bazmidd

By the way Moyes actually had a better win percentage at Man Utd than Brendan Rodgers did at Liverpool. Rodgers went to Celtic afterwards and is now lauded. Moyes made two bad career moves. Then his last club West Ham he kept them up when they were in trouble. West Ham are a big club and it says a lot for him that he was their go to guy to get them out of trouble.

That is honestly a disgrace and the exact reason the National Side is where it is

Aye you are probably right he may not want to leave but I'd at least ask him the question. I think the next candidate for me would maybe be Steve Clarke although I have reservations about his overall record and between him and Moyes there probably isn't a great deal of difference. Moyes may get greater instant respect from the players just for the fact he is a house hold name down south. Both though seem like they would not be the type of characters to stand for the fiasco of the recent call offs

Haha that's quality

See having someone like Southgate or Gemmill in charge or even Fletcher for that matter is all very well if you have a squad as talented as England's. Whereas we need someone that can motivate our players to give them more than their talents can give. I don't see Gemmill or Fletcher being that man although they may prove me wrong and it may work. I would rather hedge my bets on someone though who is proven to be a great motivator and communicator and great at organising a team into an effective system. Someone with experience but who works well with younger players and is still in touch with the modern game. My pick would be Alex Neil

Spot on mate the clubs aren't doing enough. And I don't even mean clubs such as Motherwell or Kilmarnock who have brought through decent players on the budget constraints they have to work with. I am talking about Celtic, Rangers specifically, then Hearts, Hibs and Aberdeen. Our biggest clubs. Apart from Celtic in recent seasons and even then I would only class Tierney as a top talent and potential big money player. How many top class players have they produced? The answer is none. None at all. Couple of decent players here and there but not one top class player has come from Scotland. Rangers and Celtic have to take the largest chunk of blame for that as they simply have the largest budgets and best facilities to produce these players but have chosen to bring mediocre foreigners into Scotland for the last 20 years. Hearts are doing it this season ffs. Probably our 3rd biggest club are full of mediocre foreigners. That is what is holding us back. I am not saying there should be no foreigners in our game, not when we enjoyed the likes of Larsson and Laudrup in Scotland but these guys were top talents, guys our players could learn from and even guys like Laudrup were surrounded by Scotsmen. We need our clubs to get back to that. The English Homegrown Rule should be implemented here on a larger scale. 25 man squads and 13 of that squad must be homegrown, 7 of those 13 should be homegrown by your own club. England currently have 25 with 8 homegrown players in each squad with plans to change it to 12. Let's get there first and push for this rule change.

Is this not the celtic lights of Lisbon tune. Should miby just change their lyrics to suit or very own famous 67 victory. In 67 we went down tae England We became the World Champions And showed them how to play.... At Wembley... In 67... Repeat

Well it isn't the only way to protect the defence at all and 3 in defence isn't the only way to go either. A variation of 433 could have worked if it was played differently as I explained in my last post. Unfortunately we decided to try and play like Liverpool or Barcelona and left a very inexperienced defence exposed. Added to some schoolboy defending which is what cost us.

Exactly what we should have done. There was no protection whatsoever for the defence. McGregor was the anchor man but McTominay should have been beside him. There were too many gaps for McGregor to plug on his own as McGinn and Armstrong were pushed on, and when they pushed on and McGregor covered the midfield completely lost its shape. We started the game far too high up the park. The gaps between defence midfield and attack were enormous and it was so so easy for the kazaks to pick a pass in between the lines. We should have sat a little deeper and more compact. Allow the kazaks a little bit of the ball but keep it compact and difficult to pick a pass, then snap into tackles when they ventured into our half and used our pace on the counter. We pressed them too high and left too many gaps behind. Plus the fact Shinnie had an absolute mare and either got his positioning all wrong or didn't track his runner for all 3 goals is just schoolboy stuff.

Steve Clarke or Alex Neil

Spot on that post tbh. There has been so many doubts surrounding McLeish and I'm afraid that game there just proves he hasn't got what it takes. I am 100 percent confident a Steve Clarke or Davie Moyes would have at least had us working as a unit and looking like a team that knows and understands the roles and system they are supposed to be playing. Everything was a mess nothing was organised we had players floating about wherever they pleased there was no structure no identity no obvious tactics or way of playing. Defence was a shambles unorganised, midfield equally as bad, zero balance in midfield no protection for the defence and no support for the striker. Had no clue what to do faced with Kazakhstans five at the back. No leaders on the pitch or off it

I wasn't referring to the Kazakhstan strikers more thinking ahead towards perhaps the Belgian or Russian strikers. McKenna has dealt with Morelos far better everytime I have seen him come up against him and I don't think I would even class him as brilliant just yet, whereas I watched Findlay struggle last time out against him. Just trying to gauge what level Findlay is actually at.

