Scotland's Andy RobertsonSNS
Captain Andy Robertson insists Scotland can "give anyone a game" and is "still optimistic" of reaching next summer's World Cup despite a string of disappointing results.
The Scots were scudded 3-1 by Iceland in Friday's friendly at Hampden, after suffering a dismal 3-0 defeat to Greece in their Nations League play-off in March.
However, the Liverpool left-back is adamant if Steve Clarke's side "get back to basics" they can mount a challenge when qualifying begins in September.
"Friday was a huge disappointment, a game that we tried to go into to build momentum going into the World Cup qualifiers, it did the complete opposite," Roberston told Sky Sports.
"I'm still optimistic, I'm still looking forward to the future, Friday was a bit of a blow but we know the last year or so hasn't been up to scratch.
"I still believe in the squad that we've got and I do believe that we can cause any teams problems as long as we get back to the basics we're good at.
"We can look at it two ways. First of all, we're thankful that it wasn't in a qualifier. If you're going to put in a performance like that and make the mistakes that we made, better off doing it in a friendly than a competitive match, that's the only positive we could have took from Friday.
"We can't afford that, we know how hard it is to qualify for a World Cup. The last time we tried it we had a pretty perfect campaign, only finishing a couple of points behind Denmark. We then go into the play-offs and we know how hard games in the play-offs are.
"We're in a four team group, it's more of a sprint, there's only six games and it's a real tough group.
"We've shown that at the highest level, we've drawn against Portugal, beaten Croatia, beaten Spain - I know that feels like a long time ago - we have competed against teams when we do that right and that's what we're going to need to do for all six games to give ourselves a chance."
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