DAVID SOLE

Score 50 points against your opponents at Murrayfield and it’s hard to complain. But when you consider that your opponents were down to 12 players at one point in the match, then perhaps 50 points really wasn’t enough.

Scotland needed a win after their performance against New Zealand and they secured it against Argentina although it wasn’t always as straightforward as Gregor Townsend might have wanted.

Finn Russell’s performances over the last two weekends has made a mockery of the fact that the Scottish coach excluded him from the squad in the first place.

Imagine if Adam Hastings had not been injured – Russell would have been watching the games from afar and not demonstrating that he is the best fly-half Scotland have.

Hastings and Kinghorn are both fine players, but they cannot unlock an opposition defence like Russell can, as he demonstrated so comprehensively yesterday.

One can only hope that Townsend can learn from this – Russell has made his point emphatically.

Despite the margin of victory, there is still a lack of ruthlessness in Scotland. Last weekend they dominated the

All Blacks until the final quarter of the match when Scotland began to defend their lead. This weekend, when Argentina were reduced to 12 players,

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One can only hope that Townsend can learn from this

Scotland should have put the game to bed.

Instead, when two Argentine players returned, both teams had scored seven points. Scotland had passed up a golden opportunity to bury Argentina.

But the game belonged to Finn Russell. Not only was his dexterity on show, with subtle back-handed passes out of contact, but also his game management and decision-making was superb.

When the game was degenerating into a scrappy mess, he put territorial pressure on Argentina forcing them to try and play from deep.

They were never going to manage to break out – certainly not having been a man down from the first 20 minutes.

Russell was involved in everything good that Scotland did.

To their credit, the Pumas never capitulated and another thing that will grate with Townsend, will be the fact that it was the visitors who had the last word in the game, scoring a try with an additional six minutes on the clock.

That the game was overrunning was down to Scotland’s indiscipline, which was really the only time in the game that they had been forced to concede a sequence of penalties all match.

The win was exactly the way Scotland needed to end their autumn campaign – especially after the previous weekend.

A number of players have enhanced their reputations over the past four weeks, but collectively there are still a few shortcomings.

With the Six Nations just around the corner and a World Cup following shortly after, the Scots have to develop greater consistency.

Starting the game with your best fly-half would be a good first step.