CHRISTIAN Dailly is drawing on his experiences with Blackburn Rovers as Scotland prepare for tonight's do-or-die Euro 2000 play-off with England at Wembley.

The Scots have a mountain to climb after Paul Scholes' double at Hampden put England firmly in the driving seat ahead of tonight's second leg.

But Dailly is adamant the tie is still firmly alive and harks back to Rovers last game against Ipswich as evidence to support his case.

"Everyone keeps telling us we are going to get hammered but it's not over by any stretch of the imagination," said Dailly.

"It's only half time and there's still a lot of football to be played.

"Only last week against Ipswich we were 2-0 up but they managed to comeback. So who is to say we cannot do something similar to England at Wembley tonight?"

Only the staunchest optimists are giving Scotland any chance of clawing back a 2-0 deficit following England's comfortable first leg triumph.

But Dailly believes the sides are more closely matched than people might think.

"We had a lot of good chances on Saturday but we just didn't take them," said Dailly.

"I thought we played quite well and we had a lot more possession than England over the 90 minutes. But they took their chances - that was the difference. Paul Scholes took his goals very well but he was quite quiet during the game as a whole so we were very disappointed to let him in twice."

Scotland boss Craig Brown may decide to shuffle his pack tonight and Dailly has been mooted as one of the main casualties. But the 26-year-old was happy with his own form at Hampden and he is urging Brown not to make wholesale changes.

"I was quite pleased with my own performance considering who I was up against," said Dailly. "Shearer never had a shot at goal and Owen only had one so our strikers had a lot more chances than them.

"And I think we should approach tonight's game in more or less the same way. We've not really had too many team meetings since Saturday but Craig has just been telling everyone to keep calm.

"We've got to be cautious. The time to go cavalier is later on.

"It's not as though we didn't create any chances. We just didn't take them."

Dailly and the rest of the squad now want to get back on the pitch and wipe the memories of Saturday out of their minds as quickly as possible.

And should he get the nod from Brown then it will be the Rovers star's first ever appearance beneath the twin towers.

"We just can't wait for the game to come," said Dailly.

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