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ordinary at Bet365. Steve, as we come to the end of 2023, how would you review the year?

Pretty decent. I think if you're a Scotland fan, you've had a good year, a lot of good matches,

good memories and obviously qualification for another major major tournament which is fantastic.

At the start of the year everyone looked at the group and thought this is going to be really difficult

and the way Scotland approached it it didn't seem that way given the results but what were you thinking at the start of the campaign?

No, the start of the campaign we knew would be a tough group.

The way the fixtures fell, with three home games out, the first four fixers, we knew that

the first half of the group was when we had to get the majority of the points, if you like.

And it couldn't have started off in a better way.

I was always pretty confident that we could get qualification.

But the way, I think the manner and how we got it and the way we started the group was exceptional.

There's a one moment when you thought this is on, this is definitely going to happen.

Yeah, I think the night we beat Spain at Hamden, if I'm being honest, going right back

to that night, way at the start.

We went into that camp and I spent the first four or five days of that camp, stressing to the

players how important it was that we didn't drop points to Cyprus.

Because you've always got that little Scottish psyche, that little Scottish mentality we think.

Normally we mess up in a game where we shouldn't.

So we went into that and we concentrated a lot on attacking play and playing Cyprus.

And when I watched the game back now, I think maybe I put too much fear into the players

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