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23 hours ago, BucksburnDandy said:

 

Bang on. This is absolutely vital. Win the mini league and the insurance policy is there for next year. Fail to and we can kiss goodbye to Euro 2020, as we would be in Pot 4 and it's going to take a miracle to qualify from there.

 

Harsh as it sounds, fail to win this mini-league and McLeish should be let go. It's vital that we reach these Euros for the financial and on park good of the game in this country. It has been starved of finances and success for far too long. Time to put it right, no excuses.

I’d go as far as to say if we don’t win our opener in the Nations league then McLeish should go.

His appointment at best was uninspired and his tenure so far has been at best uninspiring. I accept a lot of the fixtures probably haven’t been his choice and he was hamstrung by withdrawals etc but even so.

There I’ll be little recovery time if we don’t get off to a winning start and our best chance to qualify for a major tournament in 20 years would disappear if we didn’t react quickly to a bad opening result.

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23 minutes ago, DaveyDenoon said:

I’d go as far as to say if we don’t win our opener in the Nations league then McLeish should go.

Don't agree with this. Changing the manager every failed campaign doesn't work. Giving them one game is going to be even worse. At this point we should aiming for continuity, including a managed handover. 

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4 hours ago, pca68 said:

Don't agree with this. Changing the manager every failed campaign doesn't work. Giving them one game is going to be even worse. At this point we should aiming for continuity, including a managed handover. 

Normally I’d agree that sacking a manager after a failed campaign is not the answer. Continuity is vital imo which is why I was against Strachan going.

But McLeish was the wrong appointment and I will be very shocked and surprised if he is ever successful.

I’d be delighted to be proved wrong but if he screws up the first Nations League fixture I can’t see any way he’ll lead us to a major championships.

I hope I’m wrong.

Edited by DaveyDenoon
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5 hours ago, DaveyDenoon said:

I’d go as far as to say if we don’t win our opener in the Nations league then McLeish should go.

His appointment at best was uninspired and his tenure so far has been at best uninspiring. I accept a lot of the fixtures probably haven’t been his choice and he was hamstrung by withdrawals etc but even so.

There I’ll be little recovery time if we don’t get off to a winning start and our best chance to qualify for a major tournament in 20 years would disappear if we didn’t react quickly to a bad opening result.

Would the next manager only get one game as well? Could get a wee bit expensive.

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46 minutes ago, DaveyDenoon said:

Normally I’d agree that sacking a manager after a failed campaign is not the answer. Continuity is vital imo which is why I was against Strachan going.

But McLeish was the wrong appointment and I will be very shocked and surprised if he is ever successful.

I’d be delighted to be proved wrong but if he screws up the first Nations League fixture I can’t see any way he’ll lead us to a major championships.

I hope I’m wrong.

So, basically, you don't like McLeish, so you think he should only get one game to prove himself but you thought that Strachan should get a 3rd campaign after two campaign failures? 🤪

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2 hours ago, Orraloon said:

So, basically, you don't like McLeish, so you think he should only get one game to prove himself but you thought that Strachan should get a 3rd campaign after two campaign failures? 🤪

No.

Strachan was making progress, we had momentum and were winning games we previously wouldn’t have. We were heading in the right direction. He had the players playing for him and they wanted him to stay. That says everything for me, the players know a good manager when they’re playing for one.

McLeish is/was a backward appointment and we’ve stalled at best since Strachan got the heave. The attempts to replace him with O’Neill were acutely embarrassing.

Like I said I think continuity is key, we had that and threw it away. But it needs to be the right manager and I don’t believe that’s McLeish. Same as continuity under Levein would've been wrong.

If we’d have made a daring, brave and imaginative appointnent and it took time to start working then fair enough, give the guy a chance. But we didn’t. We went backwards and appointed an out of work failure (he’s failed in all of his recent jobs) and as far as I’m concerned with McLeish if it starts badly it simply won’t get better.

The incompetent SFA has put us in the position where a large section of the fans will have little tolerance for a poor start, whereas a better appointment might’ve seen the manager have some leeway.

As I’ve said ill be absolutely delighted to be proved wrong and if so I’ll humbly eat my words. That’s a promise.

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14 hours ago, Malcolm said:

So even if we are second in the group with Israel and Albania we get through?

I was talking about the qualifying groups which start in March. 

