Mark McGhee stands by strategy for Scotland's World Cup qualifiers
Monday 21 March 2016 17:23, UK
Assistant manager Mark McGhee says Scotland will not completely discard their qualifying strategy despite failing to reach Euro 2016.
Scotland have named 10 uncapped players in two completely different squads for their upcoming friendly matches against the Czech Republic and Denmark, with Birmingham City defender Paul Caddis and Fulham striker Ross McCormack the latest additions.
McGhee insists the strategy is one based around development rather than experimentation, and says the strategy formulated in the recent Euro 2016 qualifying campaign, where the Scots came up short, will be improved upon rather than discarded in the search for something new as they build towards the 2018 World Cup qualifiers which begin later in the year.
The Motherwell boss said: "The only way it will differ is in the sense that there will be different players. Right at the very beginning when we started in the job, we were very determined that a style and a consistency of performance emerged and it did.
"Okay we had really good days and poorer days but it kind of looked the same, regardless. And I think that is important. So in the two games, we are not going to go 3-5-2 and then 4-4-2, it is not like that.
"We are not here to experiment, we are here to develop. We have the basis of the way we want to play and we are going to roll that out again and try to improve on it. So each of the games will be an opportunity to do that albeit with different players.
"We are not fishing around for a system, we know how we want to play and we just have to make sure we do it better than we did the last time."
McGhee, who drafted in Caddis and McCormack after Norwich duo Steven Naismith and Steven Whittaker pulled out, concedes there is no "magic tablet" to make sure they will make it through the qualifying campaign.
Right at the very beginning when we started in the job, we were very determined that a style and a consistency of performance emerged and it did.
The former Aberdeen and Scotland striker said: "I don't know whether there is much missing. We scored goals against Ireland and Germany, we scored four against Poland, we maybe need to make sure we lose one or two less.
"We have learned from the different types of games, home, away, against top teams, not so strong teams, so we have been through that experience.
"I don't think there is any one thing that is a magic tablet, that we are going to take that is suddenly going to make us guaranteed to qualify."
