SAINTS midfielder Stuart Armstrong admitted “big disappointment” at Scotland’s World Cup run ending with defeat to Ukraine in the play-offs.

The Tartan Army fell to a 3-1 loss after goals from Andriy Yarmolenko, Roman Yaremchuk and Artem Dovbyk for the Eastern Europeans – Callum McGregor had netted for the home side.

It means that substitute Armstrong and Saints teammate Che Adams, who played 90 minutes of the defeat at Hampden Park, will not face Wales in the final for a chance to travel to Qatar this winter.

The pair will complete their three remaining international fixtures this break and then head on holiday, before returning to Saints at the end of June for pre-season.

“Of course, Wednesday night against Ukraine was a big disappointment,” Armstrong admitted. “We’ve been thinking about the game, trying to get it out of our minds and learn from it.

“Tomorrow is a new day and we’ll look forward to the games coming up because we do know they are very important. It was the Nations League that helped us qualify for the Euros the last time round.

“There’s no hiding the fact that we wanted to go to a World Cup this year and now we’re not.

“But times have been good recently. We had a lot of big wins and we went to the Euros last summer.

“We’ve shown we can be a very good team and I’m sure we can show that again in the very near future.”

Scotland still have three competitive fixtures to play this month with Nations League home and away matches versus Armenia sandwiching a home clash with Republic of Ireland.

The 30-year-old continued: “It won’t be difficult to lift ourselves for these games. We’re used to having a lot of fixtures and sometimes they don’t go the way you wanted them to.

“On the pitch, it’s about mentality and this is a strong group of players with strong characters. There’s a lot of togetherness in that dressing-room.

“We’ll learn and move forward. We know the importance of these Nations League games.”

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