Scotland captain Darren Fletcher believes his side's World Cup qualifying campaign can get even worse despite recording two points from four outings.
The Scots sit at the foot of the Group A table and are with very little hope of making it to Brazil 2014 but Manchester United's Fletcher feels it can get even worse if Craig Levein's men cannot drag themselves from the depths of the six-team group.
"We are sitting bottom of group with two points from four games and the bottom line is it's not good enough," said Fletcher.
"Qualification is over and for me and the players that is very hard to take.
"It is going to take a mammoth effort to take anything from this group and it is going to be a long time before we are back in action with a glimmer of hope of achieving something.
"It was always going to be a difficult group and I always felt everyone was capable of beating each other.
"Now though we have to finish as high as possible - not stay down the bottom.
"If we were to stay where we are and finish bottom that has huge ramifications for the next qualifying campaign.
"If you drop down again then it becomes extremely difficult to get anywhere and think about qualifying.
"That's a factor we now have to consider as players, if we want to go on as a group and qualify in the future then we have to look at finishing as well as we can. We can't afford to drop into the lower pots."