Ritchie scores screamer as Scotland suffer Euro 2016 heartbreak

However, Strachan, whose side need to draw or win the meeting with Adam Nawalka’s team in order to qualify for the finals in France next summer, has brushed aside the derogatory remarks. For me to talk about myself is wrong.

A trip to Portugal follows to take on Gibraltar in their final qualifying match-up, with maximum points from both encounters needed if they are to challenge and beat Republic of Ireland for a play-off berth.

“There’s no hiding from the fact”.

“There’s no hiding, that’s what killed us”.

“Outside of the very best players in the world, like Messi and Ronaldo, I think he is in the bracket of player who is not very far behind”, said O’Neill. He got an injury at the end of the game against Crystal Palace the other day.

Strachan’s future is unclear as his contract expires after Sunday, but he was in no mood to address that topic.

The Celtic man has been talking about his global boss.

“I don’t know how big it will be, win lose or draw until after the game”.

“We’re doing it week in, week out in the Premier League at the minute and this will be no different”. Let’s not get carried away with ourselves, that’s all it was – and the rest of the squad feel the same.

“It’s all down to us. Everybody has to look at things and dissect it because that’s what your job is, but I think it’s only changed because we didn’t make many chances against Georgia”.

“We felt we were making a lot of progress but ultimately we failed to do what we set out to do or even make the play-offs”.

However, when we sit down and analyse the overall picture, the prognosis is exactly the same as the previous eight campaign failures – we simply weren’t good enough! We know Hampden will be a hard place to go and win, we are well aware of this.

“I’ve seen a group of lads give as much as they can give”, Strachan said. That’s to be expected.

The home fans suddenly found their voice as they savoured the prospect of a famous victory, which would have grown closer had Fletcher’s header from an Alan Hutton cross not gone straight to the Poland keeper. So we’re going to be hurting for a while.

But it was only a matter of time before the second arrived and it was a wonderful finish from Maloney in the 39th minute, curling the ball high past Robba from 16 yards, after another powerful run from Hutton into the box and along the byline had caused panic in the Gibraltar defence.

Unfortunately, the last four games when the pressure was on, Scotland’s results and performances dipped and led to more disappointment.