Matt Ritchie believes Saturday’s draw with Lithuania was a “little bump” on the long and winding road to Russia.
And if Scotland can beat Slovakia this evening they will be back on freshly rolled Group F tarmac.
“Listen, you don’t ever qualify for a World Cup easily,” he said. “You don’t do it by winning every game in the campaign – it just doesn’t work out that way.
“Hopefully, we can go to Slovakia and get the win. That’s the aim but this is a tough group and we came across a little bump against Lithuania and we want to get back to winning ways.
“Even though we were disappointed (after the Lithuania game), we may look back on this in a couple of months’ time and regard it as a good point.
“This is a long campaign. It isn’t all about Saturday’s game or Tuesday’s game but we want to pick up as many points as possible and we’ll go there planning for a victory and expecting one as well.”
The stakes are high for the Scots in Trnava but not as high as they are for the pointless home team, who would be left with a mountain to climb to qualify should they be defeated.
“They’ll have the bit between their teeth and trying to put that right so it’s going to be a tough game for us,” the Newcastle United wide man said.
“However, they’ll also be under a lot of pressure because they haven’t had a great start and they know that they need to get something from this one.
“The way we started against Lithuania meant that we didn’t get control of the game. We wanted to dominate a bit more but we weren’t quite good enough.
“Fortunately, we improved and second half we were probing in and around their box for long periods.
“We need to start more aggressively on Tuesday but we can’t afford to be too gung-ho. If you throw the kitchen sink in then you can be caught on the counter and that nearly happened at Hampden when Lithuania had their second chance.
“You’ve got to be careful at this level and just make sure that you’re always still in the game.”
