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Belgium Match Thread (07/09/2018)


Clyde1998

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31 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

I think you might be doing Griffiths a bit of a disservice here. He fell down the order at Celtic because Dembele and Edouard are probably better players. That doesn’t mean he can’t hold the ball up. 

It certainly isn’t his strength. He’s better at running the channels while someone else holds the ball up and feeds him although playing two strikers in international football these days is pretty rare. 

In fairness, I haven’t seen that much of Griffiths outside of Scotland games but he held the ball up pretty well when he came on against Rangers last week and I’ve seen him do similar in the past. He might not be as good at it as Dembele or Edouard but neither of those guys are Scottish so he’ll have to do. 

Like yourelf, I haven’t seen much of McBurnie either but I assume he plays up front on his own for Swansea? He can’t be that bad at holding the ball up if he does. 

Don't get me wrong. I like Griffiths. I'd have him at Ibrox in front of Lafferty and Morellos if it were possible. 

He just isn't a lone striker that's going to hold the ball up. That's not his style. 

And holding the ball up against Rangers last weekend wasn't difficult. We were truly awful. I think my gran could have held the ball up against us in that game. 

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1 hour ago, RenfrewBlue said:

Don't get me wrong. I like Griffiths. I'd have him at Ibrox in front of Lafferty and Morellos if it were possible. 

He just isn't a lone striker that's going to hold the ball up. That's not his style. 

And holding the ball up against Rangers last weekend wasn't difficult. We were truly awful. I think my gran could have held the ball up against us in that game. 

McLeish is trying to get us to play out from the back and get down the wings though so he’s not really asking Griffiths to hold the ball up that much. Ok so that wasn’t necessarily the best choice against Belgium but I think it’s what we’ll do against Albania and Israel. 

Like it or not, Griffiths is the best we’ve got and McBurnie and Russell are second choice. For the moment anyway. McLeish will need to figure out the best way to play with one of those guys  

Hopefully we’ll get a win tomorrow night with Griffiths bagging a couple of goals. 

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2 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

McLeish is trying to get us to play out from the back and get down the wings though so he’s not really asking Griffiths to hold the ball up that much. Ok so that wasn’t necessarily the best choice against Belgium but I think it’s what we’ll do against Albania and Israel. 

Like it or not, Griffiths is the best we’ve got and McBurnie and Russell are second choice. For the moment anyway. McLeish will need to figure out the best way to play with one of those guys  

Hopefully we’ll get a win tomorrow night with Griffiths bagging a couple of goals. 

I'll drink to that! 

With McGregor and Armstrong in the midfield hopefully the years of playing with Griffiths helps too. 

It's the passes from defence into Midfield that were the problem against Belgium. Hopefully Albanias midfield isn't anywhere near as sharp. 

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4 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

I really would like to see us with two strikers up front tomorrow night. Griffiths with Naismith or Snodgrass perhaps. Griffiths needs support up top as he has pace which leaves him very isolated when played as a solitary striker.

The support should come from Forrest and Fraser. 

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Well that was my first ever Scotland game and what an introduction. To think ppl spend serious money watching that shite abroad lol. Nah being serious I thought we played well the first half and looked a decent side but the basic errors from mcginn and Jack were embarrassing to say the least. Do these guys not understand that they ain't playing against Motherwell or kilmarnock. Ryan jack's was especially bad. The responsibility for this kind of thing should come down to the manager. Imo mctominay or fleck wouldn't have made those basic errors. I will give mcginn a little bit of slack as he looks like a decent player who could progress but Ryan jack is utterly out of his depth at this level. Anyways hopefully McLeish learns from these friendlies and picks a team that can beat Albania and israel. 

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16 hours ago, mccaughey85 said:

Well that was my first ever Scotland game and what an introduction. To think ppl spend serious money watching that shite abroad lol. Nah being serious I thought we played well the first half and looked a decent side but the basic errors from mcginn and Jack were embarrassing to say the least. Do these guys not understand that they ain't playing against Motherwell or kilmarnock. Ryan jack's was especially bad. The responsibility for this kind of thing should come down to the manager. Imo mctominay or fleck wouldn't have made those basic errors. I will give mcginn a little bit of slack as he looks like a decent player who could progress but Ryan jack is utterly out of his depth at this level. Anyways hopefully McLeish learns from these friendlies and picks a team that can beat Albania and israel. 

