smiler82
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Posts posted by smiler82
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48 minutes ago, The Black Bra said:
Before the Euros, there were a lot of people who fancied Slovakia as dark horses. It was mentioned that they'd beaten Spain in the qualifiers and been top of the group for a long time.
After having seen them a few times now really haven't been very impressed. Couldn't believe how negative they were against England yesterday considering they were ghe home team, opening game etc.
Think we should be going all out for a win when we play them away. Our strengths are in attack, we're poor at the back so there's no point sitting back and trying to be defensive.
Probably getting carried away now but imagine if we had 9 points going into Wembley game?
Definitely getting carried away.....
Agreed.... They were very poor at the Euro's (at least they got there) and didn't show much against England... However, no matter how poor England were going forward they didn't give Slovakia a second on the ball, so its hard to judge as they will have more time on the ball when they play us.
There is not much between the teams and from what I saw yesterday, its not exactly an intimidating arena to play in - if we get 3 points against Lithuania then we should go and try to win the match -
17 minutes ago, macy37 said:
It amazes me the amount of folk saying that it was good to familiarize ourselves with the Malta stadium ahead of September.
It's Malta ffs. If we can beat them playing the stadium blind then the baws burst.
I do agree to an extent but unfortunately these games are no longer the fairly certain 3 points they were 10-15 years ago.
The manager/ SFA have been slated before for bad preparation - we are normally awful in these type of matches so at least we are now thinking ahead and obviously doing all they can to prepare to get off to a good start
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We will beat Malta 1-0 or 2-0 with a very underwhelming performance and then we will sleepwalk into 3rd place whilst showing some 'promise' for the next campaign
Standard Stuff
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4 minutes ago, bossman4 said:
Yes was the same stadium, squad actually stay in Malta till Friday Radio Scotland said last night.
That's a good thing I suppose... I always think of Macedonia away (lost 1-0) where we arrived the afternoon of the day before the game... Had a 1 hour training session on the pitch and no time to get used to the heat.
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Pointless if we only go there to defend... Surely we need to practice opening up and attacking teams even if we do end up with a heavier defeat.
Is this the stadium where we play Malta? If so, familiarisation with the surroundings (avoiding another Georgia) for the game vs Maltais the main positive I can think of as it would have done zero for player confidence.
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We conceded a sloppy goal but after Fletcher missed a golden opportunity. We could go round the houses on this a number of times but the topic of the thread is S Fletcher.
In my view someone else needs to have their turn as Fletcher didn't do enough in this campaign to retain his place and have a system built around him.
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Iceland would be a good friendly... the Swiss qualified with a slightly above average squad so lets play them away from home and set up to go and win the game. Would be good to play an Eastern European side and start to get into the habit of going there and winning.
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apart from the goals we didn't score in Tbilisi
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Will be a loss in the sense that its a midfielder we cannot select when we have injuries but I didn't feel he offered much at all in this campaign... He should be an understudy to Fletcher and McCarthur in the next campaign or he can take the easy route and just pack it in because he senses what is coming
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Its two very different things to be an impact striker off the bench or a main striker backed by the manager. You cant judge Rhodes on 20 odd minutes against Georgia and if anything it was us that were tiring... Rhodes needs a run of games up front to get him ready for the next campaign
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He needs to get his chance in the next campaign... I am wondering what Strachan's motives are for starting Fletcher last night, either letting him finish the campaign as the main striker before he gives someone else their chance or a statement that Fletcher will remain our main striker. I hope its the former and Rhodes steps in for fourth coming friendlies before the next campaign.
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That's a fair point however I would say that Rhodes is more of a natural goal scorer that Fletcher and works harder. Easy to elevate those on the bench but would still say that Fletchers big chance was against Georgia and he went in with his wrong foot and didn't even look like he believed he could get there
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Crazy that these type of threads always happen after a trip... Give the fans a pass - Thursday was a bitter pill to swallow and the game was meaningless so fair play to those that made the best of the trip and actually went to the game! What were you expecting? Would you have preferred that they gave Strachan and the team pelters for 90mins?
