Daily Record

I went crazy at half-time.Tommy took me into the showers to calm down but I said: ‘These boys have to be told.. we’ll get slaughtere­d back in Glasgow.. we’ve been s**t

Lambert sounds Faroes warning to Scots

- BY DAVID McCARTHY

PAUL LAMBERT knows the table doesn’t lie.

But he believes sometimes it can be economical with the truth and that, in Scotland’s case, two points from a possible six at the start of a World Cup campaign need not be the disaster many reckon it is.

Not with a home tie against the Faroe Islands looming when an expected three points can put a rosier complexion on Group F – if Scotland go into it with a much better attitude than a team Lambert lined up in back in 2002.

The former Celtic and Scotland captain still bristles at the memory of a night spent huffin’ and puffin’ their way to a 2-2 draw under Berti Vogts after going two goals down in the first 12 minutes to the part-time fishermen in Torshavn.

“I’d just come out of retirement,” Lambert told Record Sport.

“Tommy Burns, God rest him, told me Berti wanted a chat with me about coming back and we agreed I would have one campaign.

“I’d been to the Faroes a few years earlier under Craig Brown and it was a really tough game.

“Big Matt Elliott got sent off and we drew 1-1, so I knew how hard it was going to be.

“The park wasn’t great, the stadium was on top of a cliff and I remember getting a feeling on the morning of the game that some of the lads were too lax.

“They thought we’d win and the focus you need wasn’t there.

“Sure enough, we were down 2-0 early on and at halftime I went off my head.

“Berti was trying to calm me down and Tommy took me into the showers and told me the same.

“But I told him, ‘No Tommy, they have to know – if we don’t get this back, we’re going to go back to Glasgow and get f ***** g slaughtere­d. And quite rightly so because we’ve been s**e’.

“I don’t think a lot of them understood we were playing for our country. It was our job and we were trying to qualify for a tournament.

“We went out and got the two goals back. With the way we’d played in the first half, we’d have taken that. But it wasn’t good enough and it showed, if the attitude isn’t spot on, these results can happen.

“It wasn’t good enough. It was a joke and it shouldn’t have happened.

“I don’t think the players will have that problem this time. This group, lads like John McGinn and Kieran Tierney, Callum McGregor and Scott McTominay, they’ve got the mindset of, ‘We have to win’. If you draw or lose, the players know how much they’ll be criticised. But if we win it, Scotland are still in the mix.

“There will be a fire in their stomachs to make sure there isn’t a drop in standards.

“They know the magnitude of the game – they have to win. “In the next group of games they go to Denmark and Austria, which will be tough, so these three points are paramount.” Lambert, who left the Ipswich managerial role last month, has been watching from afar as the road to Qatar has got off to a rocky start, to say the least, with back-to-back draws with Austria and Israel.

But the former midfielder, who racked up 40 caps, isn’t buying the crisis talk.

He added: “I watched the Austria game and one of my first thoughts was that having no crowd was a killer.

“Hampden would have been

bouncing and the players would have fed off that. But Scotland did well to keep coming back against a good side.

“I know their coach Franco Foda – he was on my coaching courses in Germany – and I know how intense he is.

“He has his team very focused and prepared. To be honest, I thought that going 1-0 down, then 2-1 down, to come away with a point was a decent result.

“Austria are a good, strong side and we matched them – and should have had a penalty. They’ll be hard to beat in Austria but we can go there and try to get something.

“Then we’ve picked up a point in Israel, where we’ve lost our last two games. Again, that’s a decent point. Israel are no mugs.

“It’s a difficult game over there and in the second half Scotland looked like a good side. They forced the issue.

“The one criticism is the way they’ve started both games and given themselves mountains to climb by losing the first goal. If they can get the opening goal, it gives them something to build on. Having said that, they’ve done really well to come back in both games and still be unbeaten.

“When you look at only two points out of six, you think that’s not a great start.

“But we have done well to come back into those two matches to get the point from each of them.

“The players deserve credit for that because if they’d let the heads go down, they’d be sitting on zero points and the campaign is almost over before it has started.

“It’s definitely not the worst start and if they beat the Faroes at Hampden – which is a must win obviously – it’s five points from three games.

“And with Denmark and Austria playing each other, at least one of our big rivals is going to drop points.

“So there’s definitely no need to panic at this stage.”

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 ??  ?? Berti and VOGTS SINNER Burns Scotland assistant on sidelines left frustrated
Berti and VOGTS SINNER Burns Scotland assistant on sidelines left frustrated
 ??  ?? FAROE SHOCK John Petersen celebrates after heading home side in front in 2002 draw
ISLAND STRIFE Lambert halves deficit in Torshavn and, right, Kevin Christian Dailly and full-time Kyle trudge off at
FAROE SHOCK John Petersen celebrates after heading home side in front in 2002 draw ISLAND STRIFE Lambert halves deficit in Torshavn and, right, Kevin Christian Dailly and full-time Kyle trudge off at

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