McTominay's assessment of a frustrating night
TranscriptScott is visibly annoyed about the defeat in our interview, but the midfielder remains confident we will progress...
Scott, what’s the reaction from the dressing room? It must be quite hard to take tonight? “Yeah, it’s a tough pill to swallow when you see how the game pans out. It’s a sloppy goal to concede and then after that I thought we were brilliant. I thought we approached the game with total focus. The way the game panned out in general – I’ve not got a lot to comment on the referee and their players, but that’s football. You’re going to get that when you play in Europe.” It was a tough opening 15 minutes, they score early – but then you get a grip on proceedings… “That’s happened to us before. We’re not fazed if we concede early. We’ve got to cut that out in general. Sometimes we start well, sometimes we don’t, but we have to cut out those early goals we concede before the game’s even started. It’s not good enough. The way we responded was brilliant, in terms of the chances we created, and for us it’s a tough pill to swallow in that dressing room. The positives we’ll take away from it are a lot and obviously we’ve got a big game next week.” The margins are so fine but at the start of the second half there was that big chance for Anthony and that wonderful chip from Cavani off the bar as well. They go in and it changes dramatically, doesn’t it? “The forwards we’ve got, there’s so much quality up there and the coaches and all the players in general have got such belief in the strikers in general. Sometimes the ball just doesn’t go in the net and that can be football. Decisions, referees, their players: it’s a tough night. When we’re coming away from that game with nothing… I even said at half-time, if we don’t come away with anything we’ll be so disappointing with ourselves in the dressing room. As I say, decisions and VAR can change football.” It was just in the space of a couple of minutes wasn’t it? They scored a goal and then Fred with a second yellow, which looked to us at least like it was a clean challenge. I suppose in that couple of minutes the game changes… “The reaction of their players… I’ve got nothing to say about that. You get in trouble if you start speaking about reactions and the referee and stuff like that. I’m hearing that their goal was partly offside, I’ve not seen it back. Where’s the balance in the game with how referees approach decisions? We’re seeing it week in, week out, they’re making mistakes. It has to be rectified. Get football back to the way it was.” It’s all going to go down to the final game. Three teams on nine points, but does the performance overall tonight give you confidence going to Germany? “Of course it does. For us the result at home is out of the equation now, we forget about it. It’s a game we have to go and win. You can’t just go there and play for a point. You have to go and approach it like you want to win that football match and that’s definitely what we’re going to do.” We speak about fans a lot but was that one tonight where you really do feel it in a match of this magnitude? “Yeah, you need the fans there for nights like today. All the boys were saying leading up to it you need fans in for a game like this. There’s bigger things in the world right now than having fans in a football stadium and bit by bit we’ll hopefully get them back in dribs and drabs and hopefully have them back as soon as possible.”