mrniaboc

Louis, Lance, Neil, or Billy Joe?

Starting ahead of those six? Really? I'd be very surprised.

I imagine we'll start 5 midfielders against Russia, and it's looking very likely that the choice has to be from the following 6 players: McTominay McGinn McGregor Forrest Fraser Christie So the question is, which one do you think should be left on the bench. I genuinely cannot decide.

My weekend starts as soon as work stops on a Friday

7, with another 2 potentially in Sunday's matches.

So, does Stuart Armstrong not exist anymore or what?

I like McLean but I'd rate McTominay, McGinn, McGregor, Armstrong, Christie, Cairney, and MacArthur above him. Arbitrary rankings aside though, my pint was more that you shouldn't sum out our midfield talent by judging a single player on their performance against the European champions on their home turf.

Our 8th best midfielder struggled against one of the best teams in the world?! Shocker.

I'll go for 9. He is a penalty taker, right?

Hanley captain in the EPL! Time for another call up?

That's a weird one. Wasn't he captain at Blackburn or did I make that up? Anyway, will be interesting to see if they start him and Bates together!

Neimi is the big mystery though. Never even a sniff from the Scotland coaching setup.

He's been good at Rangers, but he plays international football for Canada.

Yes! Considering a few years back all we had to hang onto was Fletch at Man U, and now we have serious players at Man U, Liverpool, and Arsenal. Add to that top six teams seriously sniffing around Fraser, and Gilmour possibly coming through the ranks at Chelsea in the next year or two then I think things are looking on the up.

I think we'll beat Russia or draw with them at Hampden and lose the other two, but I don't think we'll lose them by that many goals.

Also this!

I try hard not to, but I do know that you can choose to turn on subtitles on BBC and ITV shows. That's not an option on social media content.

Accessibility.

Exactly this.

I totally get what you're saying, but I think the problem is that your distribution is skewed, so that players you consider "average" are considered "good" by most other people. You've pushed your interpretation of average quite high up the ranks, so there is now very little space for the breakdown above that, of "good", "very good", and "world class" as you put it. This is demonstrated by the fact that you rate Fraser (a guy who last season created more goals and big chances than almost anyone else in one of the world's top leagues) as just being "good", rather than "very good". In addition to this, both Scotland and Celtic (teams you would rank as average in professional football) both have rankings well above the actual average in the game. For what it's worth, many people do the same thing with movies. Ask someone to rank a movie out of ten and if they think it was average they will give it 6/7 out of 10 instead of 5. I call it the "imdb paradox". Finally, the problem with Scotland fucking up against smaller teams like Georgia and Kazakhstan, isn't as simply put down to raw technical ability of the players as you think. A lot of it is mental, as with all sports, and Scotland have developed a real losing mentality which seems to rear its head most when we play teams we're expected to beat. You as demonstrating some confirmation bias in not also pointing out that these same players who have struggled against the world's worst teams have also often had amazing games against some of the better teams like England, Spain, Croatia, and Germany in recent years. So ask yourself, do they suddenly acquire more technical ability on those days, or could it more likely be down to mentality and coaching?

Where did you hear that?

The first international match I remember clearly watching and having an emotional investment in was the 1994 world cup final, and for some reason I wanted Italy to win. E ery since, I have liked watching them win. A few months after that I went to Hampden for my first Scotland match, and the rest is history.

Be careful pinning your hopes on Aberdeen. Much more likely they will be out and Rangers and Celtic will still be in. Actually, it's impossible for Celtic to go out of Europe in this round of matches.

Yes. I don't think he'll be playing again for at least another month?

I remember not so long ago someone on here repeatedly saying no EPL team will pay £25m for a scottish-based Scot. Who was that again? Joking aside, I'm really glad this is happening. Can't wait to see what he does in the big boys league.