For every exercise in strawclutching, such as the line that players are permitted to have one off-day in a thrilling campaign, or that qualification for Euro 2008 was always going to come down to the last day against Italy, or even that having to win that game actually suits the Scots, anyone who saw the expression on Christian Dailly's face as he trudged out of the Boris Paichadze stadium in Tblisi on Wednesday night would have been left in little doubt about how potentially damaging this defeat was.

Alex McLeish's side could still qualify with a draw against the World Champions on November 17 . . . if France are beaten in Ukraine . . . but in all likelihood a sixth home victory of the campaign will be required. Nothing is impossible, but any detached observer would have to admit the permutations and percentages of Group B have suddenly got a lot harder. It was impossible to salvage too much from the wreckage of Wednesday night, and certainly not in the manner of defeat.

In fact, it was the kind of performance which must have left the entire European football world scratching their heads about a team who can impose their will so stoically to win home and away against France, yet make life so easy for a Georgian side with two 17-year-olds and a 16year-old in their ranks.

If it turned out that Giorgi Makaridze, Levan Mchedlidze and Levan Kenia were as good as anything Scotland were capable of producing, Kenny Miller last night admitted that Scotland for once had been "a bit of a soft touch".

"We weren't under any illusions that it was going to be an easy game, " Miller said.

"They're a good team and we were prepared for that but for some reason we never got started. We didn't begin the game the way we normally do, at a high tempo, getting at teams, working hard and shutting people down. We were a bit of a soft touch . . . we're usually really tough to beat but it was an off night.

"We were devastated at the end because we had an opportunity to go to Georgia, get a good win, then go into the last game in a real positive mood, " he added. "Although I suppose it does make it a bit easier because we now know what we have to do rather than thinking in terms of a point . . . we know we have to go and beat Italy to qualify and there's no reason why we can't. We've beaten France, we've beaten Ukraine and we've beaten everybody else.

If everybody's being honest, if we'd been offered the chance to be going into the last game having to beat Italy at home to qualify, we'd have taken that at the start. Maybe we've been due an off night, but it isn't easy to say that because it's hard to take when you've played so well over a period."

McLeish had had a blemish-free introduction to life at Scotland, but he too suddenly had problems on his hands. The squad was hit hard by call-offs by the likes of Scott Brown and Alan Hutton, the last-minute plan to introduce Shaun Maloney for Dailly to pepper the untested Georgian goalkeeper Makaridze was an attacking gamble which failed to pay off, and it only took half an hour for the manager to reverse his decision to start with Stephen Pearson in the middle and Darren Fletcher wide on the right of midfield.

The only genuine source of consolation is that . . . unlike England, for instance . . . Scotland do still have qualification in their own hands, and assuming there is no catastrophic loss of momentum from the Georgia game, they have proven they are capable of beating the best teams in the world at Hampden.

They have won all their home matches in this campaign and are undeniably a better team now than they were when they beat Holland in the playoff for Euro 2004, or drew 1-1 against Italy at Hampden in 2006.

Miller, who scored a fine headed goal that day to cap a superb personal performance, has more reason that most to recall that match.

"The last game against Italy was one of my finest performances ever, " he said. "The team had a great day but personally it was a day where everything went right for me.

We can take heart from that day because we've progressed since then."