It would have been understandable if James McArthur’s instinctive reaction to Scott Brown’s Scotland return had been not entirely positive.
After all, the Crystal Palace man may be the one who loses a place in central midfield at Wembley because of it.
But McArthur insisted there were no mixed emotions on his part.
“Not at all,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who’s here, you’re going to have to compete for places and you’re going to have to be playing well to play.
“It’s added to competition. Scott’s having a fantastic season this year and hopefully he can bring a bit extra to the team here.
“You want your best players involved and he’s been a great player for a number of years.
“There’s been a bit of banter about him coming back but everybody’s really happy.”
McArthur knows that Friday night will not be the same as other World Cup qualifiers, even if the players are doing their best to get into that mind-set.
“It’s a massive game for the nation and the players,” he said. “It’s a chance to make history, to try and get ourselves back in the group to qualify.
“We all remember the good days of beating England and that’s the kind of thing we want to create for the fans.
“We’re looking at it as a great opportunity to try and do something special. You need to treat it like every other game and focus on training every day and what the game plan will be.
“There’s always pressure in a Scotland v England game. They’re favourites to win but that’s added pressure when you’re the home team.
“Hopefully we can thrive on being the underdog. We’ve done it before by beating teams like Croatia and coming so close against teams like Poland, and great nights against the likes of France.
“We’ve created some special moments and we want to do that against a top nation.
“The manager will come up with a game plan that we need to make sure we execute and try and cause them problems. We need to look at it as a great opportunity rather than a really hard game.
“As a boy growing up you remember beating England, you remember the goals. That is what you want. You have got your chance to write your name in history here, as an individual and as a team. We can go and beat England.”
McArthur plays his football south of the border, and has done for several years, so he certainly won’t be star-struck under the Wembley lights.
“There’s a number of boys who are coming up against them week after week,” he said. “We know the way they play. We know each player’s flaws and what they’re good at. We’ll be trying to make sure we get to the flaws.
“No matter who they put in they have got a strong side. They can take 11 out and put 11 in and that is still the case.
“We know it is such a tough test, but it is a test we are looking forward to. We have got an opportunity that everyone in Scotland would love – to face our greatest rivals.”
If extra motivation was needed for McArthur – it isn’t – that would come in the form of trying to keep Gordon Strachan in a job.
“We want to win it for the manager,” the former Hamilton Accies player said. “Everyone knows that the team and the manager are under pressure to perform here.
“We obviously want to do it for ourselves and we want to do it for the fans, but we really want to do it for the manager.
“We let him down with the performances and obviously the results. So take everything else away, we just feel that we owe him a performance and a result.”
McArthur added: “He is great for the players, he wants us to play football, but at the end of the day it is us who are out there and us who need to perform.
“I have played under managers who play total football and I have played under managers who want to kick it in behind.
“You ask any player at all and they will all tell you they want to get it down and play. The manager is doing that here.
“He is bringing a belief to everyone that we can win football matches. But, as I said, it is about us producing a special performance and special result for him and the nation.”
