John Collins wants timid Scots to go in with "guns blazing" ONLY when John Collins is asked about the last time that Scotland savoured the experience of playing in the World Cup finals does he begin to feel old. But, speaking yesterday in Glasgow, the former Hibs, Celtic, Monaco, Everton, Fulham and Scotland midfielder admitted that the 14 years that have elapsed since he scored against Brazil in France 1998 have heaped enormous pressure on current players. Now director of football at Livingston and working as a media pundit, Collins remains close to the game. Close enough not to want to criticise Craig Levein overtly, but when asked for his thoughts on the current manager's 4-5-1 formation, and whether it smacked of a limiting, negative approach, Collins gave an insight into where his philosophy and Levein's may crucially differ. The key to victory over Macedonia tonight, and to regaining the faith of a Scotland support starved of something to cheer for so many years, lies in turning that formation into an attacking one, Collins believes. "Overall I was disappointed with the result against Serbia," he said, "but they had good football players, who were comfortable on the ball and knew how to take the sting out of the game and the crowd, keeping possession, slowing the game down, and Macedonia will try to do the same. So it won't be easy. It's not going to be a 5-0 game. But what you find is if you get the early goal and the crowd get up for it, they tend to lose a bit of shape and discipline and it can become an easier game. But can we get the first goal, get the crowd up and get them shaking? That's the question: do you go in and start cautious, feel your way into the game, or do you go in guns blazing right from kick-off, go forward and attack, put their goalkeeper under pressure, get shots on target? That [latter route] is the way I'd like to see it. The formation is not the thing. He [Levein] plays the same way as the previous managers [George Burley, Alex McLeish and Walter Smith]. They never played anything but 4-5-1s. Walter played it for five years in Europe in big games. But for me it can quickly flip into a 4-3-3. It depends where your wide players approach their full-backs. That dictates whether it's an attacking formation or a defensive formation. If you let their full-backs come up to the halfway line and your five midfielders are in your half then it's very defensive, but if your wide players approach their full-backs as soon as they get the ball from the goalkeeper then your whole team is pushed up and it very quickly becomes an attacking formation. The key is where you approach the full-backs. Collins was quick to state that he does not know how Levein wants to play entirely, without access these days to the training pitch, but he has long advocated, as a player and manager, that pressing opponents in their own half is a style well suited to the Scottish psyche. He feels for the current generation of internationalists who have never experienced either finals of the World Cup or European Championship, but, while stating that the quality of opposition worldwide is technically better now, he claimed that there was little difference in quality between the side he helped to the 1998 World Cup and Levein's team. We had a group of players pretty similar to what we have now, decent in possession of the ball, no real individual stars. We were a team that worked hard, were very good at set-pieces with myself, Gary McAllister the deliverers and guys who would aggressively attack the ball in the box like Colin Calderwood and Colin Hendry; Gordon Durie was similar up front to Kenny Miller in that he would run from first minute to last, and cause centre-halves problems with his pace and energy. We often played a 4-5-1 with the one striker and two wing-backs, Tom Boyd and Burley giving us the width. With McAllister and Stuart McCall we had three central midfielders and the width didn't come from wingers either; it was from wing-backs as we called them. We rarely battered teams. We won a lot of close calls because in important moments in games we got goals that took us to finals. But, I don't think we were vastly superior to this group of players. You look at [Robert] Snodgrass, technically very good; Charlie Adam has good feet and is a good passer of the ball; [James] Morrison good feet and passer of the ball; James Forrest is technically very good - across that area they can all deal with a football. But I think because they haven't been in a major tournament there is more pressure on them. It has built up four years, eight years, 12 years, where for us it was "it's been done before now go and get us there again." It's 14 years now, which is a long, long time and it brings pressure. Collins reflected on what the current crop had missed out on to date, the way qualifying for a World Cup Finals can cast sunshine across the country, generate fresh excitement and bring smiles to faces. That still seems distant one game into a new qualifying campaign, and Collins insisted that it will remain so until the team learn to score early and flip the pressure on to opponents.