Unfortunately that's the risk you run when you rely on players whose experience in the game has mainly come from playing against Motherwell and Kilmarnock.

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Tbh, my main reaction to the game was: Why on earth did we bother.

We're going into games with Albania and Israel.. so why are we playing a side full of world class footballers who play with a style and ability that we won't see on the pitch in either of the games that matter. The point of this fixture date should have been to prep us and give us the best shot at winning the games that matter. Instead we got wrecked. The likes of McGinn and Jack might be able to carry some anger into the Albania game, but they'll also carry doubt, having just been shown up. The team as a whole will be tired and frustrated from chasing shadow and getting pumped 4-0.

I'm literally just waiting for the next manager at this point.. already!
We should easily top this group, but I can see us finishing bottom right now.. 1 goal in 5 games and when asked about what we can expect from Albania he said "they've got a big man up top".. the level of analysis you give when you haven't seen a team play.

I know it's done and there's no going back, but does anyone think we'd be doing this poorly under Strachan?
He had his flaws, but we're worse now than we were.

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22 minutes ago, andyD said:

Tbh, my main reaction to the game was: Why on earth did we bother.

We're going into games with Albania and Israel.. so why are we playing a side full of world class footballers who play with a style and ability that we won't see on the pitch in either of the games that matter. The point of this fixture date should have been to prep us and give us the best shot at winning the games that matter. Instead we got wrecked. The likes of McGinn and Jack might be able to carry some anger into the Albania game, but they'll also carry doubt, having just been shown up. The team as a whole will be tired and frustrated from chasing shadow and getting pumped 4-0.

I'm literally just waiting for the next manager at this point.. already!
We should easily top this group, but I can see us finishing bottom right now.. 1 goal in 5 games and when asked about what we can expect from Albania he said "they've got a big man up top".. the level of analysis you give when you haven't seen a team play.

I know it's done and there's no going back, but does anyone think we'd be doing this poorly under Strachan?
He had his flaws, but we're worse now than we were.

I don’t see the point of this post. Wait till after the game, and if we lose, fair enough. You said yourself we were up against world class players, so why attack the manager? 

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35 minutes ago, andyD said:

Tbh, my main reaction to the game was: Why on earth did we bother.

We're going into games with Albania and Israel.. so why are we playing a side full of world class footballers who play with a style and ability that we won't see on the pitch in either of the games that matter. The point of this fixture date should have been to prep us and give us the best shot at winning the games that matter. Instead we got wrecked. The likes of McGinn and Jack might be able to carry some anger into the Albania game, but they'll also carry doubt, having just been shown up. The team as a whole will be tired and frustrated from chasing shadow and getting pumped 4-0.

I'm literally just waiting for the next manager at this point.. already!
We should easily top this group, but I can see us finishing bottom right now.. 1 goal in 5 games and when asked about what we can expect from Albania he said "they've got a big man up top".. the level of analysis you give when you haven't seen a team play.

I know it's done and there's no going back, but does anyone think we'd be doing this poorly under Strachan?
He had his flaws, but we're worse now than we were.

I'm sure I read earlier in this thread that we didn't have the option of not taking a match. Couple that with all other League C teams and all League D teams having games on each of the game periods (Thu-Sat & Sun-Tues) then we only had the option of playing League A or B teams who had no Nations League fixture during the first game period (Thu-Sat).

We would probably then have had that narrowed down even further by teams that had their NL fixtures on either the Monday or Tuesday of this week as presumably teams wouldn't have wanted to play us on the Friday then have their game on the Sunday.

Looking back at the games the only teams that I can see that would have been more at our level are Sweden, Austria, Slovakia or Denmark. It could well be that those 4 had sorted their friendlies before we came knocking.

I think we've just been unfortunate to be drawn in a group of 3, and then been left with little to pick between when sorting a friendly.

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23 minutes ago, er yir macaroon said:

I don’t see the point of this post. Wait till after the game, and if we lose, fair enough. You said yourself we were up against world class players, so why attack the manager? 

Just saying that my main reaction to the Belgium game isn't one based on the players or how we played. It's more just how unhelpful the fixutre was overall, and another layer on my disillusionment with the choice of manager.

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48 minutes ago, andyD said:

Tbh, my main reaction to the game was: Why on earth did we bother.