Is Findlay really a brilliant centre back? Tbf I haven't seen much of him but going by the weekend there Morelos easily had the better of him, and turned him very easily for his goal. Now Morelos is decent but nothing special certainly compared to the level of some international strikers he may well face. Again though I haven't actually seen too much of the lad

Yeah the loss of Robertson, Tierney, and Fraser takes away a lot of options, pace and threat down that left hand side. As someone said Tierney becoming a bit of a sicknote under McLeish nothing like the iron man image he has at Celtic. Very disappointing as it's our strongest side attacking and defensively. Not sure about McGregor down the left now as with Shinnie behind him there would be no real width there.

This is becoming an absolute joke now tbh, I am 100 percent positive that if this was Celtic playing Astana tomorrow Tierney would be playing. They have said all week they will see how he reacts to training on the astro which was the excuse well in early doors. Absolute nonsense continually using this astro pitch as an excuse not to play. Can guarantee Tierney will be playing on Astro in the coming weeks and in the future for Celtic in the SPL. It's pathetic

A few doubts with that line up but probably the strongest we have available

My revised lineup for this is Bain Palmer. Bates. Souttar. Tierney McTominay Armstrong. McGinn Forrest. McGregor Burke

Cmon, Andy Robertson pulling out because he has the dentist has to be the worst excuse of the lot!! It's not like he has to wait on an NHS appointment! He's a multi millionaire ffs, he can be in and out today! Are you trying to tell me you would be off your work for 4 days after having an abscess removed. And he claims he isn't allowed to travel... I wonder would he travel if it was his holidays he was going on.. Would you?

Look McGinn had a few dodgy moments in a couple of the Nations League games plus that big error in the friendly v Belgium, but he has improved a lot at Villa since then to add to the fantastic qualities he had already shown in Scotland. We need to give this guy a chance to show us what he can do now and how he has improved, he can set the tone for us in Midfield against any opposition. He is probably the most complete midfielder we have and by far the best ball winner we have in there. He won't dictate the tempo of a game but hopefully McGregor and McTominay have enough about them to do that for us and let McGinn to do his thing. He can be a big player for us, his energy alone improves our team ten fold and that along with his tenacity probably sums up the way Scotland should be playing football

Another thing I would add is Scotland in recent years have been trying to incorporate the same formations and style of play at every level from U16s up to the Senior squad. From U16s to U21s there is a focus on playing passing progressive football in a variant of either 433 or 4231. This is the way we are trying to play and the way players are now being brought through in this country. To completely abolish all that learning and good work over the past few years and have these young players come through the system only to come in to the senior side and then be asked to play in a completely different way that is alien to them and that they have not been taught is not the way to go. There is good work being done in the Scotland set up at all levels and hopefully in time there won't even be an argument for the way Scotland play.

I never ever said a 3 couldn't work I was actually an advocate for trying it at the beginning of the Nations League, but I never ever saw it as the solution to all our problems and that by simply changing to 3 at the back everything was solved. We looked ropey the first few friendlies we played it, which was understandable as it was new. It seemed to work in attacking sense in our first Nations League match v Albania but still looked vulnerable in defence which this was meant to solve. This was then completely brought home to roost in Israel when we were cut open time and again with balls in behind our wing back who didn't appear to have a clue how to play the position, this then stretched our centre halves to cover them and we were continually wide open. I was an advocate for it, we tried it and it didn't work. That's not to say that giving time it wouldn't work, but we simply don't have the luxury of time at international level to work on these things. That result in Israel almost cost us and the formation was to blame. At this moment and time we need to play a way the players are familiar with unless of course we are going ultra defensive v say Belgium and we string 5 across the back but I wouldn't expect those full backs to be doing too much attacking as if they did in the way they did in Israel it would be a cricket score. So for games we just want to shut up shop yes maybe the 5 has a place but for now against teams similar to ourselves the 4 just simply works better with the players we have

The formation we play depends on the opposition. 3 Centre backs could be handy against bigger nations but against nations of similar quality or less than ourselves we are definitely at our best on the front foot playing a high tempo harrying the opposition and playing with pace in attack. A 4231 allows this with two holding Midfielders as cover and the 3 ahead pressing the opposition. Agreed though a 3 may be beneficial when we have to be even more solid at the back and aim to just soak up pressure and hit teams on the counter attack. I don't know all the answers but we have one big weapon just now in our team and that is pace, Fraser, Forrest, Armstrong, Burke so McLeish has to find the best way to use it.

Agreed on Fraser though by far our most dangerous attacking player

Actually now you mention it I wouldn't be adverse to seeing that the other way around with Robertson left back and Tierney left mid. Tierney has the ability and turn of pace to get past a man from standing position whereas Robertson tends to attack from deep and overlap his winger.

I would swap McGregor for McGinn and put one of the wide men in there probably Burke. I'd rather have Forrest on the left though and let him drift inside and have Burke on the right. Tierney at Right Back for me as he's just simply too good to leave out. So.. Bain Tierney. Bates. McKenna. Roberston McTominay Burke. Armstrong. McGregor. Forrest McBurnie