Alex McLeish has challenged Leigh Griffiths to fight his way back into the Scotland side.
When the former Rangers (IL) boss named his squad for the international double header Steven Naismith wasn’t included.
An injury to Ollie McBurnie saw the Hearts striker added to the squad with Griffiths given the thankless task of facing Belgium as the sole striker.
On Monday night Naismith was paired with Jonny Russell, scored Scotland’s second goal and is now flavour of the month with the man who cheated HMRC and every club in the country while he was in charge at Ibrox.
Explaining the new pecking order McLeish told The Sun: “It was a big call but, listen, I’ve had to make these calls before.
“He’s not playing as a starter for Celtic at the moment — only in some games. Naisy is there every single week for Hearts and I know what Griff can do.
“I think he was a little bit isolated in the Belgium game and, let’s face it, it was almost mission impossible for him the other night. But again, we know what he can do. He came on and had a free-kick in his favourite position and it’s always good if he can get a goal.
“He’s still very valuable to us but I know some of the players who didn’t play WILL get annoyed. That’s just a fact of the game.
“They will be annoyed and some of them will be p***** off with me but I hope that in 24 hours they calm down and they are willing to go again for us, because they’re so important as we build a new era.
“We have lost some senior players over the last year or 18 months and a lot of young guys have come into the team.
“We’ll have different systems at different times. There are some guys in great form who never played and they must be gutted. But if I’d put some in certain positions against Albania, I’d be fielding questions about playing players out of position.”
Griffiths was joined on the bench by James Forrest giving both players valuable rest ahead of much more important club matches.
Both players returned to Lennoxtown yesterday as Brendan Rodgers reassembles his squad following the 1-0 derby success over the tribute act.
The hoops travel to St Mirren on Friday night before facing Rosenborg in the Europa League with Griffiths likely to start one of those matches.
