear at the top of the Premiership while dealing with the loss of manager, Brendan Rodgers.

That doesn’t mean the sting from the first defeat in 13 against their oldest rivals has abated, or his hunger for revenge has been sated.

“Losing any game before you get a break is bad,” he said. “But an Old Firm game is even worse obviously.

“When we went to Dubai everyone was really hungry and when we came back we had a good run. We’ve kept that up. We were hurting from that and when you experience that – some boys hadn’t done before – it maybe makes you work harder to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“Our thing was we come back and win our game in hand then from there we just wanted to be ruthless in every game, knowing that we didn’t want to give anyone around us a chance if we dropped points. We focused on ourselves to make sure we did what we knew we could do.”