Scotland coach Craig Levein was philosophical after his first defeat in charge, going down 3-0 to Sweden. Levein is confident there will be a vast improvement in next month's Euro 2012 qualifiers against Lithuania and Liechtenstein.

Sweden were comfortable winners in Stockholm as goals from Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Emir Bajrami and Ola Toivonen gave them a deserved 3-0 victory.

"I'm disappointed overall but I don't want to get too down-hearted about it," said Levein. "I feel that there were perfectly valid excuses for our performance this evening.

"One of them, of course, was the way Sweden played and I thought they played very well indeed.

"I think the lack of experience was evident tonight and part of that was the host of withdrawals. I also decided to have a look at one or two players on top of that.

"Tonight we certainly didn't defend anywhere near as well as we know we can. I have to take responsibility for that, for putting together such a young and inexperienced backline.

"We didn't quite defend properly all over the pitch, we were caught between whether to press or protect and we did neither in the first half and because of that we lost two goals.

"We did slightly better in the second half and we had a few chances that we might have converted. But overall, I've got to say it was a disappointing evening."