GROUP WIN IS OUR PAYBACK
CRAIG GORDON has backed Scotland’s shattered squad to bounce back from World Cup failure and a dismal defeat in Dublin by winning their Nations League group in September.
The Hearts keeper became his country’s seventh most-capped player with his 70th appearance in Armenia on Tuesday and will overtake Tom Boyd into sixth if he plays all three Nations League games – two against Ukraine either side of Ireland at Hampden – early next season.
And while Gordon admits he’s looking to catch some of those ahead of him – Boyd, Paul McStay, Alex McLeish, Darren Fletcher, Jim Leighton and Kenny Dalglish are the only Scots with more caps – his immediate priority is topping the Nations League group.
And that would give Steve Clarke’s side a second chance of reaching Euro 2024 in Germany through the play-offs.
The Scotland No.1 said: “It’s great, a great achievement, hopefully I can get a few more and see who I can catch above me.
“But we’ve still got this campaign in our hands, we go into the next group of games knowing if we win them all we’ve topped the group. We know we’ve not performed as well as we can in these games but we’re still in with a chance in this competition.
“We said that after the Armenia game – everybody get away, have a break and come back fresh and ready because we know we weren’t at the levels we can be. We get this break now, get a good pre-season in everybody’s legs, come back stronger and ready to go again.”
Gordon was between the sticks 59 times for club and country in the season that has just ended, despite turning 40 at the end of the year.
And he detected tiredness in some of the outfield players during the four-match Scotland stint that saw them beat Armenia twice but suffer crushing disappointment against Ukraine in the World Cup play-off and Ireland in that Nations League horror show.
He admitted: “It’s been a tough few weeks.
“We definitely didn’t get what we wanted out of this camp but we finished with three points, which is what we had to do after the disappointments. We’re satisfied with that but it’s not how we wanted to go into the summer.
“It’s been a long hard season and you could tell that about a lot of the boys at different times in the last couple of weeks. A few boys struggled at different parts of the campaign with that.
“We didn’t manage to get what we wanted and we definitely need the break, everybody could see that.
“It’s not a very long one but we need it to get ready for next season.”
Gordon admitted he was relieved to get out of Armenia with none of his team-mates suspended or with a bad injury as their hosts turned nasty as the game got away from them on Tuesday.
He added: “Everybody got a bit heated but there were some bad tackles in the game. It was quite feisty at times.
“I just wanted to make sure our guys got through the game without picking up any silly yellow cards. We don’t want suspensions so I was just trying to calm everybody down.
“From what the boys have said, the challenge on Lewis Ferguson was a bad one. The Armenian got a red card so the referee dealt with it and we’re just thankful he didn’t get a serious injury from it.”