If we win our Nations League group we’ll qualify for the playoffs which will be played after the qualifiers in March 2020. 

If we finish 2nd or better in our main qualifying group we won’t need the playoffs and another team will take our place. 

2nd place in our Nations League group may also be enough for a playoff, depending on who qualifies through the qualifiers.

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8 hours ago, DaveyDenoon said:

I’d go as far as to say if we don’t win our opener in the Nations league then McLeish should go.

His appointment at best was uninspired and his tenure so far has been at best uninspiring. I accept a lot of the fixtures probably haven’t been his choice and he was hamstrung by withdrawals etc but even so.

There I’ll be little recovery time if we don’t get off to a winning start and our best chance to qualify for a major tournament in 20 years would disappear if we didn’t react quickly to a bad opening result.

So he gets one competitive match and that's it for you - i'll have some of whatever your smoking 

Forget the friendlies, travelling over to South America with your B team who had very little to play for in a very difficult environment playing against teams prepping for the WC was always madness whoever set them up needs firing. The manager (whoever it was) was always going to come away from that set of friendlies with very few positives

I agree he wasn't the most inspired manager but who else was better that was actually wanting the gig or would take it? 

Were not paying top buck, we dont have a great squad or team, we havent had a successful recent record of qualifying - its a very hard job 

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12 hours ago, exile said:

Looking back at the Euro 2016 campaign, the closest teams to us were Ireland and Georgia (they are now in League B and League D). 

If we imagine a mini league of us three, the standings were:

Republic of Ireland W2 D1 L1 = 7 points

Scotland W2 D1 L1 = 7 points

Georgia W1 D0 L3 = 1 point

So as long as we could keep beating teams a little worse than Ireland, and stop losing to teams a little better than Georgia, we should have a decent chance.

Interesting but largely meaningless.

It will be interesting to see how we cope with being favourites to win a group for a change. 

For me it’s all about getting a good start. If we win our first game against Albania then I fancy us to win the group comfortably. 

If we lose or draw on the 10th of September then we’ll be under pressure for the rest of the group with 2 away games before our last game at home against Israel. 

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13 hours ago, scottincarlisle said:

The nations league is our best chance of getting to 2020.

Depends on who we get in our qualifying group I suppose. 

I’m hoping we don’t need the playoffs to qualify but it would be good to go into the qualifiers knowing we already have a playoff place secured. 

The playoffs could be tricky or they could be fairly straightforward. If we win our 4 group games comfortably then we have a good chance of being the top ranked team from League C which would mean the playoff semi would be at Hampden against the 4th ranked team. 

If we narrowly win our group we might need to go to Slovenia, Romania, Greece or Hungary for the semi which will be pretty difficult. 

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15 hours ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Noooooooooooo, second in our main qualification group.

Seems to be a lot of belief we can qualify from the nations league We are probably 6/4 to win group then evens to win semi and evens again to win final so 9/1, probably more chance of getting first or second in our main group

Knew if I looked hard enough I would find some odds in this. bet 365 have us at 13/8 to win the group so assuming we play 2 teams equal than us in semi and final that makes more than 9/1 to qualify, And this our best chance, no wonder we never qualify any more.

 

I love the concept of the nations league but the way we are discussing it here is deluded

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52 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Knew if I looked hard enough I would find some odds in this. bet 365 have us at 13/8 to win the group so assuming we play 2 teams equal than us in semi and final that makes more than 9/1 to qualify, And this our best chance, no wonder we never qualify any more.

 

I love the concept of the nations league but the way we are discussing it here is deluded

What difference does your made up odds make? 

It’s probably our best chance of qualifying because we are playing teams ranked lower than us in the group stage and as long as we win our group we’ll be playing teams of a similar standard to us in the playoffs.

I don’t think anyone is saying we’re a certainty to qualify for the finals but it gives us a decent chance. 

Your odds are also a bit simplistic. If we get to the playoffs and our first game is at home against say Hungary (who we beat away recently) or Slovenia (who we beat at Hampden last year) we’ll be shorter than evens to win that game. We could also be playing the final at Hampden against a similar team to us.

If we are 1/2 for both playoffs then that would put our odds of qualifying (according to your logic) at around 5/1.

Doesn’t sound too bad does it?

 

Edited by Texas Pete
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2 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

Interesting but largely meaningless.

