IF you were the Scotland team and staff waking up yesterday morning, you’d have been feeling pretty good about yourselves. It was a good performance against Austria, I liked a lot of things about it.

I’d have been telling the boys to enjoy their breakfast and not be worrying too much about what people are going to say, because it was all going to be very positive.

Well, almost all of it. Which brings me to the one source of frustration from the night, and it wasn’t from any of the Scotland players.

I’ve got a little sofa that me and my Mrs sit on when we’re watching the football, and I jump up and down on it at times, because I hear commentators saying that our wing-backs have to push forward. Try that without the ball. It’s not so clever, you know.

The wide men depend on how often you have the ball, and how comfortable you are on the ball. It’s hilarious when these guys say this, ‘Oh I’d like to see them getting further forward’. If Andy Robertson isn’t getting further forward, it’s because we’ve not got the ball.

It would look a bit silly if Andy was standing up the park against Austria and shouting back to his teammates “Give me the ball”, only for them to be shouting back “We’ve no got it!” He has to go back and get it.

It’s my pet hate when I hear these guys who have played football saying this stuff, that he needs to get further forward. You can’t do it unless you have the ball.

If the other team have it, which Austria did for spells in the game, then what is the wing-back doing? He’s defending. That’s the way it goes.

The commentators should all sit down together one day and say “Listen lads, we’ve been saying this for years, we really should shut up.” It’s a hilarious quote. Absolute nonsense. It’s just cliché that doesn’t mean anything.

If I put a training session on when I was Scotland manager and said “Here, Andy, you just go and stand away up there in an attacking position and we’ll see what happens.” The rest of the team would look at me as if I had gone daft.

The reason that Robertson stands out more for Liverpool is quite simple. Look at the possession they have. And there’s a difference between possession and good possession. You can have possession at the back without it being good possession.

If you look at Andy and Trent Alexander-Arnold, they’ve been the best full-backs in the world for the last few years. Why is that? Because they have more of the ball than almost any other team, and their strikers are doing a great job at holding the ball up.

They might not have been as effective as a partnership this year in terms of their numbers as the team have dropped off that incredible standard they set a little, but Andy’s numbers are still up there.

The fact is, you only become successful as full-backs when you have that quality possession, and it comes back to understanding the game.

When you play with Scotland, you’re usually ranked about 50th in the world, so against 49 of your opponents, they are probably going to be better than you.

When he’s playing with Liverpool, they are at a level where they can win the English Premier League and the Champions League, so there aren’t too many teams he has to worry about going back the way.

Austria were more than 20 places above us in the rankings, so right away, you are in a side who is coming up against a team who are better than us.

It’s the same with Scott McTominay. He will get forward more if he has got a forward line who are holding the ball up and he’s got Paul Pogba in beside him. He’s got the likes of Marcus Rashford, Edinson Cavani and Anthony Martial to play off of at Manchester United, so it’s a bit different.

That’s not a dig at poor Lyndon Dykes, because that boy has got a hard job, but with Scotland you’re not really sure where your runs are coming from.

When the people up front at Man United are holding onto the ball and looking after it so well, you tend to take off, but I think in the Scotland set-up, he’s probably the one who has to sit more than anyone else as the other three are naturally prone to going forward.

All this being said, I find it very hard to fathom that anybody could have been negative about individual performances on Thursday night. I don’t think any of the Scotland players would have come off thinking they had a stinker.

Steve got a system that worked for the players he has, and he had a strong team out there. That is as strong a line-up that I’ve seen Scotland put out for a long time.

You had the three centre-backs with decent height, and Kieran Tierney bombing out from the back. We aren’t sharp, but we’re powerful when we’re running. There isn’t that sort of electric pace, but we’re powerful when we get running on the counter-attack.

We had McTominay, Ryan Christie, Stuart Armstrong, John McGinn, they’re all powerful. It will be a good team that will beat Scotland now. You’ll have to play well to beat us.

We have a physical presence. We had three midfield players who are playing regularly in the English Premier League, which is excellent. You can see that in the way they move the ball, and all three are physically strong. It bodes well.

And I actually thought both wing-backs played well. Despite what some people would have you think.