Scotland: Kris Boyd knows regular place not his yet

The Kilmarnock striker ended a three-year absence from the national set-up when he was drafted into Gordon Strachan’s squad last weekend.

Boyd – who has scored seven goals in 18 appearances for the Scots – was then named as an unused substitute for Tuesday’s friendly against Norway. He says his aim now is to become a regular pick again for future squads.

Boyd said: “It was great to be back involved in the set-up but I’m not going to stand here and call myself an international player again.

“You’re an international player if you’re getting named in all the squads the gaffer names. For me, it’s about continuing the form I’ve shown since the beginning of the season and improving that from now until the end of season.

“Hopefully I can get myself back involved in the next squad and back into the original squads.

“It’s a giant step from where I was on Sunday morning to Sunday night to be called back up again. I’m delighted but I know I’ve got a long, long way to go before I can call myself an international player again.

“I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I’ve scored goals at that level. I want to get myself back to scoring goals at that level and I won’t stop until I’ve done that.”

In the meantime, Boyd wants to see Kilmarnock make amends for what he branded their worst display of the season against St Johnstone – a 3-1 loss – with a win against Motherwell this weekend.

He said: “It’s a good chance for us, a good game, and we are at home. We know what Motherwell are going to bring but it’s up to us as a team to go out there and put in a performance that gets us three points.

“A lot of the performances at the beginning of the season maybe merited picking up points and then we won two games. But the St Johnstone game was probably the worst performance of the season. We got what we deserved, which was nothing. As players, the challenge is on us now to get ourselves back to winning ways.”

Motherwell manager Stuart McCall has warned his team to cut out the concession of soft goals as they prepare to face in-form Boyd.

McCall’s men have lost three of their last four games, shipping eight goals in the process, and come up against a player at Rugby Park who has netted six goals in 12 Premiership games.

McCall said: “The two goals he [Boyd] got recently against Hearts, all right they might be poor bits of defending, but he has taken both goals extremely well.

“You don’t lose a knack of goalscoring that he has got, so obviously we need to look to keep him quiet.

“We all know that the last few games we have under-performed and we need to get back, not only to winning ways but to playing well. We have certainly not created enough and scored as many as we were, and we are conceding too many soft goals.”