Pool Q

Fair enough. I’d keep the faith in Russell, he’s as good as we have had in a while.

Who is it that is saying ‘give Horne a shot at 10 and see how he does?’

The entire team had an off day against Fiji (Horne included). The missed kick for touch against Italy was unforgivable, but it’s wrong to say he was poor all round. And I’d cite the 2016 game against France at Murrayfield against France, when he cane in after 5 minutes with the score at something like 10-0, and then played a key role in turning things round for a Scotland win. Should have started at 10 the following week in Dublin but Cotter came out with the ‘12 who can play a bit of 10’ guff, and selected Weir to start who was (not surprisingly) pretty hopeless. The step down from Russell to anyone we have is huge, I doubt Townsend will risk Laidlaw at 10 against England or Ireland.

Peter Horne is a far better 10 than Laidlaw, comfortably the best option we have after Russell. Putting Laidlaw there made sense in the context of getting Price on without sacrificing either Laidlaw’s kicking or game management. It surprised the players (all the training drills had been based around Horne going to 10 if Russell went off) and was a justifiable gamble as France had gone into headless chicken mode. England will massacre us if Laidlaw ends up there, Jones will be looking for it and just tell their players to run over the top of him. Attention to detail and discipline the French teams too often lack. Russell is a quality player who has had a couple of iffy games, hopefully he’ll be back to his best next week. They should tell him they’ll shoot his dog if he misses any penalty kicks to touch.

We almost always struggle at age group level. I’ve been to countless Schools, U18 and U20 games over the years watching my nephews, wins are a pretty rare thing. Remember a game in France from about , our U18s took a hell of a hammering from France. Certainly up to U18 level the other teams are usually noticeably bigger than our lads. Men against boys really. Also saw Scotland Scools lose to North Yorkshire schools once. Was told afterwards there were more registered rugby players at that age group in North Yorkshire than the whole of Scotland. That’s just North Yorkshire mind. The lack of depth has always been an issue of for us, there’s a reason why we have so many players from England or the Southern Hemisphere with Scottish grannies in and around the squad, which in part helps narrow the gap between us and others.

Both managers had plenty of justification for complaining about an utterly inept ref. A couple of the Hearts bookings were nonsense, while Wotherspoon was certainly unlucky. That aside the three worst games I've seen this season have been between these two teams, and yesterday's was (somehow) the worst of the three. Neither side deserved to win, if anything clubs should be docked points for dishing garbage like that up to the paying public. And they play each other again next week, so both managers can spend the week concentrating on how to stop the other side playing.

Precisely.

Levein is right that Brown gets away with murder every week (his tackle on Djoum in the same game was probably a red, with even Pat Bonner commenting that Brown might be lucky to still be on the pitch after it, but there you go) I'm not sure I agree with him that the foul on Cochrane is so bad that it is evidence that Brown effectively set out to 'do' him. It was a tough challenge and a foul, probably a booking too if the other way round, but the injury to Cochrane is as a result of Brown landing on him. That doesn't look deliberate to me, and in any case Levein can't be sure that it is. Brown was outplayed by Cochrane at Tynecastle, Levein must have known when selecting Cochrane he was sending him out against a fired up Celtic and Brown.

Do you mean Top 3?

Was always going to be a tough night after reaming them a few weeks back. At one point we were looking at 6 or 7 so 3-1 in the end isn’t that bad. This always felt like something we just had to get out of the way. Squad is a bit threadbare and asking a lot of some of the young players, although in general they have performed well. Hopefully Cochrane not badly injured.

Quite.

Thomson's is the best pub around there. A coule of minutes walk from Haymarket up Morrison Street, towards EICC.

Varga game was ‘72 maybe? Strange how things stay in your mind, ball went out for a corner, ending up in crowd, my Dad caught it and passed it to me to hand it over the railing to Varga. Joe Harper must have been playing, I’m sure I remember the locals singing the roll out the barrel song. I think it was the same season (or thereabouts) that we went to the last game of the season against Celtic at an absolutely packed Bayview. They had already won the league, won 6-0 (I think) that day and did a lap of honour after the game. Stein, McNeill, Johnstone, Macari, Lennox, Dalglish. You name it. Just about the best team in Europe at that time, with some of Scotland’s greatest players, strolling about a fitba’ Pitch in Methil.

One of the early games I went to was an East Fife vs Aberdeen game at Bayview. Midweek, I think it was one of Zoltan Varga’s first games for Aberdeen.

