The lack of wins recognised within Scotland camp but Euro 2024 hero clears one thing up about recent results

Ryan Christie reckons Scotland might have unintentionally eased off the gas after booking their place at the Euros.

But the playmaker is determined to get the foot down again to get motoring for Germany. Scotland raced their way to the big stage and qualified with games to spare. But the wheels have wobbled a tad in recent months with draws against Georgia and Norway and defeats to powerhouses Spain, France, England and the 4-0 stuffing by the Netherlands in Amsterdam the other night.

Boss Steve Clarke is refusing to panic but shipping 18 goals in half a dozen winless games is not exactly the confidence boost we were looking for on the way to squaring up with the hosts, plus Switzerland and Hungary in the group stages this June. Christie is aware of it too. He is convinced Scotland still know how to win when it matters – and that is now exactly what is required against Northern Ireland at Hampden on Tuesday.

Christie said: “Yeah. We are trying to drive our standards up. You look at the Georgia and Norway games at the end of the qualifiers, if everything was aligned I would imagine there would have been different scorelines.

“It was a nice feeling to be able to sit back knowing we’d already qualified but now it’s prep for the Euros. The last few friendlies have been against top teams in Europe. We are trying to learn as much as we can to get to their level. That will help us going into the summer. We were all pretty frustrated with the result the other night, him included. With it ending 4-0, the main message was this can’t happen with how well we played.

“For the most part he’s the same as when we are playing well. He’s very good at humbling us and keeping our feet on the ground. After night’s like the other one, you