[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

45 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

I think it is now clear that the 3-5-2 system just does not work. We have to go back to either 4-4-2 or try a 4-5-1 and that being the case McLeish has to choose between Robertson and Tierney on who makes the side and I'd go for Robertson. Both are left-backs who like to attack and if we even tried Robertson on left wing ahead of Tierney it would now work.

We were utterly and depressingly shambolic on Thursday. Only Allan McGregor can hold his head high as without him we would have been hammered by a team who had not won a match for over a year. Really tough kick in the nuts considering the wee boost after the Albania match.

We've been doing that (as well as 4-2-3-1) for 20 years with no success. Typical Scottish attitude, "don't try something new, I'm too scared to!"

I never heard anyone say after a drubbing (whilst playing a 4-4-2, 4-5-1 or a 4-2-3-1) that we should try a 3-5-2, no, people just wanted to continue doing the same thing that failed.

We should be playing with 3-5-2 for at least 4 years and see if they get used to it, as we've played 4 at the back for 20 years and they sure as hell can't do that.

The shambles on Thursday has nothing to do with the formation or the tactics or even the managers, the players were simply shocking. 

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

12 minutes ago, Bino's said:

This has been obvious for decades

It won't be

I know.

The SFA have been rotten to the core since the 70's, and probably further back than that.

A blanket boycott of tickets, merchandise, etc, would probably go a ways to getting the word to them that we are sick of them.

That won't happen, either.

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

38 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

You play a team for the for players you have. We don't have the players for a 3-5-2 so don't bother comparing it with Browns days.

One thing about sticking to a formation in the way Brown did was that the players knew their job and absentees were easy to replace. 

And evidence of the previous 20 years would suggest that we don't have the players for a 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1, 4-5-1, etc, either. So what do you suggest? Another 20 years of trying to get used to playing 4-5-1? I mean, most of the players play it at their clubs, so by that definition they should be used to it... right?

We don't have the players who can play 2 in the middle of defence and the middle of midfield. We don't. History has shown that we don't. 

McLeish has to keep faith with 3-5-2 and not go back to a tried and failed system.

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

7 minutes ago, exile said:

OK, I see what you mean. But I thought this time they were seemingly particularly bad, useless throughout. Still can't work out why that bad.

Completely agree with you, at some stages of the match it seemed like they didn't know how to control or pass the ball.

The entire Scottish game has to be ripped up and reset to zero.

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

26 minutes ago, er yir macaroon said:

I assume you’re taking the piss?

Why do opinions usually equate to the "taking the piss/on the wind-up" in this place?

Shearer and Dodds were miles better than both Naismith and Russel.

Not like this opinion? Fair enough, just don't accuse me on being on the wind up, as that's just the lazy reaction.

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

26 minutes ago, exile said:

OK but you are then implying that more or less all the players are simply rubbish. If so, how come that same set of players seemed to do just fine in beating Albania? 

The thing with rubbish players is that they are inconsistent, meaning that one week they win, the other they don't.

Albania and Israel are awful, so the fact that our players can't beat both teams equates to our players being simply average.

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

1 minute ago, exile said:

I am just asking a question. Why those 10 players were so pathetic in Israel, when they seemed to do OK against Albania? 

"it's to do with the players not being very good."

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

22 minutes ago, exile said:

Hi, just wondering can you explain why those 10 players were so pathetic in Israel, when they seemed to do OK against Albania? 

Hey,

Why? It's nothing to do with formation/tactics, it's to do with the players not being very good. It's that simple. The defence done OK, on the main, but the midfield were so below average that it simply was not acceptable. The strikers ran around a lot but they didn't have any service.

I reiterate, people say that we are strong in midfield, but it simply isn't true. Our strongest midfield has a player with a struggling Villa team, a player who plays for a poor Fulham team and a player who coasts it with Celtic.

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

29 minutes ago, er yir macaroon said:

We had Duncan Shearer, Darren Jackson and Billy Dodds up front for much of those campaigns. That may have been an incentive to play fewer strikers and more defenders. In one of those campaigns we had a very easy group.  

