Three points essential after Germany defeat to catch Republic of Ireland
Thursday 9 October 2014 20:09, UK
Graeme Souness says it’s imperative that Scotland draw confidence from their performance in Germany and beat Georgia this weekend.
Gordon Strachan’s side play the second game of their Euro 2016 qualifying campaign at Ibrox on Saturday looking for their first points after a narrow 2-1 defeat in their opening fixture in Dortmund last month.
Ikechi Anya’s second-half goal briefly looked like securing a famous draw against the world champions before Thomas Muller’s second goal of the game settled the contest, but former Scotland midfielder Souness said their display will fill their fans with optimism.
However, he is demanding a victory against Georgia, who lost their opening game to Republic of Ireland, a side Scotland are likely be in competition with for a qualifying spot.
“They’ve got to win,” Souness told Sky Sports News HQ.
“With Georgia losing to Ireland last time out then hopefully they’ll be feeling sorry for themselves, but with Ireland winning it puts a little bit of pressure on Scotland to win.
“They should go into the game with encouragement because they played well against Germany last time. They started expecting the worst and grew into the game.
“As the second-half went on they started to believe they could get something out of the game and were unlucky not to get something out of the game.
“When you go to play the world champions in their own country you’d expect to spend a lot of time without the ball – and they did in the first half.
“As the second half went on they became more and more confident about themselves.”
Scotland v Georgia is live on Sky Sports 5 from 4pm on Saturday as part of six days of comprehensive coverage of European Qualifiers on Sky Sports.
