Tierney is shaping up to be Scotland’s and no one deserves the honour more

football. He’ll not be fazed by any of it either. He’s just that type of boy – totally level-headed, takes it all in his stride.”

McGregor is used to a different form of captaincy day-to-day, week-to-week but it doesn’t make him want to follow Tierney into battle any less than Brown.

He said: “Keiran’s one of those boys who leads more by example than shouting at people.

“You can have different types of captain, the vocal ones and the ones who do rather than talk – and he’s probably in the latter camp.

“In t e rms o f h i s performances and the way he goes about his business, KT is showing the rest of us the standard he expects us to meet.

“I’d probably say Scott is a wee bit more vocal! But then Broony does both – he leads us by example as well – and the ability to do both comes with experience.”

At 20 years and five months Tierney became the second youngest Scotland captain for a century when he pulled on the armband on Thursday night.

He is a just one month older than Darren Fletcher who was made skipper for a Scotland victory over Estonia back in May 2004.

Mackay insisted after the game that following two decades worth of failure Scotland needed a squad for the future and a leader who could be the first to rack up 100 caps since Kenny Dalglish.

McGregor agreed KT fits the bill, saying: “There’s no reason why not. Kieran did magnificently well in his first game as captain and he’s improving all the time as a player as well.

“He’s g rowing. He’s always in the gym working on his upper body but for the size of him, you never see him come off second best in a tackle.

“I don’t think he needs much more strength because you rarely see him lose a 50/50 anyway.”

In terms of progress, McGregor himself isn’t far behind with the strides he’s been taking in the past 18 months.

And he was thrilled to finally pull on a Dark Blue shirt for the first time in the 1- 0 defeat after being consistently over- looked by Gordon Strachan. The 24-yearold said: “It was a proud moment, my first cap. And I thought I did okay.

“I had a few good turns, a few shots at goal, slid a few people in.

“Bits were frustrating. We had so many chances – 18 attempts at goal – so we should have put one of them away.

“Especially as they scored with their only one on the counter-attack.

“It’s a positive for us that we created so many though.”

McGregor’s only yardstick for his week’s work with Scotland is his day to day club work with Brendan Rodgers.

And he insists the five-day camp run by Mackay and Eric Black stood in comparison.

He said: “It’s been good. The intensity was the same as we get at club level and I think that’s what Mackay wanted to get across, that we had to be at it.

“Malky’s come in and freshened things up with loads of fresh faces and I felt we gave a good account of ourselves.

“It looks positive going forward when you consider how we played against a good team like Holland.

“It’s early doors as we build towards the next campaign, which is a while away, but it’s good to see us playing some good attacking football and creating.”