borojock

i was thinking the same about that - if there is one team getting someone sent off i can see it us. Dykes wise not much to bring off the bench to replace him

what a great starting 11 for Spain that is for us This is a great chance for us to win

Im confident we'll get the win we need to get us off to a positive start - the Cyprus team arent great, were at home full stadium start of the new qualifying i think we'll win but dont think we'll blow them away Would like to see the below Gunn Hickey Hanley Porteous Robertson McGregor McTominay Armstrong McGinn Christie Adams 4 points next 2 games would be great

the ratings on bbc start before the game even begins ive seen players with higher and lower scores before a ball has been kicked. TBF to the scotland fans its often the scottish players that have the higher scores before the game begins wouldnt pay any notice to the bbc scores

I honestly get the point you make and completely understand it - one of my first posts on this forum many many many years ago was something along the lines of - i would rather watch a team of guys that bleed for the shirt and lose rather than a bunch of English rejects who use us as a second choice and win. However after watching us play in 1 tournament in 25 years my feelings have changed compared what they used to be. I would rather watch us compete at a higher level with the best team even if that meant there were Anderson's and Gunn's of this world in it. I get a lot of people will disagree with that and say thats not the spirit of international football but i think many countries have been going down that route for a long time and being principled may not put us in the strongest position For me give me Tino Livramento over Ralston any day of the week But totally respect and appreciate your thoughts on it

Genuinely not and if come across that way apologies. The point i was trying to make and appreciate this isnt the popular way of thinking is I'm quite flexible to the cases of the Gunn and Anderson of the world if it makes our starting 11 stronger and gives us a better chance of qualifying for tournaments.

Look i appreciate my thoughts on this topic aren't going to be similar to everyone else & I truly do welcome the opposing thoughts and respect everyones opinion however different they are to mine On the whole Scottish Boys born and bred that would bleed for the dark blue two points i would say 1/ You don't qualify for tournaments based on passion & commitment but quality. My ultimate wish for Scotland is we regularly qualify for tournaments and for us to do that we need the best players not the most scottishness players. If we were to qualify for major tournaments but it meant we had some Anderson and Gunn's in the starting 11 i would take that. As Vokes and Robson-Kanu knocked in the winners for Wales in the quarters of the euros i doubt the wales fans were too concerned at that point if they were truly bleeding for the team. I just want us to be decent again and to achieve that we need the best players we can. If you went through the squads at the last WC there are a lot of teams that had squads with a lot of players born outside their county eg Morocco 2/ Scottish born and bred players arent necessarily as committed and as passionate as we think how many have refused to play or not turn up for many reasons. Big Dunc, Kris Boyd, Garry O'Connor, Barry Ferguson was regularly unavaliable for many periods, Ryan Fraser etc. During the laste 90's and early 00's we had loads of players who would regularly not turn up

What evidence in the last 50 years has there been that we can be better then England - would love to know what your building your belief on that we can better than England At no point in my original post did i mention us trying to be better than England or compare our performance to them - but impressive how you try and turn this into a political post with your first sentence congrats. In reality i'm not bothered what England do if they win the next tournament or don't qualify for it either way i have no real interest. My point was I encourage Scotland to follow what some of the other smaller footballing nations (which unfortunately i count ourslevs in) are doing in trying to identify and blood in promising youth footballers who are born outside their country but eligble to play for us. Sometimes this works out however sometimes like the case of Anderson it doesnt. However over the long term i think this would put us in a stronger position

The way I see it He's English and he wants to play for England nothing wrong with that, good luck to the lad. If he changes his mind in a few years and came back in and improved our squad all for it Its the price we pay for trying to blood in English youngsters at the youth level. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt, see Ireland with Rice, Grealish & Bamford. However still think its the right policy as if we didnt we would be well behind in the future Wales and Ireland are very good at it, our issue is i dont think were as good as connecting with the Non Scottish Born Youth players that we get playing for us in the youth teams possibly needs improving so we get stronger loyalty and commitment from them at a younger age

youd think we have a surplus of international strikers at our disposal where we can cast aside anyone we wish - in reality 3 or 4 players missing due to suspension, injury, loss of form etc and we have a problem Honestly dont think were in a position to dismiss anyone whos playing at a decent level

talented but work rate not good enough and heard rumours of a bad attitude

Whats concerning is the amount of Scottish players playing for any team in the top league. No stats or data to back my thoughts up but it feels less and less Scottish players are playing regular first team football for the scottish top league teams You look at the goalie situation there is only a handful of scottish goalies who are 1st or 2nd choice at the 12 teams. If this continues which you assume it will could have bad consequences for us for the years to come

