McGhee: ‘We’ll keep it tight,

SCOTLAND will head into tomorrow night’s World Cup tie with Malta flying high on the back of a stirring 3-0 victory in Lithuania.

And, the tartan- tinged logic goes, things should be looking even better come 9.30pm by which time a second comfortable win over the minnows will have been recorded.

That will further cut the gap on a Slovakia side who will themselves by then have had their colours lowered by the Group F leaders England at Wembley.

Assistant manager Mark McGhee, whose task it was to scout the Maltese ahead of the tie, warns though that in international football nothing can be taken for granted.

“Listen, we are going to really go for it now – everyone knows that,” he said. “At the same time you have to start right and not cause ourselves any stress or embarrassment by putting ourselves under pressure at home.

“I say that because we need only to go back to the visit of Gibraltar of Hampden two years back when we fell behind 0- 1 ( the final score was 6- 1) to see the potential pitfalls.

“I don’t think we were disrespectful that day, I just think we thought we could be super-positive.

“Ikechi Anya pushed away on and didn’t fill in and suddenly Gibraltar found a gap which they exploited to grab a good goal.

“It was a big lesson for us that, regardless of the opposition, they are all capable on the day.

“We won’t make that mistake against Malta. We will be vigilant and approach it in a professional way.

“That has to be the way because we know from club level too, with Hearts and others, Maltese teams can make things very difficult for Scottish teams.

“At the same time, I think as long as we do approach the game in the right way then they will have to play the game of their lives to beat us.”

McGhee happily admits in his playing days with, among others, Scotland, Aberdeen and Celtic, he relished the opportunity to play weaker teams

“As a striker I always felt there were goals against them and, don’t get me