Shaun Maloney: we need to look to Serbia game, but confidence is very low

Saturday 23 March 2013

Scotland midfielder Shaun Maloney admitted confidence was at its lowest ebb after another 2-1 defeat by Wales kept them bottom of World Cup qualifying Group A.

The game started as it finished for Scotland, with their midfield unable to get the ball off the Welsh, although they were down to 10 men from the moment Robert Snodgrass gifted Wales a penalty and got himself a second yellow card with an ill-advised and late challenge on Chris Gunter.

But new boss Gordon Strachan will have been disappointed with the way his side conceded so soon after Aaron Ramsey converted the 73rd-minute penalty with Hal Robson-Kanu afforded space to send a free header home 84 seconds later.Scotland have just two points from their five qualifiers and Strachan has a major task on his hand to lift his players ahead of his first away match in charge, against Serbia in Novi Sad on Tuesday night.Maloney said: "It's a very low dressing room. The last 20 minutes, when we were down to 10 men, it was very difficult to even get near the ball."The more results go against us confidence will be dented. We have just lost 2-1 at home in a must-win game so it's a pretty low dressing room and it's going to be pretty difficult to pick everyone up for Tuesday."The next couple of days it will be difficult to get any sort of positives. After a couple of days we might find the odd one. Grant Hanley played particularly well for us in one of his first matches."And then outwith that it's going to be pretty difficult."For the first 15 minutes Wales were dominant and after that we kind of got to grips with it. That might be a slim positive for us."Strachan's job will to be find the positives as well as rectifying the mistakes. Scotland did improve significantly from their poor start, when slack play in their own half gave Wales several openings that they could not make the most of.Scotland, already without first-choice midfielders Darren Fletcher, Scott Brown and James Morrison, also lost Steven Fletcher to an ankle injury after 90 seconds.And despite Wales' early dominance, Scotland created the best chances of the first half with Hanley heading home in injury-time.Snodgrass was almost the hero as he curled against the post from 20 yards as Scotland built on their lead after the break, and the mood could have been so much different had the Norwich winger not made his rash challenge on Gunter as the right-back delivered a cross just inside the box."It's disappointing because Snoddy was playing really well, he was one of our best players," Maloney said. "It had an impact on the game and once they scored from the penalty we weren't quite at it and after that it was pretty difficult to get anywhere near the ball."The first 15-20 minutes we struggled to find a way to press Wales. They were dominating possession. Then I think once we figured that out, we felt a bit more comfortable."The major incidents and going down to 10 men had a big impact on the game."The table makes grim reading for Scotland fans though and it could get worse before it gets better with away games against Serbia and Croatia to follow. Scotland's two remaining home games are against the unbeaten top two, Croatia and Belgium.Maloney said: "It's obviously been a terrible start. It's a bit cliched but we just have to think about the Serbia. We obviously have to improve and just try to get a decent performance."There has obviously been a lot of disappointment with the start to the qualifying campaign and it will be hard to get out of that."Obviously you do feel the pride of the nation and we want to finish as high as we can. But we just literally need to take it to the next game and we need to improve."Strachan is in need of a morale-booster to help him turn around a team who have now recorded just three wins in 13 competitive games, two of which were against Liechtenstein, and Maloney is aiming to do that by getting a result in Serbia."It would be massive for the confidence for the team," the Wigan player said. "We have spoken about the confidence being low. "We know we have to improve to get anything out there and it's going to be very difficult. We just need to keep believing in the squad and hopefully this can turn round."

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Shaun Maloney: we need to look to Serbia game, but confidence is very low

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