Skipper Darren Fletcher believes Scotland have the ability and character to get their World Cup campaign back on track by winning in Slovakia tonight.
Fletcher and his team-mates were gutted to only draw with Lithuania at Hampden on Saturday night.
However, a win against the struggling Slovakians, who’ve lost both their opening games, would leave the Scots with seven points from the first three fixtures and still in the mix.
And Fletcher believes that’s on the cards in a group where every team will drop points at various stages.
“We’ve seen that already with Lithuania drawing with Slovenia, Slovakia losing to Slovenia and Lithuania getting a point here so everyone is taking points off each other,” he said.
“So let us come out of the head-to-heads with a better record and we’ll probably be in a right good position at the end of the group.”
And he believes the grit Gordon Strachan’s players showed in battling right to the end against the Lithuanians proves they can get a result, though as much as he believes a win is on the cards even a draw would not be a bad outcome.
“We can win, without a doubt. We’ve got to keep the positives from Saturday.
“We kept battling and everyone kept wanting the ball. We kept getting it into the box and we kept fighting right until the end.
“There are still plenty of games to play. Slovakia are the second seeds and haven’t got a point yet so this game is looking like a massive game in the group in the early stages.
“Before the group started, everyone knew how tight it was going to be, all the teams did.
“We expected there to be dropped points and already there have been.
“If we get a good result in Slovakia we are still right in there.”
Fletcher was forced off at half-time at Hampden with a dead leg and, although he refused to rule himself out of tonight’s game, he is struggling to make it.
Meanwhile, team-mate Grant Hanley has admitted he thought he was on a for a dramatic injury-time winner on Saturday.
Moments after James McArthur’s equaliser, he was inches away from forcing the ball over the line as Scotland pressed for the winner.
“I thought I was going to get there but their defender’s done well to get to the ball first, get it over the bar and make the clearance.”
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