STRACHAN: SCOTS NEED BIG RESUL
GORDON STRACHAN believes Scotland’s World Cup hopes hinge on grabbing the ‘big away result’ so lacking in repeated qualification failures — and has targeted victory in Slovakia tomorrow night as a turning point. Failure to take maximum points from Saturday night’s first home qualifier of the campaign, when the Scots were forced to battle back to claim a 1-1 draw with lowly Lithuania, has heaped pressure on the head coach ahead of the Group F meeting with the Slovaks in Trnava. Asked if he thought dropping two points against a team ranked 117th in the world meant his team now needed to beat the second seeds, Strachan declared: ‘Well, we hope to take something anyway. ‘But, yes, of course we need something now. The less you’ve won, the more you need to pick up points further on. That’s common sense. ‘I think I’ve always said before that the difference between now and the last tournament we played in could be getting a big result away from home. That would make the difference — a big, big result away from home. ‘So we’ve got one result away from home, against Malta (a 5-1 win), which was probably expected. But, when you see that they only conceded two against England at Wembley, you think we’ve been fine. ‘But we are definitely needing that big result away from home, somewhere along the line. This is an opportunity. ‘There are four opportunities to do that, probably, and we need to get at least one if we’re going to try to get second.’ The Slovaks are in a state of shock, with back-to-back losses at home to England and away to Slovenia on Saturday night leaving them without a point. ‘I don’t know if a win for us would take Slovakia out of the running — but it makes it very hard for them, that’s for sure,’ said Strachan, who reported that captain Darren Fletcher — who was substituted at half-time against Lithuania with a dead leg — will travel with the squad and be given every opportunity to play. Russell Martin is expected to recover from a studs-up challenge on the front of his foot, while fellow defender Callum Paterson is also fit for duty despite suffering a knock at Hampden.