Strachan tells stars: Keep on believing
their last five qualifiers, would prevail in a game they dominated.
The 60-year-old, though, knows their efforts will count for nothing if they fail to deliver in the Stozice Stadium this weekend and has urged his men to produce one final performance.
“Every win makes you feel better about yourself, along with every performance,” he said “The goalkeeper (Martin Dubravka) was outstanding and the crossbar wasn’t too bad either.
“There was a lot we can be pleased about, but we just need to regroup and go again. Would I have taken second place before the campaign started? Yeah.
“Because England are so far ahead of us in resources. But we showed we can compete against them at times. What we want to do now is try to finish this off.”
Strachan added: “At no time did it feel really stressful. I felt part of it when I was down there and I could see they had everything under control. It wasn’t a problem for them, apart from a couple of misplaced passes.
“They had a real belief in what they were trying to do. They stayed above the anxiety of the crowd. A lot of people were getting anxious. They paid for their ticket and those are the emotions you get.
“But the players did the things they wanted to do. I genuinely felt we would score, no matter what the time was.
“I always felt the goal was coming. There have been times when I haven’t. But the work they put in tonight, the way they tried to play, a goal was coming for them.”
Bringing on Chris Martin, who forced Skrtel to turn the ball into his own net at the death, for James Forrest after an hour turned the game.
“It was time to change,” said Strachan. “We had to change when they had a man sent off and it took us 10 minutes to adjust to that and understand what was needed.
“The longer the game went, the stronger we got. We just felt it was time for Chris to come on. We tried to play around them but we needed Chris’s power. Slovakia are a powerful side with good technique. So we needed Chris and I thought he was terrific when he came on.”