dezmondo

I predict Israel at home and a home final draw. If we are drawn away for the final I think I'll gamble on £100 return flights to Oslo.

He should be our captain in my eyes. The first thing you expect from a captain is to turn up and play and be willing to run through a brick wall for team or country, that sadly is not the case with Robertson. I have it on good authority that Robertson isn't fully committed. Something along the lines of 'he hates it, can't be bothered with all the captain stuff". Apologies, I'm not trying to take away from the OP and I can assure you I I don't post unverified nonsense or try to pretend I'm in the know when I'm not. It's just what I've heard second hand from a very trusted friend.

Absolutely agree. There's nobody at all and I think it makes a massive difference. Whether it's a strong personality or somebody who is vocal there's just nobody. We also miss not having a few units/bullies in our team. Every other team I see has a few but we don't really have anyone, maybe a few with potential. Again, i think it makes a difference, not only to the actual performance of the team but also mentally.

Now you're being silly. That was nowhere near our strongest team!

I think it's now fair to say that both previous managers weren't quite as bad as a lot of folk thought. Strachan I personally thought his time was up as he had his chance and failed. Now I'm beginning to think I was wrong. There's no way we would be any worse off than we are now, and most likely we would be in a better position with the advantage of continuity. We were performing better than we are now, we had a fair bit of momentum and Strachan himself admitted he had seen the err of his ways in the middle of his tenure - by overthinking and complicating his lineups. McLeish I said at the time and I stand by it, he simply wasn't as bad as most people thought or would have you believe. Bottom line - if McLeish had been in charge last night, this board and social media etc would have been going into meltdown today! The guy got pillered from day one and wasn't given a fair crack in my opinion. He had 6 competitive matches in charges and won 4. Israel away wasn't as bad as everyone thought and was a typical albeit not acceptable loss that most Scotland managers have suffered. Kazakhstan was a disaster, so essentially he was bagged for one bad loss - despite having a group of players not turning up (I know the players not turning up is an issue itself that doesn't reflect well on the manager). I'm not saying he definitely shouldn't have been sacked but it would maybe have helped if he got the support and patience that Clarke appears to be getting. My point simply is I don't think we're currently any better off. I'm not convinced that team last night would have fared any better against Kazakhstan away - despite Clarke having a better pool of players to choose from. I'm in no way against Clarke and will support him and hope he does well. I just think think the players continue to get off lightly with their abject performances, the grass isn't always greener on the other side when it comes to our managers, and our problems run far deeper than just our choice of manager.

Did nobody else notice that from about the 15 min mark for 10 minutes or so that the Russians were constantly hitting the deck and staying down on a couple of occasions. It totally upset our rhythm and didn't recover from it. We are really missing a few characters in the team. Obviously a dominant centre half, but an imposing midfielder who can drive the team on and pull the strings...hopefully Mctominay or Mcginn will grow into this role with experience. We also badly need creativity, every time we get into the final third we pass it sideways..... Christie looked good when he came on. We are in a real bad place at the moment. We look worse than average and don't have much that really improves on our starting line up tonight. When was the last time we lost a qualifier at home against a team who isn't one of the 'elite'? The attendances are depressing and will only get worse. Terrible terrible time to be a Scotland fan.

Slightly off topic, does anyone know if you can see the loyalty points table online? Just been trying to estimate how many tickets we'll get per match at the euros if we qualify, around 9000?

David Bates told to find a new club by Hamburg.

I don't suppose anyone knows where you can buy the current goalkeeper top in a junior size. Not listed on the JD site.

I think that's very harsh to be honest. He may not have had a typically good game but 'rubbish' is being ridiculous. He had a decent game, good effort on goal in the first half plus a number of dangerous crosses. Defended OK but lost the ball on a few occasions. Second top rating on BBC and decent ratings on any other site I've looked at.

It's a complete nonsense. They clearly know where it's going to be but wait until the 120 days before to announce it. Why can't they just announce it, surely doesn't take 6 months to decide and confirm a venue.

Wild Rose I thought was excellent. Good Scottish film, great original music and quite poignant. I quite like Country music which is a bonus but don't think it would matter too much.

