Whelky75

You’re fooling no one with this. If you’re going to debate this, at least be honest and fair about it. Firstly the ‘Tierney in a months (sic) time’ comment is an absolute liberty and you know it. There is also obviously a significant difference between playing a season or two for a team at the bottom of the English Premier League, than there is in playing there consistently for years and years. The World Cup 1998 squad had a lot more players who played in the English Premier League consistently for years and years. This squad, as mccaughey85 rightly says, is below that level, in general. Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney are obviously very good players, playing at a high level and Scott McTominay’s level is up for debate, given how relatively bad Manchester United have been in recent years. Those three drag the average level of our squad up significantly, but unfortunately the two outstanding players are both left backs, which is about as far from ideal as you could dream up. Our squad on the whole, is picked from a far lower level of player than it was in 1998.

I am still astonished at how well Lyndon Dykes has done for us and I assume it will all come crashing down for him at some point, given how much of a lower level he performs at for his club. I hope he continues to prove me wrong, but at some point, the discrepancy between his club performances and his international performances has to flatten out a bit, surely. When push comes to shove, in big games, I still think our lack of quality options in the key areas of central defence and central attack will leave us to be found wanting.

I don’t remember us playing a back three, but I suppose everyone was using that formation at that point. I think ‘pretty solid’ is an understatement. As I mentioned earlier, Scotland had the least goals conceded out of any team in Europe, who competed in the qualifying campaigns for both Euro ‘96 and World Cup ‘98. 15 clean sheets in 20 matches, with only six goals conceded. Can someone tell me why Andy Goram didn’t go to the World Cup in 1998? Injury? Retirement? Falling out with the coach? I should know but I was quite young at the time and have forgotten. It seems strange if he’d retired as I assume Jim Leighton is much older than he is.

In fairness, the four other times I have seen us beat ‘big’ teams, have all been 1-0. I think this video is more down to the difference between a one-goal lead and a two-goal lead, rather than any new approach!

Yeah, I’d tend to agree - I was just interested to hear some quantification for the claim ‘achieve more than any other (squad) in our history.’ That’s a bit of a staggering claim and sums up the kind of knee-jerk reaction we’re seeing after the result the other night. We’re doing well at the moment, in comparison to recent years. However, in comparison to some of the best teams in our history, we’re nowhere near and probably won’t ever reach those heights again, given how far we are now behind the big European nations.

I don’t agree about Tom Boyd. I think that’s a really disrespectful thing to say about a player with 72 caps. (And I say that as someone who hates Celtic as well!) Tom Boyd was a regular part of our team which had statistically the best defence in Europe over a lengthy period in the 1990s. Obviously, we now happen to have two outstanding players at left back, but I believe that Tom Boyd often played at right back as well and even if not, to suggest he wouldn’t be the next pick behind Robertson and Tierney and a guaranteed pick in the squad is ludicrous.

Achieve more in what sense? I think you might be sorely disappointed and getting a bit carried away on the back of one great result. Scotland reached an 8-team finals of the European Championships in 1992, and finished third in their group at the finals, for example. I don’t think this squad will be going anywhere near those sorts of levels.

That’s exactly where nearly all of our sides this century have fallen down. Lack of quality and options in central defence and lack of quality and options up front. The current side is no different. The 1990s were the last time we had strong options in those positions. Worryingly as well, after years of being blessed with an abundance of quality goalkeepers, we now have a bit of a lack of quality in that position as well, due to the unfortunate fact of Gordon, Marshall and McGregor being all very close in age to each other and now all close to retiring at the same time.

‘Compare the full backs for starters’ is a laughable comment. How considerate of you to start with the one position that makes your argument look strongest! Our two best players currently, by miles, are full backs. That position obviously stands up well against Scotland teams of any era. Nobody is disputing that. It’s several areas elsewhere on the pitch where the current team don’t look so strong.