I want Strachan to stay on for the next campaign and we have made progress (although not enough yet) so was good that the fans backed him
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Cant agree with that one... He played well in both Poland matches but his big moment was Georgia away and our key striker should have met Robertson's cross with his bad foot and put us ahead - would have been an entirely different game.
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I would add that although we are not blessed with top class players that can change a game in an instant, I do feel we have a squad that is good enough to qualify for Euro Championships and get to world cup play offs.
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Georgia is the obvious one, even a point would have got us somewhere but after 75mins it looked like the players decided the game a was a write off as we were not getting 3pts. However, for me we lost it in the games where we had the upper hand... Poland and Germany away where big chances but it appeared that we didn't believe we could get anything against Germany and a point at best against Poland.
I felt our best performance of the campaign was the first 65mins against Poland but after 2-1 we decided to sit on it where I felt we had the chance to go and kill the game off - in the end we were very lucky to get away with a point! When it was 1-1 against Germany we sat back and did exactly the same thing - it was a free hit and Germany struggled to get out of second gear... It was a huge chance for us but we slipped into the old Levein, Burley and Craig Brown tactic of 'lets try and sneak a draw'.
Hindsight is a great thing but I hope Strachan stays on and we learn from this experience. When we have the upper hand in away games then we need the killer instinct to take three points as opposed to settling for one - Slovenia, Lithuania and Slovakia will be those type of games! The most frustrated I have been at a game was watching us settle for a 0-0 away to Lithuania when it was clear they were there for the taking!
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Should I start a thread about throw ins?
It was incredible the lack of movement and subsequently the time it took for us to take the throw ins.
That really annoyed me as well as Hutton's insistence that he has some mammoth throw where most of the time it barely makes the penalty box
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Reading this thread was highly entertaining... That's all!
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Ritchie impressed me when he played at Anfield, he looked sharp and showed a good range of passing, on more than one occasion he switched play with one pass, he also put in some really dangerous crosses. IMHO he's a better player than Forrest, he's certainly showed more of a football brain than I've seen from JF.
Watching Ritchie for 10mins made me angry as to why Forrest started the game - he was a passenger today
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Surely now that's it for Fletcher in this campaign... He played well in Warsaw but totally ineffective in the last three games.
His confidence is too low at the moment - he looks like he doesn't believe he can score. Russell, Naismith, Griffith and even Armstrong need to be ahead of him for Poland
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I miss Kenny Miller.
100%
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Ritchie looked good and linked up well with Martin... Forrest' final ball is shockingly bad
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To add to that - all this is assuming we beat Poland which I just can't see happening at the moment...
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We have given Ireland two attempts at getting 3 points ... I think that if Germany beat Ireland then Poland have qualified and assuming we beat Poland then Germany win the group. Therefore Poland's final game has no real meaning for them except pride which leaves the door wide open for IrelandThe only result that can deny us 3rd place is dropping points to Gibraltar or Ireland beating Germany.
Every other worst-case scenario (us losing tonight and Ireland winning tonight) has no effect on our final position.
Plug the scores into here: http://ultra.zone/UEFA-EURO-2016-qualifying#group=d
Essentially the game v Poland is our biggest game since we played Italy in 2007.
Any result we get tonight or if Ireland drop points makes the Ireland - Germany result irrelevant and puts it back entirely into our hands.
Positives at last
in TA specific
Posted
The most pleasing thing is that Strachan (on the whole) played the guys who were playing well or regularly for their clubs... Bannan, Snodgrass, Burke Patterson and Robertson are all playing with some confidence and it made a difference in the 2nd half. Hopefully that continues and we don't keep faith guys who got us points earlier in the campaign - I feel that ultimately cost us in the last campaign.
Hanley and Martin are the two exceptions who are not playing regularly and it certainly showed... If they can get themselves in the team then we have the makings of a reasonably solid team. Given our limited options defensively then it may force Strachan to go and attack sides away from home.
Burke and Ritchie could play a big part for us there is potential that they could strike up a good partnership on each flank with Robertson and Patterson... could make a difference this campaign