Gordon Strachan

In my view

It was one of our better decisions to have a game. It has cleared up a lot of things and helped a lot of players and the coaching staff with a view to where we are going on Sunday against Slovenia.

We learned quite a few things. It was not a great night and it won’t be memorable in anyone’s minds at the end of their career but it was invaluable for me to use the information we collected.

I thought a lot of players found it hard. To use a golfing analogy, it is very hard to take two months off golf and then go play in the Masters when it is not the easiest course in the world.

It wasn’t easy out there

“To use a golfing analogy, it’s hard to take two months off then play in Masters”

for the players with the conditions, so to try to find your form on a night like this in an international match was hard.

You could see the rustiness in the first 10 to 15 minutes and that spooked us for a bit.

We could have been braver with our passing but when you haven’t played a lot of games it is very hard to switch on.

In terms of positives, I thought Charlie Mulgrew was OK. Ikechi Anya played well and Tom Cairney on his debut was good.

There were some players who found it difficult and the professionalism of Darren Fletcher kept us going at times.

We learned a lot from the match.