Brought up in Fife, but as a kid my Dad (who was from Fraserburgh originally) regularly used to take me to Aberdeen games in either Dundee or Fife. Never quite succeeded in turning me into an Aberdeen fan though, and I finally got to my first game at Tynecastle when I was 16 and old enough to get the train through to Edinburgh on my own. Been going for over 35 year now and have had a season ticket for most of that period, allowing for spells living and working away in London and Dublin, and a brief hiatus during the Romanov thing.

😄 Tremendous.

I don’t really have much of a point of view on him being arrogant to be honest, neither here nor there for me if he has the interests of the club at heart and does a good job. He was a disaster in the Scotland job, made a terrible appointment in Cathro, and then took too long to get rid of him when it was clearly not working. He has been told by Budge to fix a mess that he bears a large share of responsibility for creating, and seems to me to have made a good start to that. Not pretty etc, etc, but an improvement from finishing last season as the worst team in the league and starting this season by not being able to qualify out of a group ahead of Peterhead and Dunfermline. He’s a divisive character, always has been, there’s a decent chunk of the Hearts support that don’t like him. Most of what he has said he would view as standing up for the club and himself. He doesn’t work the media like some do, and I don’t agree with everything he does or says (the normal service resumed comment was just needless). But at the same time where Stewart is making no effort at all to be fair and objective (which he isn’t) I see no reason why Levein shouldn’t challenge it. And in that context I thought English was bang on in highlighting Stewart’s lack of objectivity last night.

Yes, sorry, my mistake.

No he hasn’t. He has recognised the simple fact that we haven’t conceded any goals (always qualified with a ‘goal that never was’ aside), followed by an ‘it’s not pretty but I guess it’s effective’ line. And praising any team for humping Celtic the way we did is no sort of indication of objectivity or impartiality. Hence why you like what Stewart is saying.

Absolutely, I was myself. But any suggestion that he has been full of praise for Levein is, I’m afraid, just so laughably wide of the mark that I honestly wouldn’t know where to start. But I’ve no desire to cause offence so if that’s what you think fair enough, just opinions. Stewart will get an audience. He is saying things fans of a lot of other clubs like to hear regardless of accuracy, and it is very clearly personal and lacking in any sort of subjectivity (as English just stopped short of saying).

Never.

I thought that, and seemed to contradict the criticisms he made of them a week or so back. In addition his condescending tone made him come across as a bit of a wank. Which meant when he (rightly) called out Stewart on his attitude and personal agenda regarding Levein sympathies were almost elsewhere.

Much depends on the wages Rangers are paying these players, but the loan with an option to purchase at a pre agreed maximum price seems sensible enough for a cash strapped club with an interim manager. Cummings and Martin are two players that aren’t good enough to get a game for mid table (at best) Championship clubs but I’d say both wll do OK up here. Murphy was good enough to play most games for Brighton in their promotion season, not quite good enough for the EPL. Again, probably do well enough up here. These deals all seem fairly sound to me. The bid for Jones, as reported (amount and structure), makes them look ridiculous.

The scurry back up the M6 by players who thought they had something only to find out they couldn’t hack it at a better level has become depressingly familiar. Not that surprising in the case of Cummings perhaps, was never that impressed with him at Hibs but (from a Scotland perspective) would be happy to be proved wrong. Hasn’t played since November though, and never struck me as someone who would knuckle down, work hard and earn back starting place even in what is a very ordinary Championship side. It’ll be spun by the media in Glasgow if he does end up at Rangers of course.

Who is hailing him as some kind of saviour? Certainly not anyone in the discussion yesterday (most of which you didn't listen to). The stats bit you focus on was a tiny bit of it. The main thrust of it was English being critical of how Regan and the SFA were handling the process of identifying, approaching and appointing Strachan's successor. Not least their publicly identifying him as their target before any approach or contact had been made, and their apparent lack of a Plan B if he knocks them back; Young and Miller said the SFA were handling it fine, would have a short list, and a Plan B. Young and Miller wanted to talk about Strachan and how it had been a mistake to get rid if him. English didn't particularly 'big-up' O'Neill, he said Strachan had been given two chances and had failed, whereas O'Neill had a better record. That's where the stats bit came in. Like Parkie, I'm happy to look at his competitive record, particularly when you consider the quality of player he had at his disposal. He's no miracle worker, despite your claim to the contrary noone is saying he is. But he appears to be within our budget, potentially available and capable of taking a squad of players like we have (or even worse) to a finals. Like English I'd like Regan to get on with it and see if we can get him or not. Miller and Young felt it more important to chutney on about whether or not Strachan should still be in the job. Miller seemed surprised that someone was challenging his words of wisdom.