IT WAS the wrong place and the wrong time to learn such an important lesson. George Burley got it midway through the first half, when he started to urge his players further forward and tried to increase the tempo of their play. They didn’t get the message until half-time though, and however much they improved after that, it was too late for this game. Too late for the qualifying campaign? Not yet.

But it will be if the lesson is not learned. This team has the talent and the experience to qualify from this group — it’s time to start acting like it. That means playing Norway, Iceland and Macedonia like they know they are better than them. It means having the balls to take the game to the opposition home and away and making that gap in quality count for points.

The criticism that will follow this defeat is part of the process of qualifying. There will be much written and said before a ball is kicked in Iceland on Wednesday, but that is when this team and their manager must make their statement. They need to show those critics, their supporters, the other teams in the group and themselves that they are contenders. If they believe they are better than Iceland — and they cannot qualify unless they are — then they must not show them the same, mislaid respect they showed Macedonia during the first half. Scotland were on the ropes, letting a smaller guy dig them in the ribs. As soon as they went on the front foot, Macedonia were in trouble.

That was the difference between the first-half and second-half performances. After the break, Scotland pushed forward in wide positions, even more so when Shaun Maloney and Kris Commons came on. Macedonia were under pressure, Scotland created chances and could have had a penalty if their luck was in. The further forward Scotland pushed the better they looked and they could have pinned Macedonia back in the first half too, if only they believed it. This was an opportunity missed.

Both Commons and Maloney made a case for their inclusion on Wednesday. What they did yesterday was prove that an ageing Macedonian back-three should have been stretched from the start by playing with three attackers. Instead, Burley tried to play with two banks of four, a strategy that was undone by conceding a goal so early. It was the wrong call. As soon as Scotland started attacking down the sides of the home defence through Maloney, Commons and James McFadden they got to the byline and caused problems.

Iceland may line up differently, but the bottom line will be the same. Do Scotland play like they are the away team in Rome, Paris or Amsterdam? Or do they put inferior opposition under pressure? And Iceland, like Macedonia, are inferior to Scotland. Apart from their superstars — Goran Pandev for Macedonia and Eidur Gudjohnsen for Iceland — how many players are playing in the Champions League? Scotland had seven players involved yesterday that will be in that competition and a goalkeeper who is among the best in Britain.

Now all the manager needs to do is work out how to use these talented individuals. If the first two substitutes made a positive impact, the same could not be said of Darren Fletcher, the one player we have at an elite club. At Manchester United he plays wider than with Scotland and maybe it is time to move him to the right of midfield when we do play four in there. Yesterday Scotland had him in the middle while Scott Brown and Barry Robson — who play in the middle for Celtic — were out wide.

In defence the two Celtic centre-backs, Stephen McManus and Gary Caldwell, were too keen to get in front of their man and got on the wrong side more than once. The whole defence used the ball poorly, particularly in the first half, and let Macedonia off the hook too often. If Scotland are to play that high-tempo, high-pressure game in Iceland they need to keep the ball to keep the heat on their opponents. And it’s a good habit to get into, because if they give the ball away like that against Holland they won’t get it back.

This team is out of kindergarten now, and over the next three days they have to find some answers from inside the group. Get out the DVD of the game, look at what you did wrong and what you can give in the next game.

These are important times for the Scotland camp. This defeat will have hit their confidence and the performance will have changed the way the manager was thinking about his team for the next game. He not only has to get his team into that dominant frame of mind, he has to work out who to send out to put Iceland away. This game and the way the team recovers from a hurtful defeat could be the defining moment of the entire campaign.

The Scotland manager wouldn’t say it after the game in Skopje, but this is win or bust now. Anything less than victory in Reykjavik and he is in big trouble, both in terms of this campaign and his position in charge of the team. He has to work out what he wants from these players and he has to get his message across to them in the next three days. The knives are being sharpened already in some quarters, but Burley still has time to confound his critics.