Billy Gilmour addresses Scotland's year-long winless run in meaningful games

BILLY Gilmour has insisted that Scotland can rediscover the form they showed in Euro 2024 qualifying and end a disappointing six game winless run in competitive fixtures soon as he started preparations for the Nations League match against Portugal.

Napoli new boy Gilmour was devastated when the national team conceded an injury-time penalty and lost their Group A1 game against Poland at Hampden on Thursday evening.

The midfielder, who sparked a comeback when he scored his first goal at the Mount Florida venue early in the second half, was surprised to learn Steve Clarke’s side had not won in a meaningful fixture in nearly a year afterwards.

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Scotland have lost to Spain, Germany and Hungary and drawn with Georgia, Norway  and Switzerland since beating Cyprus 3-0 away in September of last year.

However, the former Rangers, Chelsea and Brighton midfielder felt that he and his team mates performed far better against Poland than they had at the Euros during the summer and remains optimistic about their future prospects.

(Image: Andrew Milligan - PA) “It’s a tough one, isn’t it?” he said. “We need to be better. But we will be better. We showed in the qualifying group stage last year to get to the Euros how good we can and could compete against Spain. We need to get back to our best and I'm sure we'll show that again.

“I think we all gave a good account of ourselves on the pitch. We played well and the result was down to some silly mistake from ourselves. We'll watch that back and we'll get better.

“Poland is a top team and we've got another tough game coming up against Portugal. We'll regroup. We've been in this position before and we believe in ourselves to go and win the next game.”

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Meanwhile, Gilmour has absolved Grant Hanley, who gifted Poland a late penalty which Nicola Zalewski converted when he brought down the Roma midfielder with a needless foul inside his own area, from any blame for the midweek loss.

“Grant's a really good, experienced player and he's helped us out in other games as well,” he said. “So I can't just point fingers at Grant. At the end of the day, we all played and we never did well enough to win the game when we were 2-0 down in the first half.”