It could be read in different ways. For one, the Republic might fancy they would be favourites to win such a three way group, but would only have done so by a whisker (if by goals scored) or not at all (if on head to head). Seen this way, the main difference between Ireland and us is that they managed to beat Germany. They probably had the self belief they could do it, whereas we probably didn't really believe it, but would do well to pick up a point. Perhaps a legacy of years of underachievement. But the tiered league format takes away any inferiority complex against top seeds. We 'only' need to beat teams around our own level, which we have shown capability of doing. Of course it's all hypothetical,  but that is the nature of a league that hasn't happened yet. As I said earlier, the simple thing is just to win our home games and try to nick some away points. 

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2 minutes ago, exile said:

It could be read in different ways. For one, the Republic might fancy they would be favourites to win such a three way group, but would only have done so by a whisker (if by goals scored) or not at all (if on head to head). Seen this way, the main difference between Ireland and us is that they managed to beat Germany. They probably had the self belief they could do it, whereas we probably didn't really believe it, but would do well to pick up a point. Perhaps a legacy of years of underachievement. But the tiered league format takes away any inferiority complex against top seeds. We 'only' need to beat teams around our own level, which we have shown capability of doing. Of course it's all hypothetical,  but that is the nature of a league that hasn't happened yet. As I said earlier, the simple thing is just to win our home games and try to nick some away points. 

It wasn’t a 3 way group though. We played both of those teams about 6 months to a year apart and we had put ourselves under pressure to win in Tbilisi because of our failure to beat Lithuania at home. 

Winning our Nations League group should (when do we ever do anything we ‘should’ do?) be very doable. Albania aren’t exactly a great team and Irael are a poor team. 

If we fail to win our group it will no doubt be because we fail to win one of our home games that we’ll have more than enough chances to win comfortably.  

If we don’t win this group it will be because we’ve underachieved. 

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12 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

It wasn’t a 3 way group though.

Yes I know that but when do we ever play in a three way group?*  As I say, the nations league is new territory, everything we try to say about it is hypothetical, yet that doesn't stop everyone making predictions about the future based on past matches that happened in different circumstances. We're all just coming from it from different angles.... but seem to be drawing the same conclusions anyway

* 1978 World Cup qualifiers

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8 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

What difference does your made up odds make? 

It’s probably our best chance of qualifying because we are playing teams ranked lower than us in the group stage and as long as we win our group we’ll be playing teams of a similar standard to us in the playoffs.

I don’t think anyone is saying we’re a certainty to qualify for the finals but it gives us a decent chance. 

Your odds are also a bit simplistic. If we get to the playoffs and our first game is at home against say Hungary (who we beat away recently) or Slovenia (who we beat at Hampden last year) we’ll be shorter than evens to win that game. We could also be playing the final at Hampden against a similar team to us.

If we are 1/2 for both playoffs then that would put our odds of qualifying (according to your logic) at around 5/1.

Doesn’t sound too bad does it?

 

Greece, Norway and Serbia are the other group favs, not as easy as Hungary {who we beat in a friendly} or Slovenia who we scraped past over two world cup legs.

 

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13 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Greece, Norway and Serbia are the other group favs, not as easy as Hungary {who we beat in a friendly} or Slovenia who we scraped past over two world cup legs.

Serbia would be tricky. However the semi- finals won't necessarily be the 4 group winners. Any of the 4 group winners could qualify by the normal process and their semi-final place would go to the next team down that hasn't made it. 

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4 hours ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Greece, Norway and Serbia are the other group favs, not as easy as Hungary {who we beat in a friendly} or Slovenia who we scraped past over two world cup legs.

 

Greece and  Norway are terrible at the moment.  

The teams I mentioned were the other top seeds in our league. 

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Albania aren't that bad a team....qualified for euro 2016 in which they beat Romania and held France until 90th minute in the group stages. Surely they should be group favourites given they qualified for a major tournament just two years back?

In the World cup group they were in with Spain and Italy so qualifying wasn't realistic.

Israel were actually in their group. Both teams won 0-3 away from home in the games wierdly.

Albania got some decent Seria A players...Berisha first choice for Lazio as the keeper, Hysaj is a very good full back for Napoli and they've also got a young midfielder just signed by Atletico Madrid. They don't really have a prolific striker though.

For this group I'll go for Scotland to finish second. Will this get a better seeding for euros group?

