Steve Clarke has reacted to Armenia fans throwing bottles towards Lewis Ferguson, the Scotland boss claiming he was more concerned with that than with handbags between the players.
The Aberdeen midfielder was left in a heap on the turf after a horror tackle by Kamo Hovhannisyan, who was shown a straight red card and joined namesake Arman in the dressing room.
That resulted in a flashpoint between the players, who indulged in a bit of argy bargy that continued after the final whistle.
But eagle-eyed Clarke spotted bottles being thrown from the stands.
It was Arman Hovhannisyan that was at it at Hampden six days ago, launching a water bottle at the assistant referee in the wake of Scott McKenna's eventually disallowed goal.
And Clarke was keen to highlight more missile throwing in Yerevan rather than focus on the players clashing.
He said: “I don't think there was too much in it (the tussle on the pitch). Their coaching staff got on the pitch pretty quickly and made sure everyone was calm. There were some bad tackles towards the end of the game and professional players are always going to react to that, but it was nothing.
“I’m more concerned about the bottles that were getting thrown on the pitch after the tackle on Lewis. I saw one bounce in the middle of the pitch. It was a hell of as throw!”
Captain Andy Robertson, John Souttar and Scott McKenna were all completely absent from the squad and Clarke revealed that the trio had no chance of featuring after picking up injures.
When asked how close they were to making it, Clarke replied: “Nowhere near it. They didn't even travel.”
The 4-1 win restores Scotland's hopes of topping Nations League Group B1, but Clarke stressed that two victories over the group minnows doesn't make this a "good camp" for his team, as they ultimately failed in their objective of qualifying for the World Cup.
The 3-1 home defeat to Ukraine was followed up by a 2-0 victory over Armenia at Hampden a week later.
But any confidence gained from that result was obliterated by a 3-0 thumping from Ireland in Dublin.
Clarke was honest in his overall assessment of the four games as a whole, acknowledging that they blew the big one.
“It was a difficult schedule for the players but we haven't made excuses up until now," he said. "There’s no excuses for the two games that we lost.
"Two wins against Armenia are not going to make this international camp a good camp, because it wasn’t. We failed in our primary objective which was to make it to the World Cup, and we failed in that.
“And we had a really bad performance in Dublin which put us on the back foot again. But it was nice to bounce back tonight. We’ve work to do”
Clarke did praise his players for how they responded to an early setback, going 1-0 down after just six minutes.
He added: “We started the game pretty slow, which was probably a reaction to the long journey we had. There was a lot of fatigue in the players’ legs, which we haven’t spoken about too much, because we don't want to be seen to be making excuses.
“But it was there and they got in behind us. 1-0 down, we showed great character to come back.”
