Steve Clarke watched Scotland blast back into World Cup contention then fired out a warning to group leaders Denmark.
Clarke’s side moved up into second position behind the top seeds with a 4-0 thrashing of the Faroe Islands at Hampden to round off a stuttering opening to the campaign with a bit of style.
John McGinn netted early goals in both halves to send them on their way before Che Adams and Ryan Fraser added some polish to the scoreline.
But the Danes were also romping to an even more impressive big scoring victory In Vienna - their third straight win in eight days - with a four goal battering of Austria.
And Clarke said afterwards: “Let’s wait and see what happens. I keep saying five months, it’s five months until the qualifying games in September and a lot can change in five months. We might have a fantastic Euros and go there on a real high.
“I think the team’s improving, I really do. I said it the other night, we are a work in progress. I feel we are getting better and we have a good squad of players with a great attitude to do well for their country.
'You saw that tonight. It was opposition we should beat but they are also physical and make it difficult for us to break them down. It was nice to get the early goal and we then had to be patient to get two, three and four.
“I know there was a little bit of negativity the other night. I tried to squash it because I expected to come here and win tonight.
“I expected to have five points and to be honest I expected to be second in the group because I expected Denmark to beat Austria and that’s where we are.”
McGinn got the breakthrough goal after just six minutes and although Clarke’s side struggled to find a second goal the Aston Villa man came up with his second of the night at the start of the second half - with the outstanding Kieran Tierney setting him up for both.
Clarke said: “We have found John a good position. He enjoys arriving in the box, he’s good at arriving in the box and he got his two goals from that. I left him on to get his hat-trick but he let me down! He didn’t get it.
“It’s good. But it’s also because of the way we set up. He has licence to arrive in the box with a bit more defensive duties tonight falling to Kenny McLean who I thought had a really good game tonight. Callum gives us that comfort on the ball, he moves the ball well, and John has his role to arrive late in the box. I was pleased with all three of them.”
Adams then smashed home a third goal from distance before Fraser wrapped it up with a header at the back post from Andy Robertson’s cross.
And Clarke said: “There were good assists from Kieran, good assists from Andy. I liked the one from Andy because it was one wing-back to another wing-back and it’s got to be a quality cross to pick out the smallest person on the pitch against a team that is all six foot plus.
“It was a satisfying result and performance. You have to be happy with four goals and a clean sheet. There was some good stuff. There were one or two moments where we could have done better defensively but I’m always looking at that side of it. It was important to finish with three points and a good performance. Five points from three games is a good week.
“Not a great week because we could obviously have picked up another couple somewhere else but we are second in the group so let’s look forward to the September games which will be a pivotal week in the qualifying campaign,
Denmark and Austria both away and Moldova at home in between. It will be a big week for us.”
