morrison1982

Fletcher played there a couple of times 6-7 years ago (when he was a much better player, before his illness) for Man Utd when they had some injury crisis. Michael Carrick also filled in there. TBH they were both pretty hopeless at centre half, they lost 3-0 at Fulham during that period. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8414926.stm

Looks like the Marshall to West Brom deal is dead, because they've signed Anders Lindegaard from Man Utd (Danish goalie who's been 2nd or 3rd choice there for donkeys).

The Georgia game was on the Wednesday night before a Rangers v Celtic game on the Saturday lunchtime. Predictably a few of the players cried off and miraculously recovered in time for Saturday (Brown, Hutton). McCulloch was suspended for the Georgia game having been booked v Ukraine on the previous Saturday. Don't really blame the players - it was a crazy bit of scheduling by the good people at the SPL. They then very helpfully cancelled a whole round of matches the week before the Italy game, which caused not insignificant fixture congestion (that was the year when the season had to be extended). Perhaps it would have been more helpful if they had just postponed the Rangers v Celtic game. http://www.soccerbase.com/matches/results.sd?date=2007-10-20

I see Georgia have recalled Khizanishvili (the Dundee and Rangers player from 10+ years ago). He's now 33/34 and playing for a club in Azerbaijan. Perhaps not coincidentally, the manager of that club is also the Georgia manager. They've also recalled the teenage goalie (Makaridze) from the 2007 disaster game. He's now 25 y/o, but his career hasn't panned out to much. I would be very surprised if he played, given that their first choice goalie (Loria) did quite well in Greece last year and got a move to Olympiakos. http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottish_fa_news.cfm?page=2986&newsCategoryID=6&newsID=15222

West Brom are still trying to agree a fee with Cardiff for Marshall.

IMO, McGeady hasn't been as big a miss as I thought it might be at the time he decided to play for Ireland. On topic, this kind of list only really tells you who was producing players ~10 years ago. Hence why Hibs are that high up, while Dundee United are relatively low.

Rhodes was injured a week or so ago.

When Adam was on MOTD2 the other week, he said that he didn't feel up to full speed physically yet (no sniggering at the back!) because he had less of a close season this year. They had been talking about teams leaving out players that had been in the Copa America (e.g. Arsenal / Alexis Sanchez)

Compared to the last squad (Qatar / Ireland), the changes are: In: McGregor, Hanley, Armstrong, C. Martin Out: Samson (no club!), Reynolds (injured shoulder), Adam (not playing much), Bannan (not playing at all)

Aye, this isn't going to be like earlier in the group when he was taking along younger players (eg1 Ryan Gauld, eg2 Lewis Macleod) "for the experience"

Have you seen McGregor in the last year? Looks like he's back on the bevvy.

I would pick Scott Bain ahead of him now.

Rhodes injured an ankle today and had to be subbed. Apparently a recurrence of an injury suffered in preseason.

Worth noting that David Marshall hasn't played yet this season, due to a three match suspension held over from last season. He'll probably move to West Brom in the week, having now served the suspension. Bit of a dilemma if he hasn't played much (if at all) going into early September. Goalkeeping is one of our stronger areas, but I don't think Strachan would want to drop Marshall ideally.

There is talk of him being sold (he only has one year left under contract).

I think so, but he would have to prove that in the two months or so before Foster recovers from injury. What I meant by saying that "Foster would be first choice" is that West Brom wouldn't be in the market for a goalie if his injury wasn't dragging on for so long (they initially thought he would be fit by now).

Myhill isn't very good. He played a bit for Hull at PL level when they were first promoted, but he's pretty much been a backup ever since (39 league games for WBA in 5 years). Foster would be first choice, but he has a knee injury. Apparently won't be fit until October. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/33640510

Some talk of West Brom bidding for David Marshall

Think the likeliest thing is that Robertson will get a move to an EPL team (there have been rumours of interest from Villa), play regularly and get into the national team more often from next season.

Playing hardly any friendlies has helped Wales. Their points average (i.e. number of ranking points earned per game) is now well above 1,000 (ours is just under 800). Even if you played Germany in a friendly and beat them, the maximum number of points you would earn from that friendly is 600. If you lose you get nothing, even if you lose narrowly to a great team. So basically the right strategy for friendlies is not to play any at all. Wales haven't played any since last June (2-0 defeat v Holland) and only four in the last two seasons. In that time, we've played 8 - twice v England, USA, Norway, Poland, Nigeria, Northern Ireland and Qatar. As it happens our results in those games have been very good, apart from the two losses v England (4W 2D 2L), yet even those results will have dragged down our rating. I see Ireland and Northern Ireland recently played a closed doors game and allowing unlimited substitutions. Apparently Wales were thinking of playing Northern Ireland in warm-up for their Belgium game, but decided to scrap it because they knew it would damage their rating even if they won. Everyone knows that FIFA's system is rotten and open to manipulation. Hopefully this new system UEFA are bringing in will put an end to this by creating centrally scheduled fixtures for every team.

Goram was first picked for the squad when he played for Oldham, before he moved to Hibs. Ritchie takes a decent corner and that's about it. Won't be a regular unless he improves significantly.

The thing that cost us in Georgia in 2007 was that there was an Old Firm game a few days later (i.e. at Saturday lunchtime after playing in Georgia on Wednesday night!). A big chunk of our players were Rangers or Celtic at that time. Some of them pulled out and the ones who did play looked half arsed. Georgia messing around did not help that lack of commitment / complacency. The Ireland and Poland games are impossible to predict, as there really isn't much between the teams. Poland looked comfortably better in the first half last night, but Ireland totally battered them in the second. Maybe Poland were settling on the 1-0 but they took it to a ridiculous extent. Our game in Poland was slightly similar, we (as the away team) looked clearly, but not decisively, better for the first 60 minutes but in the end we were lucky to get away with a draw. The one thing in our favour is that Ireland really have to beat us or they are in deep trouble, even just to get third place. Ergo that should open up counter-attack opportunities, which we exploited quite well in Germany and Poland. Our concern of course is our defence, can it withstand sustained pressure?

It would win the "best third place" spot at the absolute worst.

Snodgrass will be struggling to make it back before the end of this season. http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11714/9461836/hull-citys-robert-snodgrass-rues-season-ending-knee-injury He said: “The diagnosis has been that this season is gone. If I play any part, it will be a bonus." http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/scotland-star-robert-snodgrass-remarkable-4541102 Snodgrass said: “Progress is slow and I’ll be out longer than six months but we have excellent facilities and physios at Hull and it’s all about how I react to the rehab."

Cape Verde have done well in African qualifying recently. IIRC they should have been in one of the WC playoff ties but got kicked out on a technicality. It's kind of hard to evaluate teams like that (or indeed ourselves!) against teams from other continents because they don't play many (if any) games against teams from outside their own zone. So their ranking partly depends on how the other African teams do in the World Cup and so on.