SCOTLAND's victorious footballers flew back into Glasgow at 3am yesterday to find a large crowd of people already waiting at the airport.

Admittedly they were waiting for their luggage. A holiday flight from Tenerife had landed not long before the Scottish Football Association party's return from Macedonia and it was standing room only around the baggage carousels. Still, it was a welcome party of sorts. The tourists were excited to find themselves mingling with the players and management. They were happy and pleasantly surprised, too, to learn that the team had won. It was a scene of smiles and back-slapping all round.

The question around Scotland right now is this: is Gordon Strachan building something that can make everyone permanently feel good about its national team? People - supporters and certainly the media - have been burned before by signs and claims of tentative progress, only for the usual tailspin to begin until another manager is tossed out and the whole sorry process starts again. To be honest the argument for "progress" and "momentum" after being played off the pitch by Belgium on Friday owed as much to blind faith as they did to what everyone saw with their own eyes at Hampden. Beating Croatia and twice taking the lead against England at Wembley felt like being thrown a lifebelt after the unremitting misery of following Scotland over the past couple of years and there has been a desperate longing for it to continue.

There could have been no airbrushing of Scotland's inadequacies if they'd lost to Macedonia. The game, meaningless though it was in terms of a long dead World Cup qualifying group for Scotland, had the potential to do real damage to how Strachan was perceived. Defeat would have reduced the results in his reign to an extension of Craig Levein's rather than something distinctly different. Instead, wonderfully, for one night at least the troubles were washed away as Scotland delivered a positive, entertaining, encouraging performance and victory.

In his seven matches so far Strachan has used 32 players: 29 of them had played for Scotland before. Drawing from the same pool makes it harder for one manager to make his reign look different from his predecessor's. Liam Bridcutt and George Boyd have had only cameo roles so far but in Ikechi Anya there is a player who makes Strachan's Scotland look fresh and interesting. It may be that Anya will never have another international performance quite as vibrant and rewarding as Tuesday's, in which he gave right-back Daniel Georgieveski a fearful run around and scored an excellent opening goal before Shaun Maloney's late second. Macedonia's back four were a mess and Anya will be lucky if he has it so easy again against an international defence. But what was so refreshing was Strachan's willingness to let him express himself, the little 25-year-old's ability to dictate the game, and the infectious, bubbly personality he brought to the entire camp over their week-and-a-half together.

Anya's blend of gutsy commitment on the field, and his impeccable manners off it, could not be further up Strachan's street. "He sat in the dressing room after the game and said to me 'thanks very much for giving me my cap'. I just looked at him and said it was nothing to do with me. He did it.

"He was at Wycombe Wanderers, then he was out of football for a year. He didn't have a club but searched for one after going to Glenn Hoddle's Football Academy [for players without clubs]. He played reserve games and worked his way up. That's what I really enjoy: seeing guys like that being successful. He's got such a great character. He's wonderfully, wonderfully polite. Throw in the fact he can play like that and it's great.

"And it's the same with Shaun Maloney. I've seen other players he's played alongside with who don't work as hard as him, train as hard as him or commit themselves as much as him. Then they go out of the game and say they were unlucky because the manager didn't like them. No, the manager loves any good player. It just so happens that Shaun works harder than anyone else."

Scotland teams rarely play with poise. When they have the ball they look uncomfortable with it, rushed and scampering until inevitably a hurried move breaks down. Skopje was much better in that respect. It became the ideal fixture for a team needing to develop its confidence. Macedonia were poorer than expected - and certainly poorer than they had been at Hampden - and an unusually high amount of possession allowed Scotland to put together the sort of passing triangles Strachan wants to encourage around the field. He wants them to believe they can trust each other and it was good for them to see so much of the ball and generally use it well.

The attacking four of Anya, Maloney, Barry Bannan and Steven Naismith provided an antidote to the feeling of helplessness against Belgium's towering giants. Scotland can win small. It was suggested to Strachan that he had won with a team resembling the seven dwarves. "It was a bit like that, yeah. You need to be braver when you're that size. The front four: Bannan, Maloney, Naismith and 'Ketch', were so brave. It's easy to flick at the ball and hope for the best, making sure you don't make a mistake. You can pass a bad ball on to someone else. But those boys generally gave each team-mate a good ball.

"At 1-1 I thought football was being really cruel to the team. But then Shaun scored and you fall back in love with football all over again, just 30 seconds later. This is a marker for us, sure, but it's also a marker to the other players who want to try and get into the team. It's not going to be easy for them. They're going to need to play like that and be brave like that."

The side will continue to evolve and change. Croatia was the start of the four-game sequence which is being embraced as Scotland's new dawn, yet five of the team which began in Zagreb were not on at kick-off in Skopje. Yet it still feels like a sequence of results from a single, improving unit. Naturally Strachan needs consistency of selection but even in the absence of certain starters such as Allan McGregor, Darren Fletcher, Steven Fletcher and possibly James Morrison he can still shape the mood around the squad in general, making the Scotland camp feel positive and progressive.

For some, like Naismith, coming away on international duty now offers a break from the frustration of being underused at club level. Strachan praised Naismith's intelligence and ability to bring the supporting three into the play when he operated as the one out-and-out forward. "He was terrific. He gave us a focal point, a landing area. The midfield appreciated that. It would be great if he could get more football now."

Naismith has played only 37 minutes of Barclays Premier League football for Everton this season. Bannan has just moved from a pretty big English club to a smaller one. Maloney has just been relegated with Wigan. Anya's in the English Championship, too. Further back in the team, Alan Hutton is paid by Aston Villa but unwanted by them.

There are those for whom coming away with Scotland could become a highlight of their season. If more is seen of the bright, vibrant team which revealed itself in Skopje, that could count for the rest of us too.