Christophe Berra said three points to keep their World Cup hopes alive was the main objective Scotland had against Malta.

The centre-back opened the scoring in the 2-0 win, helping his side move three points closer to Slovakia ahead of the meeting between the sides in Glasgow next month.

Scotland had 25 attempts on goal against group whipping boys Malta but Berra said while they could have run up a bigger scoreline against a team they defeated 5-1 away from home, the main aim was to keep play-off hopes intact.

"We all knew before the game that we would have to be patient and keep the ball, keep our standards high and concentration high," he said.

"We managed to do that and we maybe could have scored more goals but our objective was to score three points and we did that."

Berra looked ahead to the visit of Slovakia and welcomed the challenge of a match that will be crucial in deciding the final standings in Group F.

"It's a must-win game," he said.

"We need to win that game, our final two games and that's what we're going to set out to do.

"Being a Hampden full house, it's going to be a great atmosphere and hopefully we can do the business."

Teammate Stuart Armstrong said the team were in a good place after taking maximum points from the double-header against Lithuania and Malta but said form going back even further had built confidence they could yet reach Russia 2018.

"It's been a very good week," he said "We got off to a good start on Friday night with a really good team performance there.

"It was hard and it's often difficult to follow those type of games but we did a really professional job here today. Christophe got us off to a great start and we saw out the game well.

"[Belief has] always has been high, especially over the last not just two games but the four results that we've had. We've been very good as a team and we're very confident."