mrniaboc

PS: Yes, it should be Team UK, not Team GB. If there's one thing I don't stand for it's perpetuating geographical misnomers! But that's off topic...

If you look at the qualifying campaigns this century, when objectively Scotland have been at their worst, we have still managed to hold group winners to a draw at Hampden 3 times (England, Italy, and Germany) and come real close 3 times (Germany, Spain, Italy). That's 6 out of 9 home games against the top team where we've been competitive. So it's not all doom and gloom. We could steal a point from Belgium, and that would be huge, especially if we do the easy things right against Kazakhstan, Cyrpus, and San Marino.

Yeah, I don't know why Scotland don't just merge with England, Wales, and Northern Ireland to make a good strong UK team.

Dunno mate. Goram is past his prime. Reckon I'd go with Gigi Buffon.

God dammit, why is it not March already?!

20 points is almost always enough to guarantee 2nd place in a 6-team group, so all we need to do is win all games apart from both Belgium matches and Russia away. That would give us 21 points. Absolute stroll in the park! What could go wrong?...

That's 9pm in Astana.

I'd love that, and there's an outside chance we could have a player in La Liga, Serie A, and the Bundesliga this time next year! Though those guys will probably end up moving to EPL or Championship teams...

Kazakhstan have only won 5 competitive matches in the last 10 years: Andorra (A) 2009 Azerbaijan (H) 2011 Faroe Islands (H) 2013 Latvia (A) 2015 Andorra (H) 2018 They are not a scary team, and it's time our boys started to routinely turn teams like this over with no drama, as they should.

I see what you're saying, but my point was that the EPL is almost certainly the best league that has Scots playing in it. So it's fair enough to point out that La Liga, or Bundesliga, or Serie A or whatever might be better quality than the EPL, but with no Scots playing in those leagues that argument cannot be used as a justification to discount the merits of a player who's playing well in the EPL. Say you've got two children: Child 1 is at Glasgow Caledonian Uni studying business management, and Child 2 is in Barlinnie for mugging old ladies. It doesn't make sense to argue that Child 1 isn't the most clever of your two children because they aren't studying law at Harvard.

Does the argument between EPL and La Liga make any sense here? When it comes to Scottish players in action, we don't have any in La Liga, so surely EPL has to be considered the best standard we have players competing at. Though I do think the top 2 or 3 Scottish teams could handle themselves against a lot of teams in the EPL, but I still would rather a good Scottish player getting tested in the EPL rather than having a relative stroll in the park as a big fish in a small pond in Scotland. Ideally the best Scottish players will start to get moves to La Liga instead, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Beautiful assist from Snoddy today. I really would love to see him back in the squad. Not only is he playing really well, but I think he's a fantastic personality to have in the dressing room.

A couple of different lineups I've looked at online are showing him at centre half. I guess we'll see when the game starts.

Harper back in the starting lineup for Malaga this evening.

Bates back in the starting lineup for Hamburg today.

Concede a shedload of goals?

Gilmour is indeed on the bench tonight for Arsenal. All the usual suspects starting for Celtic.

He's going along nicely this season. Hopefully he keeps it up and makes a solid place for himself in the squad.

All I meant was he has showed he can actually do it against the big boys. I really hope he can show us that again soon.

Didn't he also dominate the big boys in the Championship for a while?

What the fuck is happening at Villa Park right now?

No way! That would be huge. The more I read about the lad the more he sounds like the real deal. I hope he can keep on the path he has outlined for himself.

I think the nice thing I liked about it is that you don't really know what a false dawn is if you've never seen the Sun. I'm not getting over-excited just because we beat a couple of weak teams. I'm always excited when a crop of new players are coming through. I understand that most of them won't fulfill the massive potential we all wish they would, but the interesting thing for me is that they may not feel that weight of expectation like the rest who have come through in the last 20 years, because these ones never experienced the highs.

I found this blog post quite interesting and optimistic. The point about the players now being of an age where they have never experienced witnessing a successful Scotland side is fascinating. Maybe that does make them less burdened? https://thesefootballtimes.co/2018/11/20/how-a-generation-raised-on-failure-can-drive-scottish-football-forward-again/

I'm not sure he's that far down, is he? Maybe behind Christie at the moment. Who else? Would be a decent lad to bring on off the bench at least. If he's keen.