Gordon Strachan hailed Scott Brown as his Euro 2016 talisman in the wake of Scotland’s crucial first qualifying win of the campaign.
And the captain will need to lead by example again on Tuesday night when the Scots face a Polish team riding high after their shock defeat of World Champions Germany.
Group D took on an unexpected look following the result in Warsaw, and Joachim Loew’s men are maybe not going to be the runaway winners that everybody expected them to be.
A Polish victory wouldn’t have been the result Strachan would have expected or wanted, with second place still the most realistic chance of automatic qualification for the finals in France.
But, as well as making that goal tougher to achieve in the long term, in the short term it shows the scale of the task ahead for Scotland tomorrow evening.
When his players head down the tunnel for kick-off in Poland though, Strachan couldn’t be happier with the man leading them into battle.
Brown returned to the side for the Georgia match after missing the Scots’ defeat in Germany through injury, and produced a man of the match performance in the vital 1-0 victory.
“We did not expect anything else,” Strachan said of his captain’s display.
“The team played well but sometimes it looked like he was picking up two and saying ‘come on, let’s go with me’.”
Strachan was Brown’s club boss at Celtic but the player he now sees before him is a much improved one from then.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Definitely.
“He was bombing on when he was younger. He is doing things now like picking the ball up off the back four.
“But he doesn’t do it like a Carrick. He does it and rolls people in the middle of the park and shrugs them off, so it is different. And his passing I thought was terrific.”
It may seem like stating the obvious that Poland will be a step up from Georgia, but Strachan insists that his players’ attitude will be the same as it was on Saturday evening.
“I think Georgia are a right good side.
“They are not mugs, let’s get that right. They got beat by a wonder goal by Aiden McGeady for Ireland. We did not have a wonder goal.
“We had a goal that we worked away at, that was a bit scrappy. But we had other moves where you thought it deserved a goal.
“We don’t want to get too excited. I am just saying that over the last year we have become more comfortable on the ball. We are putting things together.
“We put things together all week and then we had to change it after five minutes because Georgia were not playing the way we thought they were going to play.
“They’ve been spending three days working on playing against a back three and then it changes.
“I could not see us playing THAT well. There was even a time when Naisy (Steven Naismith) was right through with just the goalie to beat and I think he thought ‘that’s such a good move, I shouldn’t be here!’
“I have seen these games before when you have played that well and yet it gets to 1-1. So I am delighted. I think everyone on that pitch can handle the ball.
“And whatever you say about football, it’s still the most important thing to be able to handle the ball.”
Strachan added: “Sometimes when you have to win you don’t play like that that is what surprised me. I have to say, the quality of the play was above what I thought this occasion might need.”
He hinted that his team line-up may be tweaked with Shaun Maloney one player likely to be taken out due to a lack of game-time recently but the approach to the Poland match will be similar to the Georgia one.
“I can’t change it too much,” Strachan pointed out. “There are players who want to play with the ball, to feet and without it.”