Tough games will stand us in good stead for future, says Oli McBurnie
Scotland have faced the likes of Portugal, Peru and Belgium in friendlies this year
Scotland striker Oli McBurnie is convinced a run of difficult games will stand Alex McLeish's emerging team in good stead in the long run.
Scotland suffered a sixth defeat in eight games since McLeish took charge when they lost 3-1 against European champions Portugal on Sunday.
Most of the other defeats have come in friendlies against teams that featured at the summer's World Cup finals - Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru and Belgium - as McLeish experiments with young players and formations.
The costliest defeat and poorest performance came in last week's Nations League defeat by Israel but Scotland have the destiny of Group C1 in their own hands ahead of next month's trip to Albania and return game against Israel.
And McBurnie believes his international baptism of fire will ultimately help him and his team-mates.
"You look at the defeats and two of them in the last four games have been against Belgium and Portugal - the second-best team in the world and the European champions,'' the Swansea striker said.
"It's tough games and it's good for us to go against these tough teams, we learn a lot when we play against these teams. There's definitely things on Sunday that we can improve on but there's definitely things to be positive about as well.''
The 22-year-old added: "We are the underdogs going into most of these games, they are a lot higher ranked, but these games will stand us in good stead for the future.
"That's the idea, we can see there are things to improve on and we can take that into these next two qualifying games, they are the important ones.
"You could see there was improvement on Sunday from Thursday night and the more we get to see each other and play together, the understanding is only going to get better.'