We were just one decent Matt Phillips pass away from glory
Griffiths: So close but bad start to campaign has bitten us on the bum
LEIGH GRIFFITHS last night admitted Scotland had been bitten on the a**e after their World Cup exit.
The striker was on course to be a national hero after his opening goal against Slovenia put the nation in position to make the play-offs.
But Griffiths could only watch in despair as the home side hit back in the second period.
The Celt’s fourth international strike of the year and a late Robert Snodgrass counter were not enough in the final analysis and the hitman confessed the squad paid a heavy price for a bad start to the campaign and sloppy set-piece moments in Ljubljana.
Griffiths said: “Listen, you can go in 1-0 up at half-time and everybody talks about keeping it tight for the first 10 or 15 minutes.
“We came out and were sloppy with the set-plays we gave away.
“It just showed the character and the determination these guys have to keep pushing to the 90th minute and one decent cutback from Matt Phillips and we would have been in the play-offs.
“We kept pushing and we kept fighting. Snoddy got a goal with a couple of minutes to go then we saw the board going up to say four minutes of injury-time. When it’s against you, the four minutes seems like forever.
“It just goes to show if you don’t start the campaign off well it will come back to bite you on the a**e. “That’s one thing the boys will look
at but we’ve finished 2017 very strongly – undefeated. So we need to take that into the next campaign, with the way we played against the likes of England at home and Slovakia at home.
“It’s going to be a sore one for a couple of days but it was earlier results that cost us.
“It’s disappointing. We’ve put so much into the campaign and to fall short at the final hurdle is a bitter blow. But the boys can hold their heads high.”
Griffiths battled through a first-half injury and added: “I took a knock to my foot but I played through the pain barrier for the whole second half.
“That’s what I do for my country. I want to play every minute.
“I’m proud to be Scottish and I’m proud to pull on that jersey every time.
“We have a lot of good strikers here. Me, Chris Martin and Steven Fletcher as well as other guys who can’t get in the squad, like Steven Naismith.
“I don’t feel I’m the No.1 striker at all. We have a lot of good guys here all fighting for that one position.”
Christophe Berra agreed that the failure came about last year and not last night. With just four points from the opening four matches and sitting second bottom in the table, the squad
had just too much ground to recover. Berra said: “The damage was done earlier in the campaign, conceding in the last minute to England and no disrespect to Lithuania but we should be beating teams ranked lower than us at home. We paid the price in the end.
“In football you have to bounce back. As players you’re thick-skinned and you get on with it.
“We gave our all here and it wasn’t to be. If we start the next qualifying campaign in the same way as we ended this one, with the same intensity then we will have a right good chance. “We knew we needed the win but it was too little too late. If it had been the first game of the campaign I think we would have taken a draw from Slovenia, as they’re ranked higher than us. “We knew we had to win and at 1-0 up at half-time we had limited them to long-range efforts. “To concede a goal from a wide free-kick was disappointing and that gave them the confidence to get on the front foot.
“They’re dangerous from set-plays because they have big men and one of their balls fell to their sub again and he scored his second.
“We showed good character to come back into it and on another night we might have sneaked a winner.
“Slovenia hadn’t lost a goal at home before our game. To score two goals is good on our part and they never really cut us open.
“But they caused us a lot of problems from set-plays because they were bigger physically than us.”
Berra, denied a fourth straight clean sheet alongside partner Charlie Mulgrew, played down the incident which saw Slovenia skipper Bostjan Cesar red-carded in a frantic finale.
He said: “I was marking him at corners and it was tit for tat throughout the game. He was leaving a few elbows and I was getting tight to him as I usually do.
“We were in each other’s faces and never touched each other – but the referee decided to book us.
“Then the last bit was handbags at the end. We were walking up and we crossed paths then he gave me a shoulder barge.”