SCOTS CAN SHOW THEY HAVE RIGHT MENTALITY

Stuart Armstrong is confident Scotland will quickly be back to their best as they approach next week’s Nations League matches.

The Scots’ World Cup hopes were ended when they went down to a 3-1 play-off defeat by Ukraine at Hampden on Wednesday.

Scotland host Armenia on Wednesday in the first of three Nations League games in the space of six days. A trip to the Republic of Ireland follows on Saturday before Steve Clarke’s men make the return trip to Armenia next Tuesday.

Having approached the Ukraine match on the back of an eight-match unbeaten run – six of which were wins – Armstrong is optimistic the Scots can get back on track.

The Southampton midfielder said: “I think we know the importance of those games. Wednesday night was a big disappointment.

“We’ve been thinking about the game, trying to get it out of our minds and learn from it. Tomorrow is a new day and we’ll look forward to the games coming up because we do know they are very important.

“It was the Nations League that helped us qualify for the Euros the last time round.

“There’s no hiding the fact that we wanted to go to a World Cup and now we’re not. Times have been good recently. There have been a lot of big wins, and going to the Euros.

“We’ve shown we can be a very good team and I’m sure we can show that again in the very near future.”

Armstrong says the pain at suffering defeat by Ukraine on such a highstakes stage will not be allowed to linger.

He added: “It’s football and we’re used to having a lot of fixtures and sometimes they don’t go the way you wanted them to. On the pitch it’s about mentality and it’s a strong group with strong characters. There’s a lot of togetherness in that dressing room.

“We’ll learn from this and move forward.”

Armstrong could not hide his disappointment following the play-off defeat, adding: “There’s not much else to say apart from that we’re disappointed that we didn’t make it.”