ANDY ROBERTSON has apologised to the Scotland fans after admitting that the national team ‘didn’t show up’ in their World Cup play-off semi-final defeat to Ukraine.
The Scotland captain was gutted as his dreams of playing in Qater were extinguished, with his disappointment compounded by the lacklustre performance from Steve Clarke’s men on the night.
In the end, Robertson felt that the players had let themselves, and the country down.
“Hugely disappointing,” Robertson said. “We’ve waited a long time for this game, our performances had been really good. And to be honest, we didn't really show up.
“Ukraine settled into the game a lot quicker than us and that continued really. We knew they were going to get tired and that was the case, but we gave ourselves too much of an uphill battle.
“With the way the game was going and the chances they had, we had to try and stay in the game.
"But we didn’t manage that, going two goals down and we ended up pushing at the end. We left ourselves open, which we had to do.
“We didn’t play the way we wanted to and that’s the most disappointing thing. Unfortunately it has passed us by now after a really positive campaign, we’ve let ourselves down tonight.”
While the emotions of the defeat were still raw, Robertson acknowledged that there will be positives to reflect on from the World Cup campaign once the dust settles.
“Look, it took us eleven games to get here, it was a positive campaign, finishing second, getting a home Play-Off,” he said.
“We have to hurt, of course we do. We need to reflect tonight and tomorrow’s a new day. We have the Nations League and we have to try and push.
“That’s the World Cup gone for another four years and that’s really hard because we all have dreams of playing at big tournaments. But we didn’t put in a performance that justified that tonight
“We have to stick together, we know there will be scrutiny coming our way, we know we’ll be under fire.
“But we have to stick together as a group, we have made massive strides and there will be a time when we need to take perspective on that.
“But tonight’s not that time, all we can say is sorry to the fans in here and back home for disappointing them.
“We will try and dust ourselves down and go again.”
