“It was an interesting bit of business by Celtic when they signed him”.
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“I knew what I had to change to calm a few things in me, which I didn’t know how to do after (scoring four against) Real Madrid”. “In football you can’t sometimes explain things”.
From a dazzling counter-attack in the 29th minute, left-back Maciej Rybus fed Lewandowski on the edge of the box before he teed up the onrushing right-winger Jakub Blaszczykowski to drill his shot just past the far post.
Strachan pointed to the first-half goals Germany scored last month, a deflected effort and a rebound off the post.
Three key players are out for Scotland, with regular starter James Morrison, winger Ikechi Anya and versatile defender Charlie Mulgrew all on the sidelines.
It just so happened then that Lewandowski scored with the very last touch of the game – so would he have had that chance had there been no pitch invader?
“I can’t remember us getting anything lucky”.
“He’s one of the best I’ve played against”, he said.
“For me to sit here and pontificate about what went wrong is unfair to everybody in that dressing room”. They’re playing in England, at a good level, but we still play against any European team and there’s an element that their touch on the ball seems to be better.
Law thinks that the dead rubber against the Gibraltarians on Sunday is the ideal opportunity to test the theory. “They, along with my coaching staff, are the priority”. “I have people in this building hurting at the moment and I need to look after them”.
In Braga, Portugal also locked down their place at next summer’s tournament in France after beating Denmark 1-0 to wrap up top spot in Group I.
If they want to catch Ireland, they need to pick up four points from their last two matches (with a comparatively easy fixture against Gibraltar following this one), while hoping Martin O’Neill’s side lose both of their remaining games. “We’ve had to put up with a lot”.
He said: “It has been a long, long time since Scotland got to a (finals) campaign and we can all feel it on our shoulders. If you work very hard you get your luck”.
Poland now face a shoot-out in Warsaw against the Republic with the pair locked on 18 points.
“We can take heart, too, from Northern Ireland and Wales”.
On 46 minutes Steven Naismith was inches away from connecting with Whittaker’s clever cross while Grant Hanley’s tackle denied Lewandowski up the other end.
Although the Irish took a winning lead against the world champions, Scotland would still have had a chance of reaching the play-offs going into Sunday’s match against Gibraltar in Portugal.
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“Fabianski is a good goalkeeper and Arkadiusz Milik from Ajax is a great player”.
