AS a softly-spoken midfielder from Darlington, James Morrison would probably not top any Tartan Army poll on their modern-day Scotland heroes.

It matters little. The 26 year-old has only to convince one man and, for quite some time now, it has been clear he is a firm favourite of Craig Levein's.

It is difficult to predict the line-up for Saturday's opening World Cup qualifier against Serbia, but Morrison will almost certainly be in from the start, his ability to open teams up likely to be key to Scotland's chances of emerging with a victory.

Morrison missed the 5-1 friendly defeat by the USA at the end of last season but still featured heavily in the post-match debrief. Levein, looking to extract any sort of positive from a harrowing loss, insisted he would take "James Morrison over Landon Donovan every day of the week", his comments all the more jarring given Donovan had just scored a hat trick. Morrison blushes at the recollection and tries bashfully to deflect the idea that he might just be the teacher's pet. "Yeah, I bring him breakfast in bed," he said, smiling, although he was not slow to also spot the possible benefits of sticking in with Levein. "It's nice to hear the manager talking about me – maybe he'll get a top-four job and take me with him," he added, presumably not entirely seriously.

Not that Morrison is in any great desire to go anywhere. He is a central figure at West Bromwich Albion, a club who have surprised many with their start to the Barclays Premier League season under Steve Clarke, beating Liverpool and Everton, and drawing with Tottenham Hotspur. Morrison scored the late equaliser at White Hart Lane and is enjoying a rich vein of form. "Hopefully I can bring that into Scotland now."

Scotland will need him and others to be at their best. A fairly daunting World Cup qualifying group may have no easily-identifiable favourite but it contains no minnow either. Morrisons identifies Croatia and Belgium as the two to beat, although Serbia, Macedonia and Wales won't be pushovers either.

"Just looking at the Belgian squad, they've got a lot of players at top clubs in the Premier League," said Morrison. "We've all seen what [Eden] Hazard and [Moussa] Dembele have been like. We saw Croatia at the Euros and they look a top team, although one we think we can take something from. It's a tough group. If we had the last group from the Euro qualifiers going into this campaign we would really fancy our chances. This time there will be different tests but we think we're ready for them."

A World Cup finals in Brazil would be quite something, especially if Scotland could end a 16-year absence from major tournaments to take part. "That would mean everything to me, a dream come true," mused Morrison. "It would be a career highlight."

First things first, however. Scotland kick off this campaign with two home matches – the Serbia tie is followed by the visit of Macedonia next Tuesday – and will look to do what they have failed to do in their last two qualifying groups by getting off to a winning start.

Morrison feels four points from six would be an acceptable return but knows the Serbs, in particular, will be daunting opponents. "They played Ireland recently and I spoke to Shane Long, who said they were a good team who play three centre halves and five across midfield. That's a formation we're not used to and one we'll have to be ready for. They've got players who play in the Premier League so we'll know some of them."

The Macedonia game will also offer Morrison the chance to meet Goran Popov, his new West Brom team-mate. "I haven't met him; I guess I'll see him next Tuesday. That will be interesting. He's a big lad apparently so I'll be staying away from him. We played them before and this will be another tough game."

The feeling surrounding this Scotland squad is that the midfield is the strongest part of the team and Morrison doesn't disagree. He revels in the free role Levein affords him and hopes to make the most of it. "I'm happy to take the responsibility to be the main creator. I play in a different position than I do for my club. I just go off the cuff and try to do what I think is right at the time. We do a lot of positional play during the week to set us up then just go and play. The whole team can go and express itself."

There was, concedes Morrison, an element of frustration in having to watch this summer's European Championships on television rather than being a part of it and regrets linger that Scotland couldn't get out of what was a relatively favourable group. "Looking back on the Euro campaign, if we had just done a little bit more we probably could have been there. There are regrets that we didn't see out the Czech game at Hampden, and Lithuania away was a big disappointment, too. We should have won that game.

"But we look to the future now and hopefully we can start with a win which would give everyone a confidence boost and get the fans behind us. We'll try to avoid a defeat and see where the rest of the results take us."