I do feel a bit for McLeish. He's a passionate Scotsman, served his country well as a player, had a great spell as manager last time around, and is obviously trying his best at the moment. I don't buy into "he walked out on us last time " stuff, he came in during the middle of a campaign, done a good job and at the end of the campaign decided he wanted back into club management. He's also been let down by some of his players and they should be equally to blame. He won the nations league albeit with a poor result and performance in Israel but the flip side was a resounding 4 0 won and performance in Albania. As far as the friendlies go I was never too concerned. He had a second string squad in Peru and Mexico, we played quality teams in Belgium and Israel whilst still experimenting with his personnel. San Marino.......we won, we could've easily had 2 or 3 more goals. We laboured a bit but not too surprising given the journey to Kazakhstan beforehand and the changes to the squad. Kazakhstan was a disaster. There's one thing getting beat but to get pumped 3 0 is unacceptable. I listened to an interview prior to the game and McLeish talked about how they had done their homework on them, watched loads of matches of teams managed by their new manager, and I was confident that we'd get the result. I think it's obvious that he was out foxed and worryingly for me he didn't know how to change things early on....how there were no subs until 60 mins is unbelievable. Overall, I don't think he's as bad as he's been made out. Levein and Burley were worse. He's also operating with no proven strikers really available to him and trying to blood a new defence. I can totally see the argument for him getting sacked but our problems run deeper than McLeish and if he stays on he'll get my support. On another note, I'm not seeing this whole "he doesn't look well" stuff. He just looks older to me. I watched a number of his interviews last night and he does come across different than years ago but I don't see someone ill or someone with health problems, I just see him maybe slightly slower in his responses, possibly stressed, I suppose time will tell.

Better than hearing the "I hope you die in your sleep Nacho Novo" chant outside the stadium. What kind of arsehole sings that never mind at a Scotland match?

He played on Sunday afternoon! He was ruled out by the same night so if his toothache was so bad as you said he would not have been able to play on Sunday afternoon. He is a professional football player earning a fortune so for a routine toothache he would have had root canal treatment done which wouldn't stop you plating football. The fact that surgery has been required almost certainly suggests he has had a wisdom tooth extracted where he has been nursing along a sore wisdom tooth and waited until the international break to elect to have it done. Not good enough for a Scotland captain.

Robertson chose to hold off and deal with a dental issue during the international break, pretty poor from a Scotland captain in my opinion.

Well said. Berti gets far too much stick in my opinion. We've had worse since.

The bottom line is that there is no conclusive evidence that such pitches cause injuries. The players had one important 90 minutes to play on an artificial surface, you would think they were getting asked to play on fucking lava or something. It's a convenient pathetic excuse. As a dentist I find it hard to fathom that Andy Robertson could be fine to play on Sunday but not fit to fly that night, so yes, he's clearly chose to delay treatment which I expect will be a wisdom tooth issue, as captain, that is unacceptable for me.

Apparently a bust up with Mcgregor and Mcfadden post match ?

I've booked the bus from the airport to Rimini. It's 17 euros and takes 90 mins. Saves any hassle getting from the airport to the train station and shouldn't take any longer, although i think there's only one bus every 2 hours or so.

Anyone else who selected special delivery still waiting on their ticket? When were tickets posted? Still not had anything. I've bought 2 tickets separately for me and my son, selected special delivery for both. I got an email for random ticket collection but it doesn't specify a name so don't know if it's me or him......or both (my email is registered to both our accounts).

To be fair they did send out a survey of interest for numbers but maybe loads of folk didn't bother with it. Davy's buses have approx 1600 folk so far, I'd be surprised if there's more than 1500 folk making their own way so I still reckon most folk will be OK. Anybody know how many have been sold do far?

Really hope there's enough for everyone. I'm taking my 7yr old son to his first away match and he only has 3 points.

According to this list he's the 39th most successful men's player to ever play tennis. I'd say that's pretty good! That list is flawed as a measure of overall success though as it has many players from an era that just isn't comparable to today's game. It also doesn't include other titles, ranking, Olympic Golds etc. It also neglects the fact that everyone is aware of in that Andy was in the most difficult generations ever. You're also missing the obvious in the fact that injury (if he indeed retires) has cost him around 30% of his career and potentially his prime, missing out on more GrandSlams. I'm confident he would have added another 2 had he stayed fit. I'm sure an algorithm could be done taking into account all factors, and I'd guess it would have Andy in the top 15 male players ever. Scotland's most successful sportsman by absolute miles!

Could I please have 2 seats Davy. Thanks