We’re not on hiding to nothing

Anna Signeul had two choices the minute the final whistle went on Wednesday night.

Give the players a doing or wrap a collective arm round them.

She’ll have been tempted by the former – but will rightly have chosen the latter.

Irrespective of the tanking we took from England, we still have to believe we’re favourites against Portugal this afternoon. We can’t let one defeat, no matter how crushing, cloud the big picture.

Despite the hype, Scotland were expected to lose to England.

So in that respect the game hasn’t changed. What has changed is the element of doubt – because it was the manner of the loss that hurt so much.

All week the message from Anna will have been, “I don’t care what happens early on, just stay in the game, don’t lose a goal.”

Then 10 minutes in, after a decent start, bang, you lose a goal and it all spirals away. As soon as England settled, we panicked every time we got the ball.

The passes were aimless, giving up cheap possession. We never gave our front players a chance.

Yes, we’ve got injuries – Kim Little, Jen Beattie, Emma Mitchell and Hayley Lauder are massive players. Any country would be weakened by losing a player of Kim’s ability. Now we’re missing Jane Ross as well.

Don’t lose hope though. We still have an opportunity to get out of this group and against Portugal we don’t need to be as a defensive.

We’re expected to get three points. We should get goals and shouldn’t concede.

It was a shock that Portugal made the finals and only losing 2-0 to Spain was a respectable result.

They have a couple of decent players - pay special attention to Claudia Neto who plays for Linkopings in Sweden. She’s so clever and will make them tick.

But we also have players who can make amends for Wednesday.

I suspect Anna will give Lana Clelland a chance to shine.

She did well after coming on at half-time and with 23 goals in 22 games in Serie A, she has earned her moment in the spotlight.