PRESSURE POINT
Late McArthur goal gets Strachan out of jail but Scotland boss insists Lithuanians were the lucky ones
GORDON STRACHAN last night claimed Lithuania were the lucky ones despite his men requiring a last-minute leveller from James McArthur to rescue a World Cup qualifying point.
Scotland were staring at a hugely damaging defeat until McArthur, on as substitute for injured captain Darren Fletcher, cancelled out Fiodor Cernych’s strike in a desperate comeback battle.
But, when asked if Scotland enjoyed a fortunate escape on the night, Strachan replied: ‘I don’t know if you can tell by my face, I don’t see the lucky bit.
‘I thought it was the other way about. I thought we were unlucky. I always felt the equaliser was coming. I thought we’d win. It was happening before
that, we had a lot of chances. It just so happens we took the chance later on, which wasn’t as good a chance as some we’d had.
‘The ball just sliding by the post. The guy heading the ball off the line at the end. Maybe we could have had a penalty. Someone said there was a handball along the line. So there were a few things where you could say we were unlucky.
‘And if you want to take that out of that then that’s fine. You might want to put it down to just not finishing well. I could rephrase it and say we weren’t unlucky, we just didn’t finish our chances. But I do feel the chances in the second half, and if you put the second half together, we were the far better team.’
Skipper Fletcher is now a major doubt for Tuesday’s tie against Slovakia — who lost 1-0 in Slovenia last night — as Scotland seek to recover from dropping two points in their first home qualifier for Russia 2018.
‘It’s important we get something out of the Slovakia game, definitely. And it can be done. We’ll shake it up a wee bit for Tuesday,’ added Strachan, who was at pains to praise his team’s resolve.
‘In the second half we played really well,’ he claimed. ‘That’s the best we’ve played in a long time — far better than our four friendly games. We made more chances tonight than we did in Malta and it was exciting stuff at times.’