CAPTAIN Grant Hanley will have returned to Blackburn Rovers on a high.

Yes Scotland eventually went down to defeat against Germany on Sunday night but all the talk is about how well they did.

Grant played his part in that and he’s cutting a great little partnership with Russell Martin at the heart of the Scottish defence.

Yes he and his team-mates will have been disappointed by the manner of the goals Germany scored but overall he did a very decent job – and that’s a good sign considering the opposition.

As an individual you always know when you have played well or not and that’s why I’ve got no doubts Grant will have come back flying and be ready for a couple of big home games against Wigan and Derby.

It’s great that Grant gets the chance to experience games like the one against Germany.

When you play in the Championship and you go away and represent your country it’s the next best thing to playing Champions League football.

You find yourself playing against the best players in the world and on Sunday Grant certainly did that.

You had Thomas Muller, who scored most of the goals for Germany at the World Cup, and you had Mario Gotze, the man who got the goal that made them world champions.

But Scotland proved that Germany are not infallible.

They got a goal and showed at times in the second half that it’s not always best to sit back and counter-attack – that if you have a go at even the best team in the world you can score goals.

And I think Blackburn can take a leaf out of Scotland’s book.

Don’t get me wrong you can’t go gung-ho and you have to be patient at times.

But you can get at the better teams and that what’s Wigan and Derby are in the Championship.

I expect them both to be in the top six come the end of the season.

But Blackburn really need to be looking at taking four points out of these next two games.

The minimum is not to get beat in either.

But after that we need to be winning at least one of them.