We're going into games with Albania and Israel.. so why are we playing a side full of world class footballers who play with a style and ability that we won't see on the pitch in either of the games that matter. The point of this fixture date should have been to prep us and give us the best shot at winning the games that matter. Instead we got wrecked. The likes of McGinn and Jack might be able to carry some anger into the Albania game, but they'll also carry doubt, having just been shown up. The team as a whole will be tired and frustrated from chasing shadow and getting pumped 4-0.

I'm literally just waiting for the next manager at this point.. already!
We should easily top this group, but I can see us finishing bottom right now.. 1 goal in 5 games and when asked about what we can expect from Albania he said "they've got a big man up top".. the level of analysis you give when you haven't seen a team play.

I know it's done and there's no going back, but does anyone think we'd be doing this poorly under Strachan?
He had his flaws, but we're worse now than we were.

We were pumped 3-0 by a bang average Slovakia team under Strachan, albeit away from home. 

We could easily have lost 0-4 (or worse) under Strachan on Friday night. 

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5 minutes ago, Lion Rampant said:

I'm sure I read earlier in this thread that we didn't have the option of not taking a match. Couple that with all other League C teams and all League D teams having games on each of the game periods (Thu-Sat & Sun-Tues) then we only had the option of playing League A or B teams who had no Nations League fixture during the first game period (Thu-Sat).

We would probably then have had that narrowed down even further by teams that had their NL fixtures on either the Monday or Tuesday of this week as presumably teams wouldn't have wanted to play us on the Friday then have their game on the Sunday.

Looking back at the games the only teams that I can see that would have been more at our level are Sweden, Austria, Slovakia or Denmark. It could well be that those 4 had sorted their friendlies before we came knocking.

I think we've just been unfortunate to be drawn in a group of 3, and then been left with little to pick between when sorting a friendly. 

I find that a little hard ot believe given that there were about 30 games across thurs to sat.

So that's 60 involved nations.. there's quite a lot left to pick from, surely?

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47 minutes ago, andyD said:

Tbh, my main reaction to the game was: Why on earth did we bother.

We're going into games with Albania and Israel.. so why are we playing a side full of world class footballers who play with a style and ability that we won't see on the pitch in either of the games that matter. The point of this fixture date should have been to prep us and give us the best shot at winning the games that matter. Instead we got wrecked. The likes of McGinn and Jack might be able to carry some anger into the Albania game, but they'll also carry doubt, having just been shown up. The team as a whole will be tired and frustrated from chasing shadow and getting pumped 4-0.

I'm literally just waiting for the next manager at this point.. already!
We should easily top this group, but I can see us finishing bottom right now.. 1 goal in 5 games and when asked about what we can expect from Albania he said "they've got a big man up top".. the level of analysis you give when you haven't seen a team play.

I know it's done and there's no going back, but does anyone think we'd be doing this poorly under Strachan?
He had his flaws, but we're worse now than we were.

My exact same thoughts when the fixtures came out, i also think the same about the Portugal friendly next month and the friendly fixtures at the end of last season. The only decent friendly i think we have had since McLeish came in was Hungry. If we have 2 or 3 more of those types of matches where we had a decent chance of winning the feeling around this place and probably in teh squad would be a lot better 

However to be fair to the SFA i have read (not certain if this is correct) that we had to play a friendly match and we could have only played against group A or B teams in the nations league and i imagine the options were only 2 or 3 teams of which Belgium was one

It would have been interested to see if we could have played a non UEFA team as i see the Dutch played Peru (i think it was) on Thursday night - if this was the case i would have preferred to have played a lower ranking non UEFA team to give us a chance of building some momentum. Thats if the option was there  

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2 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

We were pumped 3-0 by a bang average Slovakia team under Strachan, albeit away from home. 

We could easily have lost 0-4 (or worse) under Strachan on Friday night. 

Under Strachan we could have possibly got a draw, or a win or lost - or maybe not even played the game or any friendly games - or maybe played a different team in a friendly at a different location at a different time

The outcomes of what could have happened under stratchan are limitless 

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1 minute ago, andyD said:

I find that a little hard ot believe given that there were about 30 games across thurs to sat.

So that's 60 involved nations.. there's quite a lot left to pick from, surely?

Sorry, you've totally lost me here, do you mean 30 friendlies?

Any of the teams playing Thu-Sat in Nations League games would have been unavailable for selection for a friendly with us on the Friday. That left only League A and B teams who had a free date on the Thu-Sat that we could select from.