personally ive been concerned about the goalie situation for years, always felt once Gordon, Marshall, McGregor retired we would be significantly weakened. However always hoped a young goalie would come along but not had a half decent one appear for 15 years now. Its been like watching a car crash waiting to happen and it feels like its about to happen Firstly feel terrible for Gordon and hope he's ok but u struggle to see at his age and the possible time frame he may be out that it could be a struggle for him to come back internationally The back ups are a massive drop off from the 3 goalies we have had the last 20 years or so. I get the earlier point about not playing a back up in recent friendlies and i completely agree but in reality wouldn't have put us in much of a stronger position Goalie position is such a unique one the other starting 10 positions you can change tactics and formations to protect a weaker starter but with goalies you dont really have that option I personally would, but can completely see & understand why others would strongly disagree, be on the phone to the gunn's junior and senior tonight to see if we can get him onboarded for the next squad The rest we have Kelly, McCrorrie, McLaughlin, Z. Clarke (however dont know why people keep suggesting him hasnt played any first team football for nearly 6 months) are a massive drop off and wouldnt fill you with any confidence

kitman left???

Wasn't the point that was being discussed, previous poster says he can't score for Scotland, I was suggesting the goal that he scored against serbia in the shootout was a goal he had scored for scotland Nothing was being discussed about his contribution in that game compared to other players of it the majority of Scotland fans would have him in the squad due to a penalty he scored nearly 2 years ago

It kind of counted in terms of us winning the game though

does the penalty to help get us to the Euros not count ?

This really is an exciting time to be a Scotland fan and I honestly think if we can get a really good young goalie found this could be a great next 10 years or so for us First team doing better than they have for years recently qualified for our first major tournament, playing nations league group a, playing decent against good quality opposition, good average age, some really decent players in there, IMVHO good manager Youth team looks like they have some good potential players, some of our young players being courted by top european clubs, Italy has obviously taken notice and looking at players in our league I follow a twitter account called everything scotland (top account if you want to know how youngsters are doing) and some of the players we have in the youth teams in england and germany is really promising As i say if we can find this top goalie we could be a right good team for the next 10 years i hope and dream

i see on the bbc match report he was voted by fans player of the game must of been a hell of a 10 mins Ive noticed that a few times where scottish players who havent played much time or done anything are voted man of the match by fans, good to see someone out there pushing the love to the Scots

Ben Doak has really hit the ground running for Liverpool which is seriously impressive - hell of a long way to go and no guarantee he will become anything but the boy has a serious chance and with a lot of hard work and a lot of luck hopefully will have a great career ahead of him Out of interest is he from the performance school

As much as i hate buying in players who have very distant if any links to Scotland with questionable reasons for playing for us i do think its worth investigating for the goalie position. After Gordon hangs his gloves up we have no real quality for such an important position Problem with Gunn is for the last 5 seasons (if you include this one) he hasnt been first choice and played a limited amount of games so i dont know if he is the answer seems happy to sit on the bench A guy who works with me his brother is a youth goalie at Middlesbrough and the SFA were in contact with him asking if he had any Scottish links so they are out there searching just if nothing is there nothing is there

Theres a player in there just needs a run of games at a decent level to see what he can do and get his confidence back Were the crowd shouting braveheart after his first goal???

Wasnt it from Simon Ferrys YT channel - they started using it a few years back Free from desire Slaneys on fire then something about Willie Collum I think its a great tune gets the tempo going

For me with the drop outs and the drop in quality i would play it safe and revert to 3 at the back - back 4 with a few that have never played together before is too risky for me especially when you consider Declan only been with the squad a few days and hasnt been in the squad for nearly last 2 years. Kingsley/Porteous never played international football and not played with that group of players and tactics before For a must not lose game play it safe I'd go Gordon Hickey Hendry Gallagher Kingsley Taylor McGregor Jack McLean McGinn Adams

A thought that came into my head earlier was how is our record since the Euros We've played 15 games (2 friendlies included) - we've won 10, drawn 2 and lost 3 The two draws were friendlies So competitive games played 13 won 10 and lost 3 - granted the real important one we lost However overall i really think we've done well Got a stable group of players, good age makeup, most playing at a good standard domestically, strength in depth is a real positive, players who have come in to cover players missing i cant think of many letting us down, great squad togetherness, management team getting more experience at international level which is a huge positive, player call offs are at a minimum, fans seem more engaged Overall looking really positive IMVHO Only real concern i have is what do we do when Gordon retires