Martin delighted with Scottish display against Georgia

RUSSELL MARTIN was delighted with how his side reacted to a tactical switch from Georgia at Ibrox.

The Norwich City defender was rarely tested at the back for Scotland, but dealt with anything thrown at him along with his defensive partner Grant Hanley.

Georgia have lined up in a 3-5-2 formation in the past, but switched to a more conservative 4-2-3-1 formation at Ibrox and Martin was pleased that it didn’t change the game plan set out by Gordon Strachan.

He said: “I think we’ve got players all over the pitch that can really hurt teams. So after their first result against Ireland they obviously wanted desperate to get something here and that’s the way they decided to play it.

“We’ve worked on them playing a different formation all week. They’ve been 3-5-2 for a long time and they changed it tonight but we dealt with it.”

“The result was really important but the way we went about it and got a clean sheet was pleasing.”

The English-born Scot was also pleased to see a return to the Scotland team for Scott Brown after the Celtic midfielder missed the Germany game through injury, and Martin feels he adds something else to Scotland’s midfield.

It was a man of the match performance for Brown

“It definitely makes life a bit easier having him [Brown] in front of you, especially when he listens to you! But yeah he was fantastic today, both him and Morrison and they’ve so much energy going forward and they’re happy to do it going back the way as well which helps us hugely.”