JAMES McARTHUR believes Scotland can take inspiration from Leicester City's unlikely Barclays Premier League charge to pip historic rivals England to top spot in World Cup qualifying Group F. Gordon Strachan's side were seeded third in a group which also contains Slovakia, Slovenia, LIthuania and Malta, with only the group winners guaranteed to qualify. By the time the finals in Russia tick round it will be 20 years since Scotland last reached a major finals but the Crystal Palace midfielder, fresh from running Manchester United close in the FA Cup final last weekend, doesn't subscribe to the theory that everyone else is merely making up the numbers behind Roy Hodgson's side.
"We are trying to win the group," said McArthur. "If you have not got ambition to come first in anything you do then there is no use being here. It is going to be hard to qualify automatically but why not? You just need to look at Leicester. Anything is possible in life, not just football. So we will be going in, hoping we can start well and create that momentum which will be hard to break.
"They [England] are obviously good players but I keep going back to us as well," he added. "You can always think 'oh God, they're great, they're this, they're that'. But we are a good side, we have got good players who can hurt anyone. We have got a good base, and a great manager who can take us to that next level of qualifying. We need to look at what we are good at as well."
As painful as it will be to sit at home and watch while the rest of the home nations strut their stuff at Euro 2016 this summer, the former Hamilton midfielder feels the previous campaign showed that Scotland weren't too far away. The campaign begins with an away meeting with Malta in September.
“If I’m being honest, I thought the last campaign was good," said McArthur. "We were in a good position and just the last couple of games has let us down, mainly Georgia. We feel like we let the country down. But before then, everything was upbeat. As the manager is saying, if we can do the same this time as we did last time, then I believe we can get there. We need to concentrate on every single moment, every single game and make sure we do everything to the best of our ability."
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