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This all over. As a back up player he's good enough and he's done alright when he's been put in. Continually banging on about Norway's mislead too. No one came out of that game covered in glory, we were pretty rubbish all over the pitch, and lucky to get a win. Suddenly it's all greers fault that the entire team didn't perform and only he's not god enough. ok.. that's logic i can get behind. I'd agree that "Statistics can sometimes be misleading", but when the statistic is clean sheets, it's a much harder one to argue with. You can argue that he's not played great in those games if you like, but the original accusation that hes bad and to deny that he's played a part in keeping those 3 clean sheets in the 4 games he's played is just disrespectful to someone who's come in done a job for the national side.

Russell, Fraser, Cairney are the only likely candidates for me. Maguire's not in as good form as he was last season, so i think he's unlikely and russell plays a similar role and is better. palmer's been mostly used at right back, but i don't think he's really ready yet. another year or two and maybe. broadfoots too old and as has been said strachan already knows caddis. it was probably fraser, but as he didn't get game time on tuesday he's probably not going to be called barring a lot of withdrawls.

Aye, forget 3 straight clean sheets, dont' trouble yourself with facts and results, it was nothing to do with him.. just buy into the ethereal 'he put other people under pressure'.

Please explain why Greer is bad, given that the 4 games he's started for us were a clean sheet agains the USA, a clean sheet in Norway, a clean sheet in Poland and a draw with Nigeria? I think far too many people just don't like that he's 33 and for them he's not a glamorous name.. so berate him for no other reason than that. He's been a solid option for us. I'd like to think the fans would at least give him some respect for that. He's not a long term option, no one is suggesting he is, but he's come in and done a job in a problem position for us, and if 75% clean sheets is bad by your reckoning then i can see you having a miserable time watching basically any football anywhere.

I remember reading that he grew up watching Scotland games with his dad, who's from Glasgow. Clearly not a Scottish bone in his body, he should eff off and stop making our national side such a sham.. ...

Chris Martin on Steve McLaren and the Scottish contingent at Derby: "There’s a bit of banter back and forth about the Scotland-England thing, to be honest. He gives us some stick but he didn’t do too well as England manager so he gets it back as well."

watt.. better than martin... umm.. yeah.. clearly..

I saw something where his manager was saying he had great potential.. if he was playing regularly and scoring a few goals i'd be more inclined to buy into it. It seem weird if he really did rave about a player that he doesn't pick.

Hmm Maloney can play out there, Dorrans has played out there, Bannan or Burke can swap flanks easy enough as well. I wouldn't call Bannan a wide right player, but he does a good job for us there. So it's more about whether we have players versatile enough to perform there rather than a 'true' left winger. Anya's not really a left winger either remember. He's _very_ right footed and mostly plays on the right when he turns out for watford afaik. I expect that after this campaign we'll probably see Maloney and Burke move out of the squad and the likes of GMS and Fraser will be looking to secure places in their stead. I think we're looking ok for a few years yet. The only concern is obviously center backs.. but we'll just have to wait and see who comes thru or rediscovers form on that one.

Cairney could be the other youngish player, give his recent injury scare which fits with what WGS was saying. But i think it's more likely to be Ryan Fraser as he's been out recently and is back fit for Bournemouth's match tonight. As for Rhodes, he's not started the seaon on fire, his scoring record is very similar to May who's settling into a new club, at a new level and netted 2 in the last 3 league games. For WGS that pick seems to be more about getting ot know the player and giving him a taster to spur him on to greater heights in the future. I'm curious why some think Watt is worth a call up? Other than "he's quick", he doesn't seem to be pulling up trees in Belgium just now. He's not starting games and 10 games into their season he's got just the one goal. I'm curious how anyone can justify that shout on merit. As for Burke, he's started every league game for the team 1 point off the top off the championship, so while i haven't seen every forest game, it's fair to assume he's doing something right. it's a good squad, mixes experience and youth and contains all of our best 11 players. we can go into both these games with no real worries about who was called up. hopefully everyone remains unscathed thru the remaining games between now and the qualifiers.

it's all very weird. but now he's in the team and playing games so.... ok. good.