Shearer, Jackson and Dodds would walk into this current Scotland team.

But no, the main striker in that area were Durie, McCoist/Gallacher, and yes, those three could also walk into our first team.

[Israel Match Thread (11/10/2018)]

Without a shadow of a doubt we should be playing 3-5-2, and we should have been doing so for the past 20 years. In my time I can only remember Scotland qualifying for two tournaments (Euro 96 and France 98), with both we played with a three at the back system. Why? Because we haven't had a solid pairing of central defenders since the 80's. Scotland have produced decent defenders in the past twenty years, but nothing top drawer, with the obvious exception of Colin Hendry. 

 

Football is a simple game that's complicated by idiots. Rule of thumb is if you're weak in a position then you must lean towards the "strength in numbers" philosophy. Craig Brown saw this when he took charge and he took us to two tournaments, and it could/should've been three, as we battered England at Wembley in the '99 play-off. Brown saw that we were weak at the back so his solution was to play with three, and it worked.

 

When Berti Vogts took the reins he wasted no time in ripping up the successful template left by Brown and reverted to the  four at the back system - every subsequent Scotland manager has done likewise - and we have achieved nothing but failure.

 

What puzzles me is that in sporadic times that we actually have played with a three at the back, and lost, the vast majority of fans come out and say that we should forget about using the three at the back system. Which means that the fans are as clueless as our previous five managers. The masses want to play with a flat back four even though we have systematically failed with that system for 19 years. 

 

I love the argument that "Our defenders don't play as a three at their clubs, so they probably couldn't do it playing for Scotland". Look back at '96, we had Calderwood, Boyd and Hendry as the three, none of them played with a three at their clubs. In '98 we had Boyd, Calderwood/Weir and Hendry, again, none of whom played in a three at the back system with their clubs.

 

Three at the back is the only change we have of qualifying, simply because we are weak at the back, and if our defenders aren't intelligent enough to plug the gaps then another body will fill if simply by being there.

 

The common consensus is that we are strong in midfield, which is baffling. How many of our midfielder are competing for trophies in top footballing nations? Just because we had about a dozen or so decent midfielders in no means that our midfield is strong. In 96/98 we had the likes of McAllister, Collins and Lambert. Those three were great players. In actual fact, those three were better players than all of our current midfielders combined. So to say that we are "strong" in midfield is just plain wrong.

 

Same with in attack, I'd take one of Durie, Gallacher and McCoist over all of our strikers. And while I'm comparing, Goram and Leighton were top-drawer goalkeepers and were far better than Gordon and McGregor.

 

It's not all doom and gloom, we have the foundation of McKenna, Robertson, Tierney and McGinn to build on, and with kids like Johnstone, Middleton, Bates, Morgan, Gilmour and Porteous coming through, things do look a little bit sunnier.

 

The main strength we had under Craig Brown's leadership is that we were organized, we were compact, we were like a club side, in that they worked tirelessly for one another. With the 3-5-2 we had eight players down the middle of the park which made it difficult for teams to tear us apart. Like I said, strength in numbers.

 

Those fans who are old enough to remember the aforementioned qualification successes and are adamant that we're better with four at the back should be embarrassed.

As for last night's debacle, it wasn't about formation, it was about 10 out of 11 players who were simply pathetic. If 10 players play badly in the same team then 99 out of 100 times that team will be beaten.

We have to stick with 3-5-2. We've stuck with a variation of 4 at the back for 20 years and we've had nothing but abject failure.

[Scotland u21 squad]

11 minutes ago, SkyBlueScot said:

Thank you.  Managed to find it through the link pasta shared though.

So thank you to both of you

You're welcome.

For future reference: http://sportstream.tv/

[Scotland u21 squad]

1 hour ago, SkyBlueScot said:

Can't find a live stream that works. Anyone else?

 

 

live.harleyquinnwidget.com/freelivematch/622425010728640.html

It's been a truly awful performance. Our players are unable to do the basics, at any level.

Someone above said we've been "decent", aye, okay, and WWII was a minor scuffle.