Aberdeen, Manchester United, Hibs and Scotland legend, Jim Leighton doers not consder the Scotland Under-21 squad are under any added pressure ahead of games with Luxembourg and Austria. Leighton insists the goalless draw against Bulgaria in their European Championship opener last month does not mean the youngsters have to get maximum points in the forthcoming double-header, but it would be nice. Billy Stark's side failed to break down their Bulgarian counterparts at St Mirren Park on 5 September. Scotland, whose final opponents in the group will be Holland, need to get back on track on Thursday in Luxembourg, before Austria head to Paisley next Monday. No matter what the next two resulst bring, the Scotland Under-21 coach believes there is still a long way to go.
Leighton said: "To qualify for the championships you are looking to win all your home games so I am disappointed that we drew the last one. But even if we had won the Bulgaria game we would have been looking to win both of these games. We are obviously disappointed not to win the first game but you don't win or lose a qualification campaign in the first game. Hopefully we can put in a couple of good performances and get a couple of good results as well and that would put us back up there. I don't know a lot about Luxembourg but Billy Stark has had them carefully watched and will know everything about them by the time the game comes around. So we will go into it very positively and looking to win the game." Stark has a mostly new batch of players to guide for this campaign and Leighton is hoping some of them can follow the likes of Barry Bannan and David Goodwillie into the full squad. He said: "A lot of the players who are in the big squad have come through the under-21s in the last five or six years and it is nice for us to see so many players progressing."
Source: FOOTYMAD
