'Wild.

Horrendous." Who would have guessed Gordon Strachan was talking about Cappielow? Scotland's visit to that picturesque hamlet on the Clyde was greeted with the sort of inclement Greenock weather that would have repelled a Viking invasion. The international squad trained, though, and the mood remains sunny.

The manager, however, knows that this evening's match against the United States signals the start of a period when storm clouds can gather. And quickly. The lost cause of a World Cup qualifying group was fought well by Strachan and his troops but the arrival of Juergen Klinsmann and his side offers a severe test ahead of a European qualifying campaign that will make extraordinary demands of the Scotland manager and squad.

It is difficult to prise a definitive verdict from Strachan on his expectations or apprehensions. He reserves the sparkling insight for his TV commentary on other teams, preferring to be soberly reserved when discussing his own side. Yet he has led Scotland to victory in three challenging, competitive matches, beating Croatia home and away and defeating Macedonia in Skopje. He has imposed a shape on the team that owes at least something to pragmatism.

Strachan has bowed to reality. The idea of Scotland playing the ball out from the back on all occasions was rendered absurd by the performance in the first 15 minutes against Wales at Hampden. But he has been bold in picking wide players and has been rewarded by excellent performances from Robert Snodgrass of Norwich City and Watford's Ikechi Anya.

His shape and strategy have also been drawn up and judged successful. "There is something we feel comfortable with but we might not always be able to do that for some reason or another," he said yesterday. "You don't chop and change to take into account the other team too often; there might be the odd occasion where they are so good that you might have to think about that. But it's good that you have a kind of idea of how you're going to play, so that when the players come here they know what they have to do, instead of starting all over again every time. I think we just keep doing what we're doing. The players are comfortable with it but the system is only as good as how the players perform it."

The departure of Craig Levein during the most recent qualifying campaign has given Strachan a chance to assess resources before the Euro 2016 qualifying group matches. Has he marked down those players he believes are reliable? "There are more as the months go on, that's for sure," he said. "You might have question marks when you first start in the job but there aren't question marks now. There are more pluses than negatives."

The goalkeeping position holds little worry with Allan McGregor of Hull City, recovering from surgery, being shadowed by another Barclays Premier League goalkeeper in David Marshall of Cardiff City. The midfield has a glut of competent players and Steven Naismith has led the line with vigour and technique in the recent qualifiers against Macedonia and Croatia. "We know what he can do," was Strachan's brisk assessment of the Everton player. However, the Scotland manager will almost certainly use Steven Fletcher, the Sunderland striker, as his "point man" tonight. Fletcher, injured after five minutes in the defeat to Wales in March, has impressed Strachan. "He has that quality to make a squad and a team better," he said of a forward who is desperate to kickstart a Scotland career that stalled under Levein and has produced one goal in 12 caps.

If this is a squad that is speckled by quality but marked with the high competence of Premier League players in England and Scotland, it also contains one oddity. Alan Hutton, at 28, is not so much frozen out at Aston Villa but resembles that packet of fish fingers that is found between drawers in the freezer with a sell-by date that suggests it should have been consumed in the Great War. It is not difficult to see why Phil Bardsley, a player famously festooned with bank notes, would not be a Strachan player but Hutton retains his place not because of the paucity of options but because the manager rates him highly.

"He's been brilliant. It's a mystery of football, how he's not getting a game somewhere," said Strachan. "I look at other games in the Premier League, look at right-backs and think: 'He's better than him, he's better than him . . .'. The games he's played for us recently have been outstanding. And he's not playing against teams away down at 100th in the world rankings. He's doing it against the teams at the top of the world game.

"Off the pitch he's smashing, too. He's always polite with good conversation. He's not as good as Charlie Adam - he likes to talk - but Alan is great and I just find his situation very, very strange. Is is becoming more difficult to pick him? No. Some players need games, I know that, but he's strange. Whatever he's doing, he's keeping himself in good nick."

Scotland, too, are in reasonable shape, though that might be tested by a USA team who can reflect on a 5-1 victory in the more recent match between the teams. Strachan's task for tonight is simply stated though perhaps harder to achieve. "We aim to send them home feeling good about themselves, as individuals and as a group," he said of his players. "If we can do that now, great, we've got four months where we can look forward to working again. But this period has been good for everybody."

The manager is content in the present but forecasts must yet be cautious on a Scotland side that faces two friendlies and then the squalls and storms of qualifying for a major tournament.