Strachan: England Spooked Us

Gordon Strachan admits England scared the life out of his Scotland team, who were blown away by their Auld Enemy at Celtic Park. Wayne Rooney scored twice and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain also got on the scoresheet as England routed their bitter rivals 3-1 in Glasgow on Tuesday night. Scotland struggled to deal with the intensity of the visitors' play in the opening half and their only consolation came when Andrew Robertson scored his first international goal in the 83rd minute. It was a bitter blow for Strachan, whose team went into the match on the back of a morale-boosting win over the Republic of Ireland on Friday night. The Scotland manager said: "The intensity, and pace England played it, without the ball in particular, was fantastic and it spooked our players a bit. "I think my players were expecting England to sit back and wait, but they didn't. "They're a team full of Champions League players, and they showed that. Maybe we were mentally fatigued from Friday, too, which we need to look at." Strachan delivered a particularly blunt assessment of his team. They were careless in possession and weak in attack, according to the former Manchester United midfielder, who had lost just one of his previous 10 matches in charge. "We wanted to win this game tonight," Strachan added. "When you analyse the game, we gave the ball away under pressure, and without pressure. "The team who looked after the ball better was England. The team which pressured the ball better was England. "It was a one-off game tonight. Our priority was the Republic. "I'll try and keep that fresh in my memory. But I'll have to deal with this game for now, and the players have to as well. "We let ourselves down, to be honest." Given their recent improvement under Strachan, this was seen as a good chance for Scotland to register a morale-boosting win over their neighbours. But instead the match served as a reality check for the Scots. Strachan admits his team are still some way off their oldest rivals. "They're coming from Championship football and playing against Champions League players. When you take on a good England side, which they were, you need to have 10 or 11 (on top of their game) to beat them, and we didn't have that tonight," Strachan added. "We know we can play better. We have to be at our maximum to play against a top side like that. We were for 70 minutes against Germany, but that was probably the best performance against us for a long time."