Angry Andy Robertson admitted frank words were exchanged in the dressing room as he insisted the Tartan Army were right to jeer the Scotland flops off the pitch in Dublin.
Steve Clarke’s men slumped to an embarrassing 3-0 defeat to Ireland in the Aviva Stadium and Liverpool star Robertson pulled no punches in his post match assessment.
First half goals from Alan Browne and Troy Parrott and a third from Michael Obafemi after the restart did the damage, with Grant Hanley’s spectacular goal line clearance preventing further humiliation.
Clarke praised Robertson for picking up the squad after their World Cup play-off defeat to Ukraine as they bounced back to beat Armenia at Hampden.
And they have to do the same again before Tuesday’s trip to Yerevan for their return against Armenia.
But Robertson told Premier Sports: “It was nowhere near good enough. We’ve now said that twice in the space of 10 days which isn’t us.
“We’ve let the manager down which is so disappointing for us. He set us up in a way and we didn’t carry that out.
“Nobody played above par today and that’s not good enough. Some words were said in the changing room but we’re all together - managers, coaches and players.
“But some things have to be said and we hit the reset button and go on another good run. It can’t be one good performance, one bad. We need to get back to doing the basics right.
“The fans behind the goal booed us off and that was completely correct. The fans travel a long way and pay a lot of money and that performance was nowhere near good enough in a Scotland jersey.”
Ireland were under pressure going into the game after back to back defeats but Robertson admitted they failed to capitalise.
He said: “Coming here we knew they were under pressure after two defeats. They were probably getting questioned and we had to weather the storm at the start and we didn’t.
“We knew in the team meetings they would try and get off to a good start and we had to try and prevent that.
“We knew if we done that then their crowd would get on them but we did the complete opposite - gave them easy corners, let them win big tackles - which got the crowd up and that set the tone for the game.
“Every one of us lost our individual battles which can’t happen in these type of games. Second balls went to them and they were winning the tackles and had the chances.
“And when it goes like that then the result is only going to go one way. We need to assess as a team and individually and hit the reset button because everything was good last year but this year the performances haven’t been up to scratch as of yet.”
