ALEX McLeish last night dismissed his track record to date as Scotland manager and stated that his reign starts “for real” with their opening Nations League match against Albania at Hampden this evening.

The national team have lost four and won just one of the friendly games they have played since McLeish was appointed boss for a second time back in February.

The latest disappointment was a 4-0 defeat by Russia 2018 semi-finalists Belgium on Friday night that was their heaviest loss at home in 45 years.

But the 59-year-old – who inherited the summer tour of South and North America and was forced to field understrength line-ups against World Cup-bound Peru and Mexico due to call-offs and the unavailability of key personnel – is undeterred by the statistics.

He has experimented with untried youngsters and different formations since succeeding his former Aberdeen team mate Gordon Strachan in an attempt to unearth players capable of performing at international level.

However, McLeish stated that he believes he should be judged on how Scotland perform from now on as he prepared for the first competitive fixture of his seven month tenure.

“We’re ready to go again,” he said. “This is it for real now. I can feel it already. I woke up this morning and said to myself ‘this is where it really begins’.

“We have done some experimenting, looking at different players and we have a big roster now should we need to call people up. But this is it. The guys have got to bring their best performance level on Monday night.

“The guys know what is at stake. They are ready for it. They have created a group chat for themselves and Andy (new Scotland captain Robertson) has shown good leadership.

“He is rallying them as well as the coaches they turn to for motivation. But there is nothing to motivate you more than pulling on the jersey of the national team.”

McLeish looks set to persevere with the 3-5-1-1 formation – which allows him to utilise both Robertson of Liverpool and Kieran Tierney of Celtic on the left side - that he fielded against Belgium on Friday night despite the defeat.

“I take examples from other teams and countries,” he said. “There are players around who are flexible enough to play in specific roles. There is no evidence to say that if we’d played 4-4-2 against Belgium we couldn’t have been beaten 5-0.

“If we’d been 4-4-2 and got a doing then people would have been asking if I was thinking about changing the system. I know how it works but I’ve got to persevere.

“One thing I’ve done throughout my life, in terms of out on the pitch, is that if things aren’t right for me I never give up. I persevere. And I’m going to persevere with this formation.”

McLeish continued: “It was actually the errors that are easy to put right. We have got players who 99 times out of 100 would do things differently. There was Charlie’s first-time pass and he sclaffed it.

“Hopefully he doesn’t do another one of them for the next 99 times. The errors were pretty blatant but they can be fixed.

“Albania got to the Euros which is something we haven’t done. So there is nobody who can disrespect them. The biggest way we can show our respect is to Albania is to play at our top level and swarm all over them. We also need to try and get a clean sheet.”

McLeish revealed that Celtic striker Leigh Griffiths, who came off at half-time against Belgium, is fit to face Albania.

“Leigh will be available, he trained this morning. He had something in his heel, be it friction from the boot or something. But he has trained every day since. It wasn’t a big scare, he hasn’t missed anything.”