Robertson, obviously. Tierney, unless he gets injured and never plays any more football in his career, probably yes as well. Hickey not yet and Taylor not yet/come off it. I don’t think it’s fair to down play how good Tom Boyd was, based on the fact that we currently have very close to the best left back in the world and another left back who plays for one of the ‘Big Six’ in England. This is what I mean about being disrespectful. What the Scotland team achieved defensively in the late 1990s, in having the best defensive record in Europe over two qualifying campaigns, was a phenomenal achievement and Tom Boyd was a big part of that. You don’t win 70 caps for Scotland without being a very good player (or Christian Dailly.) (That’s a joke and no offence meant!)

I think also we have to respect what the Scotland teams of the 1990s achieved. In a total of 20 qualifying matches for Euro ‘96 and World Cup ‘98, Scotland kept 15 clean sheets and only conceded 6 goals. That was the best defensive record in all of Europe, by a reasonable distance, for teams who competed in both qualifying campaigns. The current team haven’t achieved anything like that yet. This is surely a conversation which should only take place if the current team go on to achieve much greater things. At the moment, it seems like a lot of recency bias and wishful thinking. Understandable that some of that may creep in at a time like this, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of any of our great teams or achievements of the past.

Em….. I don’t see why they wouldn’t? Given how bad we have been up front for years/decades, there’s no reason why Darren Jackson and Simon DONNELLY wouldn’t be in the squad. Tom Boyd won 72 caps, and is our seventh most-capped player and second most-capped defender of all time, so you’ve picked on the wrong player there. This was during a time when our defence was fairly formidable as well.

Is the ‘85’ in your name the year you were born? If so, I think we might be twins. Everything you say is like what I’m trying to say, but put better and more succinctly than I can!

But then surely the whole of football has changed, and every other team has made similar strides, so that’s irrelevant? In the 1990s, we qualified for four major tournaments out of five, when there were between 8 and 16 European places available. Since then, we haven’t qualified on sporting merit for a single tournament, despite there now being between 13 and 24 places up for grabs. We are way further down the European pecking order than we were back then. Part of that is due to the increase in teams and increase in quality teams, due to the break up of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, but it’s mainly down to a decline in the level that we play at. Andy Robertson and Kieran Tierney are outliers in our squad, in terms of dragging up the average level of our players, but in actual games, the fact that they are both left backs, negates the high level they both play at quite a bit, as it’s A. Difficult to fit them both in the same team and B. Not a position that has a great deal of influence over match results, as a whole, compared to nearly every other position on the pitch. If we had Arsenal and Liverpool players who were strikers, or creative midfielders, for example, that would be of far more advantage to us than having two left backs. That’s not to put down Robertson or Tierney, or what they do for our team, it’s just a simple truth about football and tactics.

Right. You’re deliberately selecting our lowest-level players there and they would still be comparable standard or perhaps higher standard than the lowest-level players in the current squad.

That’s a bold statement to say that Ryan Porteous will eventually play in the EPL. You state that as fact, when it’s clearly far from it. He’s only recently moved to English Championship level.

Yeah, some people need to calm down a bit. We are still miles behind where we were in the 1990s - one of the major reasons as to why we were qualifying for major tournaments then, when 8 to 16 European teams qualified and struggling to qualify now, when 13 to 24 teams qualify. I can’t see how anyone could compare our current squad to then and keep a straight face. We went from a squad made up of loads of top division players in England, to a squad made up of lots of second-tier players in England. We have started to claw that back in recent years, but we still have far too many lower level players now, to come anywhere close to the standard of the 1990s Scotland teams. To suggest otherwise is simply disrespectful to what those players achieved, both for Scotland and in the game of football as a whole.

Eh?? What team lists were you looking at? We had four English Championship players in our team. I didn’t see anyone playing at that level in the Spain team - let alone four players.

Is there a ‘did my previous post go right over your head?’ emoji?!

