Frontline Troops Are Hot Shots Says Weir

Oct 14 2007 By Gavin Berry

VETERAN defender Davie Weir insists Scotland's sharp shooters are helping make life easy for the defence.

The Rangers stopper hailed the form of the frontmen after Alex McLeish's men bagged three in the win over Ukraine yesterday.

Kenny Miller and Lee McCulloch struck inside the first 10 minutes and despite Andriy Shevchenko pulling one back, James McFadden sealed the points.

Weir said: "The attackers are making chances and taking them so that's always nice.

"When you're not getting opportunities it's difficult to win games but we've got a lot of options up front.

"That helps the defenders because you start to believe you'll win games if you keep a clean sheet. We've been scoring goals which is what football's all about.

"It's great to have guys like James McFadden, Kenny Miller, Kris Boyd, Garry O'Connor and Shaun Maloney to call upon - it's good firepower to have."

Scotland now head to Tbilisi to take on Georgia and with the Euro 2008 finishing line firmly in sight, Weir wants the players to get over it - even if it means needing a result against world champions Italy in the final game.

Weir was part of the last Scotland squad to reach a major finals at France 98 and said: "I'd love to go to Euro 2008, it's what you play international for - to be at the big competitions.

"We've given ourselves a chance now, we've come a long way and we want to finish it off.

"We've got to be confident even if we do go into the Italy game needing a result. We've got to cross the finishing line but it's up to us to get over it.

"Georgia will be difficult and everyone saw at Hampden that they were a good side so we'll need to get ourselves ready for that and there's no doubt we'll need to put on a good performance to get the result.

"I thought we started really well against Ukraine and got the goals and then they came into it a wee bit but it's always difficult when you start like we did because you wonder what you're going to do next.

"We sat back a bit and they got the goal but it was nice of James to take the pressure off a little bit with the third goal and we got the win."