GORDON STRACHAN has revealed that his Scotland squad has prepared harder for the match against Gibraltar tomorrow than it did for the fixture against Germany in September.

 

The Scotland manager was keen to emphasise last night that he had not underestimated the challenge of a side that has lost 21 goals in four matches in Group D.

Strachan said he believed he had been successful in showing respect to his opponents, adding: "That's what we tried to set out to do, to make sure that the team is set out properly and I do my job properly as well on and off the field."

He said he had pondered hard and long in the build-up to the match at Hampden.

" We want to make sure we do not to patronise anybody or disrespect them. We try to get a nice balance. We do that with most sides, but more so with this game," he said.

He was also aware of the pitfalls of playing a side that should be beaten easily.

"There are a lot of teams have had games like this and found it difficult," he said.

"Circumstances, a wee bit of luck in front of goal early in games, you could come up against people who are inspired, the goalkeeper is inspired, that can happen. You never know. All we can do is do what we did this morning and will do again this afternoon."

But he pointed out that the preparation for the match had been rigorous.

" I think back to the way we have trained and the hours we've put in, I think we've put in as many hours on Gibraltar as we did on the Germany game. Hour wise it is as much here as we gave to Germany - maybe even more. We started doing this on Monday, downed tools on Tuesday and Wednesday for Northern Ireland and then started again last night."

Scotland will walk out on in front of a Hampden crowd that will expect to witness a facile victory. Strachan is not disturbed by this level of expectation.

"I understand that and I don't have a problem with it," he said. "I can only ask the players to do certain things. If they do it, then I don't have a problem. It's like the other night against Northern Ireland. If I said to them, "look, make sure they don't get a shot on target and we're going to get nine on target then I think that is decent for an international game.

"You can't change it after the game and say you should have done better. And that is what we ask them on Sunday; we set out a way of playing but within that structure you have a freedom to go and create."

He said the victory over Northern Ireland had offered him encouragement.

"I enjoyed the tempo in the first half an hour until the crowd and ourselves and the game kind of went into a friendly mode for half an hour, and then it became not bad again near the end. It is important to get a high tempo, whether you get your breakthrough early all depends on circumstances: are they good enough to take it, are they good enough to stop us?"

Strachan has already decided him team and will tell the players this morning. His major decisions will be over who plays in goal - with Craig Gordon of Celtic challenging David Marshall of Cardiff City - and whether Scott Brown of Celtic or Darren Fletcher of West Bromwich Albion captains the side.