Salutes resilience shown by his Dark Blue aces
Big Eck’s only focus on auto qualification
you in this team’. I had been going with the 3-5-2 and that didn’t suit the wingers. We tried to do a 3-4-3 which gives wingers a better chance, but perfecting that takes a lot of time.
“What do you say to James after scoring two goals at the weekend? The motivation was there. We just kept patting him on the back and telling him to go again. His finishing was brilliant. They were phenomenal finishes keen to ignore the scans and come and play for Scotland.
“They are two really good young players who have been produced in this country. Can they become Scottish greats? That’s the challenge for them.”
There remain significant challenges to be overcome before Scotland book a place at Euro 2020, but the outlook is suddenly a lot brighter than it was this time last week. you will lose players, and lose some of your good ones, at certain moments. That can obviously be difficult.”
The fact that Austria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey all reached the Euro 2016 finals despite being placed in pot three in the qualifying draw has given McLeish belief that Scotland can book a place at Euro 2020.
“It is realistic,” he said. “Third seeds have done it before. That’s a fact. We will now be dangerous third seeds. Being third seeds is progress.
“I think we have got to be happy at how we’ve done. We had a go to top the group and we have done that. Now we, like every good team, will put it in the past.
“We have got to use these games, and the fact we can get there, to our advantage. But we want to qualify from the group stage. We want to qualify.”
McLeish came in for criticism following some poor displays and disappointing defeats to Belgium, Israel and Portugal.
But the 59-year-old believes the 4-0 win over Albania in Shkoder on Saturday and the 3-2 triumph against Israel on Tuesday night, achieved through a hat-trick from James Forrest, has got the Tartan Army firmly behind him and his players ahead of their Euro 2020 qualifying campaign.
“I think we won them over on Tuesday night,” he said. “We celebrated with the fans. It is something we haven’t done for a wee while. We put one foot in the door of the Euros.
“At the end of the day the only way you can get folk to support you is to win. We have won two in a row there, back-to-back. But we know there is still work to be done.”