Despite a strong start, though, it was Azerbaijan who took the lead with their first shot.<\/p>\n
St Mirren’s Ryan Carr lost the ball and Columbus Crew winger Nariman Akhundzade drove into the box and cut a low finish back across goalkeeper Liam McFarlane.<\/p>\n
Scotland’s response was lethal, though, as the home side rattled in three goals in five minutes to knock the stuffing from Azerbaijan before the half-hour mark.<\/p>\n
First, Barney Stewart headed into the bottom corner after a great delivery by Curtis before grabbing his second from close range when Taylor Steven knocked Dylan Lobban’s delivery into his path.<\/p>\n
Curtis turned provider again for Scotland’s third when the winger picked out an unmarked Wilson to nod into the net.<\/p>\n
Fletcher, watched by his father, Darren, from the stands then squeezed in Scotland’s fourth goal to cap a fine individual performance after the break.<\/p>\n
Azerbaijan, who drew 3-3 with Scotland away from home a year ago, did improve as the second half wore on and Raul Mammadov narrowed the deficit by tapping home from a free-kick.<\/p>\n
However, another run and deft pass from Curtis eased Scotland’s concerns as he teed up substitute Bobby Wales to lash in Scotland’s fifth goal and seal the perfect start for the new management team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite a strong start, though, it was Azerbaijan who took the lead with their first shot. St Mirren’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-787896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}