Lawrence Shankland comes out swinging in Steve Clarke's defence despite radio silence over lack of Euro minutes

Lawrence Shankland has backed Steve Clarke to lead Scotland out of their Euros gloom and get back on track for next year’s World Cup qualifiers.

The Hearts goal machine - who only managed three late substitute appearances in Germany - admits the pain of falling short of their knockout stages target is still raw. But as he broke the squad’s silence on the German flop almost a month after the campaign came to an end, Shankland insists Clarke won’t allow it to linger and affect the upcoming Nations League fixtures.

The latest FIFA rankings released yesterday showed Scotland had slipped nine spots to 48th in the world on the back of the Euros flop and sections of the Tartan Army have turned on the manager. But Shankland insists the players still believe in Clarke with the Nations League opener against Poland just seven weeks away.

He said: “Of course. He has got us to the two major tournaments and it wasn’t so long ago that we hadn’t been to one in I don't know how many years. So, there is the credit you get from that in the bank. We will look at what went wrong at the Euros but we still have a lot to look forward to. There is still a lot to go and achieve as a group and that's what we want to do.

“We were all disappointed but in football you learn to move on pretty fast. We have another challenge coming up, in the Nations League, and we want to do well. Then, going forward, we have the World Cup qualifiers so there is always something else on the horizon to aim for.

“It would be silly not to address it, chat about where we think we went wrong so we can learn from our mistakes, but there is a lot ahead of us that we can go and achieve.”

Shankland only managed 23 minutes of action plus injury time across three games with Che