CHRIS MARTIN is hoping he has done enough to retain his place in the Scotland starting line-up despite drawing a blank against Lithuania – so he can help to silence the national team’s critics.
Martin, the Fulham forward, was given the nod to kick off the Russia 2018 qualifier at Hampden on Saturday night, but was unable to supply the goals which would have secured another victory for his team.
Gordon Strachan is under intense pressure to select Leigh Griffiths, the free-scoring Celtic player who did well after coming on in the Group F fixture at the weekend, against Slovakia in Trnava tomorrow evening.
Read more: Pressley: Scotland can exploit Slovakia's weaknesses
However, Martin, who was on target in the 5-1 triumph over Malta away last month, would like the chance to repay Strachan, who has faced calls to be sacked in the wake of the 1-1 draw with Lithuania.
“The manager has been very positive,” he said. “He has told me to go and enjoy myself. Try and win the game for the boys. Try and hold it up, bring the lads into play, get on the end of crosses and take my chances. Hopefully I have done enough to keep the jersey.
“After the game we said: ‘Listen lads, we’re disappointed about it, but let’s go and prove and few people wrong on Tuesday night and try and get the win and it will all look very different again’.
Read more: Pressley: Scotland can exploit Slovakia's weaknesses
“Yeah we’re disappointed about Lithuania, ultimately we didn’t get the result that we wanted. But we have got to try and forget about that and move on to Slovakia now. We’ll obviously have to assess this and see where we went wrong and try and adjust it and try and win the game on Tuesday night now.”
Slovakia suffered the second loss of their Russia 2018 qualifying campaign at the weekend when they crashed to an unexpected 1-0 defeat to Slovenia in Ljubljana and Martin admitted Scotland face a backlash when they take to the field in the Stadion Antona Malatinskeho tomorrow night.
However, the 27-year-old, who qualifies to play for this country due to a Glasgow-born father, believes the national team can use the predicament their rivals are in to their advantage and is confident they can atone for the draw against Lithuania with an away win.
“There’s a bit of pressure on them playing at home as there was on us against Lithuania,” he said. “Sometimes that’s how it works, you can be under more pressure at home and find it more difficult. Hopefully that’s the case and we can go there and give them a right tough game and see where it takes us.
Read more: Pressley: Scotland can exploit Slovakia's weaknesses
“We expect a lot of ourselves. I think we need to ignore all the outside noise and understand what we’ve got in the dressing room, set our own targets and live up to those.
“We can get carried away listening to too many things that go on outside of the group. That’s not what we can afford to do because we will get carried away. We have got our own targets, what we want to achieve.
“If we stick together, work as hard as we did on Saturday night and show some of the spirit that we did then hopefully we will manage to get there.”
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