Are you inside my brain? Everything you have typed is exactly what I would have said! Thank you. The Spain team last night, still had quality in abundance - players from Real Madrid and Man City, off the top of my head, without checking each player individually to see which clubs they played for. England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain will always be big teams. Other teams can join and leave that group. Currently Belgium, Netherlands and Portugal are at that level, with Croatia hanging on by less and less fingertips every day, as Luka Modric moves ever closer to the end of his career! The Sweden side that failed to qualify for Euro ‘96 and World Cup ‘98 would not be considered a big team, by any measure I could think of. Top seeds, yes, (I assume?!) Big team, no.

Sorry, I’ve got rather mixed up there, thinking/assuming the top two qualified, when it was top team only and second team potentially into a playoff. Your claim that Serbia had a good chance of finishing ahead of Croatia in second place, with four games to go, is still outrageous and inaccurate though. Please can you correct that, or if you stand by it, please can you clarify what constitutes a ‘good chance’ to you? I’m getting a percentage chance of less than 1% of Serbia finishing ahead of Croatia, at that point, which surely doesn’t count as a good chance in anybody’s books?!!

Yeah, I was talking wins against ‘big’ teams, in matches where both teams still had qualification to play for. By big teams, I meant a team who I thought could win the tournament in question, or perhaps more importantly, the tournament just finished. A top-seeded team is not necessarily a big team. A big team doesn’t necessarily have to be top-seeded - see Euro 2008, when somehow the World Cup winners and the runners-up both ended up in our qualifying group. It’s easy to have short memories in football, but Croatia of 2012-2014 were not the team they are now. They were a decent team, but not what I’d call a big team. Denmark, although having reached the Euro 2020 semis, did so having scraped through with one win in three group matches and also didn’t face any big teams themselves, on their route to the semis. They also only took one point in their World Cup Finals group in 2022. Yes, they were on an incredible winning run in the qualifying group when we beat them, but again I don’t consider them as potential tournament winners, so not a big team. Still only the five matches I mentioned, for me.

I’d say the Sweden win was more important, for sure, for several reasons. More impressive, no. Also, I wouldn’t consider the Sweden team that had failed to qualify for Euro ‘96 as a big team any more. They also finished below us and Austria in qualifying for World Cup ‘98, although obviously that one is not an independent event to us beating them!

Again, what you’re saying is simply incorrect. They were 9 points behind Croatia, with four games to play. So, first and foremost, they had to beat Croatia by 2 goals. That alone meant they didn’t have a ‘good chance’ to qualify, probably less than a 20% chance of that happening, on its own. Secondly, they had to go away to Belgium and match/better whatever Croatia did at home to Belgium. Finally, they had to take significantly more points from their other two matches - against Wales and Macedonia - than Croatia did from their two matches against Scotland. I can work out a more accurate percentage chance when I have time, but I think we’ve dipped down to the realms of a ‘less than 1% chance.’ I’d be interested to know what you define as a ‘good’ chance? You must have a very different definition to me. (Remember, your statement was based on what the chances were at the time when Croatia first played Scotland - not looking back on the group with hindsight, and not with the benefit of results from when Croatia had already guaranteed a top-two spot.) I think you’d struggle to find any scenario in world football where a team who are nine points behind, with four games each to play, are considered to have a ‘good chance’ of overhauling the gap.

Yes, that’s what I said. Croatia hadn’t mathematically qualified. However, you said Serbia still had a good chance of second place at the time we beat Croatia. They didn’t. Croatia and Belgium both had five wins, and a draw against each other, from their opening six matches, and were sat on 16 points. Serbia had two wins, a draw, and three defeats, including a defeat to Macedonia, so were sat on 7 points. Croatia were about to play at home to the bottom team, Scotland. Serbia were playing away to the top team, Belgium, on the same day. Barring an incredible turnaround - both in terms of football and in terms of probability - Serbia were all but out. They certainly didn’t have the ‘good chance’ which you claim. The way the group panned out from there, Serbia ended up closing the gap significantly to Croatia. However, at the time we are talking about, to say Serbia had a good chance of overhauling Croatia is simply untrue. The fact the gap was closed can surely be mainly put down to Croatia easing off after having qualified with several games to spare.