McGREGOR’S DEVASTATION

CALLUM McGregor’s eyes lit up when he was handed the Scotland captaincy for the first time in Kazakhstan. By the end of a torrid 90 minutes last night, that armband must have felt as tight as a hangman’s noose after the Celtic midfielder branded a 3-0 defeat in the Astana Arena ‘embarrassing’.

The 25-year-old was skipper for a defeat which now ranks as the biggest humiliation in the history of the Scotland national team.

On a personal note, he has now played in Kazakhstan’s capital three times for club and country and has yet to win a game.

‘It’s embarrassing in terms of performance and result,’ said McGregor. ‘For the ones who have been here before — and you mention Astana — it is a difficult place to come but everyone will be looking at this as a game on paper we should have won and it should have been comfortable.

‘However, there are never any givens in football and, having played so many games, now I realise that.

‘You’ve got to be at it, be on the front foot and start the game aggressively to make it an easier night for yourselves.

‘But when you don’t do that, anyone can cause you problems and credit to Kazakhstan because they did exactly that.’ On Wednesday evening, McGregor was called to the room of manager Alex McLeish to be told he would captain the team.

Thrust into the role in the absence of injured duo Andrew Robertson and Kieran Tierney, the contrast in his emotions last night was stark.

‘It shows you how quickly things can change in football,’ admitted McGregor. ‘On Wednesday, I was buzzing, getting the chance to captain my country with everybody sending text messages through.

‘To go to such a low with the performance and result, it just shows you how cruel football can be sometimes.

‘It’s really poor. We didn’t start the game well enough. When you come here, you’ve got to give yourself half a chance by getting through the first ten to 15 minutes, but we conceded twice and that killed us. We never really recovered from that at all.

‘There is not much else to say, it’s just so disappointing.

‘We were trying to come here on a high and start the campaign on a positive.

‘When you get hit with a result like that, it’s so disappointing. Everyone in there is devastated.

‘We can only hold our hands up and try to put it right in the next couple of games.’

The reality is that victory over San Marino will change nothing. It would merely be the minimum standard expected and another poor or unconvincing performance will only ramp up the pressure on the manager.

There were those who never fancied McLeish in the first place. Supporters feared he was a backwards step and a political bone thrown in the direction of vice-president Rod Petrie by reformers on the board of the governing body to secure preferred candidate Ian Maxwell as chief executive.

None of which alters a core, basic fact. When Scotland play the 117th-ranked nation in the FIFA rankings, the team has to do better than a 3-0 defeat.

Conceding the result is sure to pile scrutiny on the manager, McGregor said: ‘Of course, but it’s a collective. The players didn’t do ourselves justice at all and we’ve got to take that on the chin. ‘We’re a tight group and, although we’re not disregarding the disappointment, we’ve got to dust ourselves down and go again on Sunday to show everyone we have half a chance in this qualification group.’ They can change Astana’s name to Nursultan on presidential orders, but for the Celtic players in Scotland’s squad, it remains a hellish place to win football games. The Parkhead side lost to Shakhter Karagandy in the same stadium, before drawing 1-1 and losing 4-3 in Champions League qualifiers to Astana in the same venue. McGregor continued: ‘It’s a horrendous place for us to come — we have never won a match here.

‘Going into the game I was mindful of that, as well. I know how difficult the atmosphere can be.

‘That’s why I was trying to place the onus on trying to get through the first 15 minutes to give ourselves a chance.

‘The boy hit a worldy finish and we switched off for the second one. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb straight away.

‘As captain, you just try to steady the game and get us back into it.

‘Unfortunately, there is not much else you can do, other than try to rally the boys and get them forward and try to create a couple of chances.

‘We actually created a couple and if we had taken maybe one, we would have got back into the game quickly.

‘That didn’t happen and we had a mountain to climb when the third one went in.’

The national team fly to San Marino today.

Anything other than a convincing win remains unthinkable and Tierney — ruled out of the match against Kazakhstan on medical grounds — will again be missing after flying back to Scotland for treatment on his ongoing pelvic problem.

‘We’ve got to be positive and dust ourselves down to get a good result to get the campaign back on track right away,’ said McGregor. ‘Obviously, we will be really disappointed tonight but we travel in the morning and we’ve got to pick ourselves up and get a positive result.’