Belief ‘never wavered’ for Scotland

STUART Armstrong claimed Scotland’s self-belief never wavered, despite widespread scepticism outside the camp.

Scotland secured top spot in Nations League Group C1 after scoring seven goals in their final two games against Albania and Israel.

Five weeks earlier, things had not looked so positive as a 2-1 defeat in Israel – a scoreline that flattered the visitors – put manager Alex McLeish and his team under pressure.

With Newcastle’s Matt Ritchie, pictured below, Robert Snodgrass, Tom Cairney and James McArthur making themselves unavailable for the crunch games, the continued absence of Leigh Griffiths and injuries to the likes of Steven Naismith, Craig Gordon, John McGinn, Kevin McDonald, Kieran Tierney, Charlie Mulgrew, John Souttar, Stephen O’Donnell and Michael Devlin reducing McLeish’s options, Scotland were on the ropes.

But the withdrawals seemed to galvanise the players and simplify the selection choices available to McLeish, who ditched his three-man central defence and reintroduced wingers to great effect.

Celtic wide man James Forrest followed his double in Shkoder with a hat-trick against Israel to earn the Scots a 3-2 victory over the pre-match group leaders.

Armstrong said: “There was always that belief in the camp that we could go on and achieve what we wanted to. There’s always going to be negativity in football when things aren’t going the way they are expected to, or people want them to.

“But as modern-day professionals, you just need to focus on your job at hand and not get bogged down with what’s happening on the periphery.”

Scotland now turn their attentions to the regular qualifying route for the 2020 European Championship, with a place in pot three secured ahead of the draw on December 2.

But they have the fall-back option of a play-off with Finland provisionally earmarked for a semi-final trip to Hampden in March 2020.