I COULDN'T take my eyes off one player at Hampden yesterday. That was Barry Ferguson, who for me was the most significant figure on the field by some margin. He was fantastic, different class.

It wasn't just his passing, or the fact he barely gave the ball away. What I thought was brilliant was that when the game needed slowing down he did it. When it needed speeding up, like in the first 10 minutes, he did that as well. He dictated the pace and tempo of the game. In my time down south I didn't see Barry that much, but I'd doubt if he's ever had a better or more important game. It was his ability to orchestrate things that allowed Alex McLeish's tactics to work so brilliantly.

I was at the team hotel on Friday and Andy Watson told me that, much of a problem as it might be for the crowd, Scotland were going to sit deep. They had a big fear of the way the Ukraine full-backs are capable of pushing forward and getting behind a defence. Their strikers play up against the full-backs, then make little angled runs inside taking the full-backs with them. That allows their own full backs to swarm into those channels.

Alex was determined that wouldn't happen, and that's why Scotland decided to sit deep. The two early goals made things easier, because you can imagine what the crowd reaction would have been if it had been 0-0 and we were sitting back. But most of the time yesterday Ukraine had no place to go.

There's no doubt the first two goals, both from free- kicks, were from the training ground. Ukraine will be really disappointed at the second, because Lee McCulloch wasn't picked up, but it was a brilliant piece of creative set play.

Even at 2-0 I knew Ukraine were too dangerous to write off, but the way the game was going there was only one thought in the heads of everybody in the ground - when was it going to be 3-0? So it was such a shock when it became 2-1.

It was one of those situations that the ball never quite gets clear, never quite comes to someone's head. There was a claim for a penalty anyway, but Shevchenko finished it brilliantly. I was impressed with his attitude throughout - he's a top player and character. You can see the pride he takes from playing for his country.

In that crucial early part of the game I don't think Ukraine looked as committed to defending as they would have been had the circumstances been different and they'd had a chance of qualifying. It's easier to attack in yesterday's situation than it is to defend, so I think Scotland took brilliant advantage of that with their free-kicks.

There was one part of the game that worried me a bit. In the 15 minutes at the end of the first half, and then 10 minutes into the second, I thought we were going to expend too much energy on those quick counter-attacks when Scott Brown and James McFadden would run with the ball. That used up a lot of energy and Ukraine looked at their most dangerous when Scotland looked stretched. The big danger was that we would get excited but against that Brown, McFadden and Stephen Pearson can run past people and that's a huge plus to have in your team.

The preparedness of McFadden and Kenny Miller to work back in turns and make an extra man against the Ukraine midfield was also impressive. In that area I though Anatoliy Tymoschuk was their Ferguson and I was pleased to see him being substituted in the second half.

When McFadden put it beyond doubt we could all start to relax. But you could feel the expectation all day - if we didn't win there might have been a mass suicide. I can't recall this level of excitement since Ally's Army in 1978.

The impressive thing is the quality of the opposition we're beating. We're two games from qualifying, yet at the start of this campaign it was considered a second-rate Scotland team. We were expecting a celebration of our own at the coaches' get-together at Gleneagles last night. Sir Alex was choosing the wine - given his tastes, I hope he was paying for it as well!