Confident of 4 points from the Hampden games but inevitably the away games will be a struggle I think.

Edited by Tartan Chris
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11 hours ago, exile said:

Yes I know that but when do we ever play in a three way group?*  As I say, the nations league is new territory, everything we try to say about it is hypothetical, yet that doesn't stop everyone making predictions about the future based on past matches that happened in different circumstances. We're all just coming from it from different angles.... but seem to be drawing the same conclusions anyway

* 1978 World Cup qualifiers

I prefer to base our chances on what I think will happen over the next 3 months, not what happened over the last 4 years. 

Not that there’s any harm in it. It just seems a bit pointless. Even if we had lost home and away to Ireland and Georgia, we would still have a decent chance of winning our Nations League group. 

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1 minute ago, Tartan Chris said:

Albania aren't that bad a team....qualified for euro 2016 in which they beat Romania and held France until 90th minute in the group stages.

In the World cup group they were in with Spain and Italy so qualifying wasn't realistic.

Israel were actually in their group. Both teams won 0-3 away from home in the games wierdly.

Albania got some decent Seria A players...Berisha first choice for Lazio as the keeper, Hysaj is a very good full back for Napoli and they've also got a young midfielder just signed by Atletico Madrid. They don't really have a prolific striker though.

For this group I'll go for Scotland to finish second. Will this get a better seeding for euros group?

Confident of 4 points from the Hampden games but inevitably the away games will be a struggle I think.

To guarantee pot 3 in the qualifiers I think we need to win our Nations League group. We might still scrape pot 3 if we finish second but we’d need to get lucky. 

Albania are certainly not a terrible team but they are no better than Slovenia, Ireland or Finland etc. who I would fancy our chances against, particularly at Hampden.

We are favourites to win our group for a reason and I can’t see Albania or Israel beating us at Hampden. Can we live up to our favourites tag and win both our home games and take something away from home? We’ll find out over the next 3 months or so. 

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On 8/9/2018 at 1:08 PM, BucksburnDandy said:

 

Bang on. This is absolutely vital. Win the mini league and the insurance policy is there for next year. Fail to and we can kiss goodbye to Euro 2020, as we would be in Pot 4 and it's going to take a miracle to qualify from there.

 

Harsh as it sounds, fail to win this mini-league and McLeish should be let go. It's vital that we reach these Euros for the financial and on park good of the game in this country. It has been starved of finances and success for far too long. Time to put it right, no excuses.

I think we could still get pot 3 if we finish second in our Nations League group, in fact we could still make the playoffs. 

We would need to be one of the best runners up though and unless at least one of the teams that won their League C groups also qualified outright, our playoffs could be against League B opposition. 

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24 minutes ago, Tartan Chris said:

Surely they should be group favourites given they qualified for a major tournament just two years back?

Seems a strange thing to base who’s favourites for our group on. 

Qualifiers for Euro 2016 started 4 years ago. We had a stinker of a group (our own fault admittedly based on our seeding). 

A better manager (or at least a less stubborn one) would have got us to Euro 2016. Would that have made us favourites to win a Nations League group with the Netherlands in it because they didn’t qualify?

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Well I give Albania the edge as see both as similar matched teams as Albania usually finish 3rd or 4th in their groups. They're not a minnow so yes tie breaker would be if they've made a tournament recently.

Would use the same logic if Scotland had been in a group with Wales, ROI or Norn Iron. For example I'd say Denmark would be favourites to win their group with Wales and ROI.

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1 minute ago, Tartan Chris said:

Well I give Albania the edge as see both as similar matched teams as Albania usually finish 3rd or 4th in their groups. They're not a minnow so yes tie breaker would be if they've made a tournament recently.

Would use the same logic if Scotland had been in a group with Wales, ROI or Norn Iron. For example I'd say Denmark would be favourites to win their group with Wales and ROI.

Wales and the two Irelands are both ranked well above us though. Albania are not. 

Albania came third in their last group but finished a mile behind Italy and Spain (understandably so) but they had three poor teams below them. They also lost 0-3 at home to Israel and only just beat Macedonia with a last minute winner so going to Albania shouldn’t hold any fears for us.

Scotland also normally finish 3rd or 4th in their group and finished 3rd in our last group. 

I’d say we were justified favourites. Only just though and as we all know, being favourites means nothing. 

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