We only had about 5 or 6 to pick from, and if many of them were already sorted we probably had little option.

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Texas Pete said:

We were pumped 3-0 by a bang average Slovakia team under Strachan, albeit away from home. 

We could easily have lost 0-4 (or worse) under Strachan on Friday night. 

I wasn't meaning just the single Belgium fixture.

Under McLeish:
> Lost 4 of 5 games.
> Scored 1 goal in 5 games.
> Conceded 8, which is 1.6 goals a game.
> We don't have a settled side.
> We don't have a settled system.

We scored in all 7 of Strachan's 7 games in 2017. 12 goals scored in 7 games. 5 conceded.

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4 minutes ago, Lion Rampant said:

Sorry, you've totally lost me here, do you mean 30 friendlies?

Any of the teams playing Thu-Sat in Nations League games would have been unavailable for selection for a friendly with us on the Friday. That left only League A and B teams who had a free date on the Thu-Sat that we could select from.

We only had about 5 or 6 to pick from, and if many of them were already sorted we probably had little option.

Sorry, guess i wasn't clear.
I took a look thru the results listed on the bbc site and there were 30 games, that's national league and friendlies combined.

So that would mean there was a total of 60 teams playing in that sequence of days.

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3 minutes ago, andyD said:

Sorry, guess i wasn't clear.
I took a look thru the results listed on the bbc site and there were 30 games, that's national league and friendlies combined.

So that would mean there was a total of 60 teams playing in that sequence of days.

The teams playing the Nations League games wouldn't be available to play a friendly with us, as they already have games.

The only teams available to play friendlies on the day we wanted, probably Thursday or Friday so as to allow us a decent gap before the Albania game, were the ones actually playing friendlies on those days. These teams were Denmark, Slovakia, Austria and Sweden.

Holland and Peru played each other also, but we've played these two recently. Assuming we wanted a Friday game then that discounted Denmark and Slovakia as they had NL fixtures on the Sunday so wouldn't have fancied playing Friday then Sunday.

So realistically it looks like the only real options for a game on the Friday were Belgium, Sweden and Austria. Who's to say that Sweden and Austria hadn't got their friendly tied up early on?

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23 hours ago, RenfrewBlue said:

I'll drink to that! 

With McGregor and Armstrong in the midfield hopefully the years of playing with Griffiths helps too. 

It's the passes from defence into Midfield that were the problem against Belgium. Hopefully Albanias midfield isn't anywhere near as sharp. 

the problem was they didnt make it to the midfield 😕

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7 minutes ago, Lion Rampant said:

The teams playing the Nations League games wouldn't be available to play a friendly with us, as they already have games.

The only teams available to play friendlies on the day we wanted, probably Thursday or Friday so as to allow us a decent gap before the Albania game, were the ones actually playing friendlies on those days. These teams were Denmark, Slovakia, Austria and Sweden.

Holland and Peru played each other also, but we've played these two recently. Assuming we wanted a Friday game then that discounted Denmark and Slovakia as they had NL fixtures on the Sunday so wouldn't have fancied playing Friday then Sunday.

So realistically it looks like the only real options for a game on the Friday were Belgium, Sweden and Austria. Who's to say that Sweden and Austria hadn't got their friendly tied up early on?

I'm not sure why the only team available to play a friendly with would be just those 4..

60 teams played a game around the time we did, that includes games like Qatar v China and South Korea v Costa Rica.. 60 teams played.. out of 206 listed in the fifa rankings. That's 146 twiddling their thumbs.

Sure, some of them are too far away or wouldn't want a game, but I'm not sure why we'd be limited to just those 4 nations.

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6 minutes ago, andyD said:

I wasn't meaning just the single Belgium fixture.

Under McLeish:
> Lost 4 of 5 games.
> Scored 1 goal in 5 games.
> Conceded 8, which is 1.6 goals a game.
> We don't have a settled side.
> We don't have a settled system.

We scored in all 7 of Strachan's 7 games in 2017. 12 goals scored in 7 games. 5 conceded.

Fair point but I think we can discount the Mexico, Peru and Belgium games. Certainly Mexico and Peru anyway. These were almost B teams playing against teams warming up for the World Cup. We were never going to beat Belgium, regardless of who the manager was. 

The Costa Rica performance was quite poor but we played reasonably well against Hungary. 

Managers are ultimately judged on their performance in competitive games so let’s see how we get on tonight before writing McLeish off. 

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