McFadden targets early morale boost (From Bridgwater Mercury)

McFadden targets early morale boost

8:18am Thursday 2nd September 2010 in National Sport © Press Association 2011

James McFadden claims Scotland owe their fans some early success in their Euro 2012 campaign after a disappointing World Cup bid.

Scotland begin their European Championship qualifiers in Lithuania on Friday night amid reduced expectation following a failed attempt to get to the World Cup finals. Scotland lost out to Norway for second place in their group while the Scandinavians failed to make the play-offs.

McFadden said: "We need to get back on track and make it up to ourselves - the manager, the fans, everybody. We were so poor last time, we need to get better and basically get off to a good start."

Scotland began encouragingly under Craig Levein with a 1-0 friendly win over the Czech Republic but were well beaten 3-0 by Sweden in Stockholm last month as a five-man midfield including McFadden struggled defensively despite some spectacular moments from the former Motherwell man.

"We've got a lot of making up to do after a bad campaign and poor defending in Sweden," the Birmingham player said.

"We'll be ready. Most of the boys have started the season well so it's looking good.

"We just never played very well last time. In the campaign before we were hard to beat and that wasn't the case last time.

"We need to forget about the last one and move on to the next - although not totally forget it, if you know what I mean.

"We need to try to learn lessons from it and take it into the next campaign."