STEPHEN O'DONNELL says that Scotland must be more clinical if they are to build upon their qualification for Euro 2020 by sealing at least a play-off place for the World Cup in Qatar.
The Scots blew a glorious chance to win promotion in the Nations League and greatly boost their hopes of making the next World Cup by losing narrowly to Israel and Slovakia over the past four days.
And while O'Donnell was delighted to play a part in taking the nation to a major tournament at last, he says their profligacy was to blame for the week ending on something of a sour note.
"If you had asked me before the games if I would rather be in the Euros or a qualifier for a tournament then I would of course have said yes," O'Donnell said.
"But to get in the qualifiers for the tournament we need to be coming here and winning. Hopefully, when the draw is announced for the World Cup we will be meeting up in March to compete and at least get a play-off place.
"It was similar to the game against Slovakia – it was a good performance with plenty of chances. But at this level, and at most levels, if you don’t take your chances you get punished, and that is what happened again.
"The Serbia game was obviously a massive achievement for the squad. We would have liked to have followed it up with the victory that we needed, but we didn’t manage to do so.
"There are positives to take away from it. They were two very good performances. But at this level you need to take your chances. If you don’t do that you are going to get punished."
One of the main plusses for O'Donnell is the team spirit that has been built up within the Scotland camp over the past year.
"That is one of the big positives in the last six to 12 months – the squad has been relatively similar and we have been able to build up relationships," he said.
"Not just with players who have started. It build up the camaraderie which builds up the team spirit and team chemistry on the pitch."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here