Chuckling Steve Clarke joked he wouldn't get himself into trouble as he responded to a Scotland vs Switzerland poser.
The national team manager was in high spirits during the pre-match press conference ahead of the Euro 2024 showdown on Wednesday.
Clarke is hopeful his side will find form in their second outing after a nightmare opening encounter against hosts Germany.
Despite the heavy 5-1 loss, Clarke was in a positive mood and even had time for a joke with Swiss press when he was quizzed on the importance of Granit Xhaka and whether he could be compared to Toni Kroos.
One journalist asked: "Can you compare Toni Kroos with Granit Xhaka, or is Toni Kroos one or more levels above him?
READ MORE: Andy Robertson disagrees with 'information overload' Scotland theory
Smirking, Clarke joked: "Are you trying to get me into trouble?
"No, listen, two very similar players - similar in how they control the game for their team.
"We understood that Toni Kroos was a key player for Germany and we didn't handle him very well.
"So, we know Granit Xhaka is a key player for Switzerland, and hopefully we handle him a little bit better."
On the second match and what Scotland must do to recover from the opening defeat, Clarke added: “For us, it is to regroup and go again. It’s that simple. It is about doing better, exactly that.
“The players want to go back and play better and I think that is pretty standard when you play so poorly and let yourself down.
“As I said when I spoke to a lot of you on Sunday, it is about doing better, working better into the game.
“We thought we were well prepared for Germany, obviously we weren’t. So this time I think it is better not to say too much and hopefully with our actions on the pitch we will show that we prepared well and a positive result would be lovely.”
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