Positives to be taken from Cyprus friendly

Craig Levein can at least take a number of positives from the Scotland win over Cyprus tonight, although there are still a number of questions to be answered.

In the first half the major positive was, we were winning at half time thanks to Kenny Miller’s magnificent strike, we should also have been awarded a penalty when there was a clear hand ball missed by the officials.

Equally we could have lost a couple of goals with theScotlandwoodwork being rattled on a couple of occasions, although McGregor may have saved the first one, but he was certainly well beaten for the second one!

In the Second half it looked bright early on when Mackie getting the goal he deserved after having a number of chances blocked or saved. He looked lively all night, with a desire to take on defenders and commit them in the tackle.

We did give away a goal on the hour mark, when we were caught on the break by Christofi, who got on the wrong side of Bardsley to fire across McGregor, exploiting the defensive frailties again.

Over the piece there are still major question marks at centre back with Caldwell and Berra still looking all over the place every time the Cypriots broke up the park.

I would doubt if Craig Levein learned little from the game with the defence playing the way it did tin the last Euro qualifying group, Kenny Miller still scoring the odd quality goal. Okay Jamie Mackie did well, but we knew about him already before his injury at QPR.

We could also have done with seeing more than four minutes of Jordan Rhodes, seemed a bit harsh on the youngster. Also why no playing time for Matt Gilks in goal, we all know about McGregor and there would have been no harm in seeing the Blackpool keeper pull on aScotlandjersey.