Marky

Another measure of our standing now is that we don’t even warrant studio guests on Sky any more. 🤣

I think you accidentally made that sound like a good prospect, rather than the utterly, horrendous, fear inducing prospect that it actually is.

Ach come on mate, it’s not as simple as that is it. Winning at half time might be better than than losing or drawing but let’s keep it in context. We were extremely lucky to be winning against a team that for their entire history have been in the whipping boy category or at the very best the next layer up of European guff. All I’ve said in any of my posts on this thread is that if we have fallen to a level where we now need to be chuffed about luckily scraping 2-1 victories against Cyprus, then I find that a rather depressing thought. I am absolutely not one of these people who think we have a divine right to beat anyone (despite growing up in the “glory days”). I said as much in the Nations league about Israel and Albania, but we beat them comfortably (with the obvious exception of Israel away) and we did so playing some very nice football. In my opinion (and it is only my opinion), we have not put in one single acceptable performance under Clarke. You could perhaps argue San Marino at home, but it’s hard to get too excited by that. Hopefully the Kazakhstan game will throw up something better.

Erm....right there. ETA..........ah you said Clarke, not Scotland. i take it back. Humble apologies.

He was suggesting that away to Cyprus is a harder game than home to Bulgaria and that we should be happy that we managed to squeak a couple of lucky wins against them. He was also saying that we should expect to lose at home to Russia and even more bizarrely away to Kazakhstan. The only games we should have been expecting to lose would be against Belgium and perhaps away to Russia. His post only goes to reaffirm tho my point earlier about just how incredibly far the expectations of the average Scotland fan have fallen.

I’m sorry mate, but I completely disagree with this post in every sense. I was delighted with the Nations League results against Israel and Albania because as a realist I accepted that by the very nature of the Nations League these teams were “our level” and we beat them playing for the most part reasonably entertaining football. If you are now claiming that Cyprus is our level then we really are fucked.

At the risk of repeating myself, it seems that the folk being positive are thinking that the folk being negative are being so because of the scoreline. I can only speak for myself by my criticism is of the performance, which for the most part (in my opinion) was horrendous.

Unless things improve dramatically Kevie, the play off will not be a set of matches. It will be one match.

It’s not about the score line buddie. Like you say, even in our heyday we rarely pumped teams. It’s about the performance. People have suggested that it was an “average” performance or an adequate one because we won the match 2-1. It wasn’t though. Not only were we lucky to win it, it was a terrible, uninspiring, lacklustre performance in which we luckily managed to edge out another terrible team. Anyone who thinks a performance even remotely like that will be good enough to beat any of the countries we are likely to meet in the play off is off their head. A confidence building victory would’ve been going away, winning the game by pretty much any score line, but doing so in a comfortable, entertaining and positive way. What I referred to a “depressing stuff”” was seeing us playing keep ball in the corner with 5 minutes to go against Cyprus, in match that that had no real significance at all.

Depressing stuff.

Maybe Jim fixed it for him.

McBurnie looks like a competition winner.

Not sure how your post relates to mine?? It’s not living in the past to offer up evidence of how far we have fallen. Strange response.

You forgot the 00s as well. We are the worst we’ve ever been.

If you ever wanted evidence of how we have fallen as a football nation and how far fans’ expectations have fallen, then it’s the fact that some folk seem reasonably happy with that first half. Good grief.