HAVING turned 30 a few months ago, Stuart Armstrong appreciates that he is now very much one of the elder statesmen in the Scotland set-up.
“I’m an old man!” he said yesterday with a wry smile as he talked about the raft of talented young players who national team manager Steve Clarke has called up into his squad and handed game time to this season.
Armstrong, who set up the opening goal in a 2-0 win over Armenia at Hampden on Wednesday night that got the country’s 2022/23 Nations League campaign off to a positive start, has a good few years of international football ahead of him.
Yet, he knows that the hopes of the Tartan Army will very much rest on the likes of Allan Campbell (23), Lewis Ferguson (22), Billy Gilmour (20), Aaron Hickey (19), Nathan Patterson (20), Anthony Ralston (23) and David Turnbull (22) in future.
The Southampton midfielder, who won his 34th cap in the opening Group B1 match in midweek, is eager to do whatever he can in training and games to help his compatriots make a successful transition from the club game.
If any of them get the nod to face the Republic of Ireland in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin tomorrow – and Gilmour, Patterson and Ralston all have a good chance of being named in Clarke’s starting line-up – they will need all the assistance they can get.
Armstrong, though, has been impressed by both the ability and mentality of his new team mates and is sure they can help Scotland to perform at their very best and build on their morale-boosting triumph over Armenia without any words of advice of encouragement if they are selected.
“I don’t feel too different than I did years ago,” he said. “But obviously when I look around and see a lot of young players and a lot of young faces then I realise I am a little bit older now.
“I do feel a little bit of responsibility. I just try and help out the team when I can with a little bit of experience and just try to do my job when I am asked.
“You would have to ask them if it helps! I can only speak for myself. I just try and do as much as I can when I am on the pitch as an attacking player. Hopefully, that influences the players around me.
“But I don’t think they’re coming on as fresh faces. You can see the quality when they do come on and the impact they have on the team.
“It was good to see Tony Ralston playing behind me last night. You can see how far he has come as a football player. I thought he was excellent. He took his goal magnificently well. So I think there is a nice blend in the team at the moment with experience and youthful energy.”
Ralston, the Celtic right back who netted on his first Scotland start against Armenia, picked up the Man of the Match award on Wednesday night as his side bounced back from their Qatar 2022 play-off semi-final defeat to Ukraine seven days earlier in fine style.
The pain of that loss will linger for some time. When the finals get underway in November, it will be hard for the manager, coaching staff, players and supporters to take. Still, Armstrong was pleased the national team responded to the devastating result in such positive fashion.
Asked why he felt their eight game unbeaten run had come to an end when it mattered most in the rescheduled semi-final, he said: “Ach, it’s hard to say. Football is football, these things happen a lot.
“Sometimes when you have a disappointment you need to show that you are a good team and you have a lot of good players and we certainly do have that in this Scotland team. We have a lot of depth. We are just happy that we managed to show a good performance.
“I think everyone is pleased with the performance. It was all about getting the win. We would have been happy with the three points even if we had won ugly. But I don’t think it was that Wednesday night. We showed some good moments in the game definitely and some character to see out the game. It was a good solid performance.”
The Group B1 winners will go into the Euro 2024 play-offs if they fail to secure a spot in the finals in Germany through qualifying. Armstrong, then, is keen to help Scotland build on their opening win with away triumphs over the Republic of Ireland and Armenia in the next four days.
“Every fixture that we go into, we want to maximise what we can out of it and show that we can reach major tournaments,” he said. “It’s obviously the ultimate ambition and this is a pathway to that. We want to have a good start, which we have had, and continue on.
“In the past we have shown what a good squad we can be. We have shown that we can grind out performances, grind out wins, when we have had to. It can’t be perfect all the time, which of course was the case last week.
“But I think there is a big belief in the squad. There is a lot of togetherness, the group is excellent, everyone believes in ourselves and what we can achieve, hopefully reach another major tournament.”
Ireland have lost 1-0 to Armenia away and Ukraine at home in their opening two Nations League matches and will be desperate to overcome Scotland on their home turf and quell growing unrest in the stands.
Armstrong is confident the visitors, not least the youngsters who feature, are more than capable of coping.
“Of course they will be looking to get off the mark against us,” he said. “It is a different challenge. There is a short amount of time between now and then so I imagine we will look at it in more depth in the next couple of days. But we had a week between the Ukraine and Armenia games also so we did some preparation and analysis. We will be ready.”