"Hanley was again the weak link in the team." I thought we did reasonably well defensively all night. When you think what the germans are capable of, we pressured, we blocked and we stayed organised for almost the full 90 minutes. they didn't rip us apart and if one of our center backs was a terrible as you're making out we'd have lost by a lot more. "Martin was found wanting for the 1st goal, both in positioning and in effort." huh? there was very little we could do with the first goal once the cross is hit. muller's got up really well, he's being challenged by martin and hutton, they're right on him, but the ball and his jump is inch perfect. the only chance we had there was to stop the ball coming in in the first place. anya's got sucked inside i think due to mulgrew being out of position and whittaker's not stepped up to cover the wide man. he leaves anya with both and covers a guy who's already marked by 3 instead. then when the ball comes across anya (understandably) can't get there quick enough. blaming it on martin (and questioning his effort!?) i really don't understand. "I've watched McArthur play better games" no question. he was pretty ineffectual in every way when he came on. I don't remember a single game for us where he's actually played as well as he can. just one of those that can't do it at international level. I'd rather see us use morrison deeper or give macdonald a shot than see mcarthur play again. "Mulgrew was extremely stupid" i guess. seemed incredibly harsh to hand out the second booking so quickly for a relatively minor offense, especially after drum and muller's fouls. i wonder if the ref didn't realise it was mulgrew until after he'd gone for the card. silly to have kicked it, it gave teh ref the opportunity to make a harsh sending off. My take-away from the reaction on here is we're far too down on our dfensive players. i've seen people criticising martin, hanley, whittaker, mulgrew and morrison.. who exactly do they think stopped the german midfield just running roughshod over us for 90 minutes? hutton and fletcher by themselves? it was a decent team effort, we stay organised for the most part (notable exception being the 2nd goal) and while we had a few last ditch challenges, they were made. we got blocks in and while marshall had a few notable saves to make, against the world champions it was a good display. Better teams than us have lost by a lot more, very recently and many good teams have failed to be as much of a threat to beating them as we were. I'm gutted to have lost, but there's no way in the world that half the team played as badly as some would have you believe.

Cairney and McArthur are totally different players, who play very different roles in the midfield. Why you'd want one instead of the other I'm not sure. I'll agree that McArthur doesn't really seem up to it at this level. He's consistantly been disappointing when interntional opportunities have presented themselves, but he's in no way competing with Cairney. Cairney is rightfully behind Bryson, but I'm sure he's not far off making a squad.

From my memory, Morrison was fine in the 2-0 over Croatia and the win in Poland. So not sure why those have been turned into 'bad games' for him. He wasnt in west broms starting 11? eh? He played 35 of their 41 games last season and of the last 14 of those games, he missed one and started 10. I can't help but think you're making stuff up. He was ok last night. He didn't do much that was flashy or creative, but he got around the park and moved the ball on. I don't remember him giving away possession particularly, do you? He did a decent job against the world champions having had an operation in the summer, missed pre-season, only just got back fit in time to play 20 minutes of premier league football and missed a fair chunk of Scotland training with a suspected groin strain. If on that basis you think his number's up and he shouldn't play for us again.. well i'm glad you have absolutely no input into the national sides management.

I was at the QPR sunderland game last week and paid a lot of attention to Fletcher. He was a level above the rest of the attackers Sunderland had. He worked hard, even dropping deeper to start moves when QPR gained the upper hand. Touch was good, made the right runs, looked to work angle and laid if off well. He was very much let down by the lack of quality around him. Johnson was out of position and lacks any pace or will to be adventurous. Nothing came off for Wickham at all, he just gave the ball away when it went to him. Rodwell dropped way too deep and never played aforward ball the entire game. Meanwhile Larsson just disappeared completely. You'd have been forgiven for not knowing he was even playing. Fletcher was the only player really looking to make a difference and get something going. His substitution made no sense to me or the friend i went with. I'd start with him, with Naismith behind. If Sunderland had better player arond Fletcher they've had easily beaten QPR.

---------------- McGregor Hutton -- Martin -- Hanley -- Forsyth ------ D. Fletcher -- Mulgrew Morrison ---- Naismith ----- Anya --------------S. Fletcher Looks the best to me.