Scotland’s first goal of Gordon Strachan’s reign may have looked like it came straight from the training ground but one of its architects has revealed that wasn’t exactly the case.
Charlie Adam’s well-worked free-kick just before half-time against Estonia was swept home by Charlie Mulgrew and was enough to hand Strachan a winning start as national team boss.
Although Adam’s set piece appeared meticulously planned on the face of it, the Stoke midfielder admitted the goal was more spur of the moment than practice making perfect.
“We never worked on it,” he confessed.
“We just made it up. Just before we took it, Charlie said he would just come off the side of the defender and we were lucky it worked.
“It was similar to one we had at Stoke this season we had a goal like that against West Ham off a corner. When you are in that area and the pitch is not great and there are so many boys in the box, if you get one person free it can work.
“Charlie can strike a ball from anywhere and it was a good finish, but it was a good team performance. The pitch didn’t help us and I think if we were playing on a better pitch we might have had more goals.
“But overall I think it was a good performance and a good result. It’s the start of a new era and we go forward.”
While even the most ardent Tartan Army member would admit Wednesday night’s 1-0 win over Estonia wasn’t exactly a vintage performance, Adam has urged supporters not to judge Strachan’s Scotland on the basis of one game.
“We’ve only had three days’ training really,” he added.
“Craig Levein would come in and he had a period of time where he managed to work with the players and we got into a way of playing.
“Obviously the new manager has come in and wants to change things a little bit, but we’ve got good players in our squad, which helps. I think it was a good performance and we can take confidence from it.
“We’re in a good moment because we’ve good a lot of good players it’s just getting the right balance in the team.
“The manager has got five or six weeks before we meet up again, so at the end of the day there might be a few other new players coming into the squad. We don’t know.
“The next break will be a big one for us because the manager will have 10 days to work with the players and really get his point over.
“We’ve had a few meetings about the way we want to go forward and we’re looking good.”
The 27-year-old hasn’t completely written off the country’s hopes of reaching Brazil 2014 just yet but admits qualification is a tough ask.
He hopes the arrival of Strachan as manager will bring about a change in fortunes.
“If the results went for us, we’d be in a different situation, but they haven’t,” Adam concluded.
“But we need to pick ourselves up and we need to go again. It’s as simple as that. We’ve got two points, we know it’s not good enough, and the next couple of games we can put that right.
“Every defeat hurts. Not just that night in Cardiff, the night in Belgium as well hurt because we were beaten.
“We should have won the game in Wales, it was a bad decision that cost us, but that’s the way it goes. We need to react to it and I think we did that against Estonia.”