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Your line-up to play Albania and Israel


Chripper

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1 hour ago, andyD said:

If we played a sensible, familiar system, say a 451, which our players know and are suited to, is stable and balanced.. then i feel like we might have a bit more success.

People talk about how we're on a par with Albania and Israel. We're not. Simple as.
We're ranked 40th, Albania 60th, Israel 91st.
We were supposed to walk this group and win every game.
Saying "we're on a par cos we're in that group" is stupid on it's face. It's like saying Malta and England are on a par because they were both in our last qualifying group. Ridiculous. Groups have top seeds and bottom seeds, and we are very clearly the top seed and we're screwing up because we've put a chancer in charge who couldn't get a job anywhere else.

Okay. Could someone please tell me why they think our players are suited, stable and balanced with 4 at the back. Where's the evidence of this? We've been nothing short of hopeless for 20 years playing 4 at the back. I'm not saying this is the only reason for our failings, but I'd say that it's a bloody big reason.

When is the last time that we qualified for a World Cup or a European Championships with a flat back four? 1990? That's a long time...

I keep saying this, international football is akin to European football. How many of our players shine in Europe? How many of our players are still playing In European competitions? Teams playing 4 at the back in the SPL is one thing, but once they do it in Europe they get beat against the likes of Skonto Riga and AEK Athens, etc.

And as stated previously, the groups for the Nations League is calculated by coefficients. Given that Israel ran us ragged, do you think we're better than them?

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24 minutes ago, PASTA Mick said:

Who are you talking about there? 😕

If anyone has any doubt how poor we are, our top scorer in the squad is Fletcher, our second top scorer is Robertson with 2.  Armstrong and Phillips have 1 each.  The rest of the squad are equal 5th with none.  

That would be Griffiths. Apparently he's thrown his dummy out of the pram after being criticised by McLeish at the Belgium game, then benched against Albania.

I don't think the goal tallies are a representation of how poor we are, it's just that we picked Naismith and Fletch for so long that no one else has really had a game. Then we do weird things like play Phillips up front.  That combined with a desire to play every friendly against a team what will have 70% of the ball and stuff us 3-0, it's hard to rack up the goals.

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1 hour ago, kwhitelaw said:

I disagree with a couple of points though, no way is Paterson our best option up front, I know he's scored some goals in the EPL but it's not his natural position and its not like he's on some kind of streak.  Our best option up front with this current squad is still Fletcher and he's still a decent enough option to have!  I don't understand people wanting him ditched.

I think people's problem with Fletch's is that he's scored in just 5 of his 31 caps. It's not that you can't rely on him to get a goal in an important game, it's that he's proved he's really unlikely to do it. Hence not wanting to rely on him. He's a decent link up player, for sure. Just not sure he's the guy i'd want to see on the end of chances.

As for Paterson, 3 in the last 4 feels like a bit of a streak. Fletch's 1 in 7 doesn't. The things Paterson have going for him are..
> he's a bit of an unknown quantity and that's likely to worry defenders as they wont be prepared
> he's pretty big and strong, so can put himself about
> he's always been good in the air
> he's on a high and confident, which counts for a lot

If we're going to play a 2, I'd probably go with him and McBurnie. I like Fletch, but he just doesn't score enough.

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51 minutes ago, Chripper said:

Okay. Could someone please tell me why they think our players are suited, stable and balanced with 4 at the back. Where's the evidence of this? We've been nothing short of hopeless for 20 years playing 4 at the back. I'm not saying this is the only reason for our failings, but I'd say that it's a bloody big reason.

When is the last time that we qualified for a World Cup or a European Championships with a flat back four? 1990? That's a long time...

I keep saying this, international football is akin to European football. How many of our players shine in Europe? How many of our players are still playing In European competitions? Teams playing 4 at the back in the SPL is one thing, but once they do it in Europe they get beat against the likes of Skonto Riga and AEK Athens, etc.

And as stated previously, the groups for the Nations League is calculated by coefficients. Given that Israel ran us ragged, do you think we're better than them?

The back 4.. see Strachan's final year.
Excluding the England game, cos we played a back 3, we played 5 competitive games with a back 4 (and a couple of defensive minded midfielders in front of them). In those 5 games we conceded 2 goals. So in our recent history we have been tight at the back, and against teams with better coefficients than we're currently playing against. In terms of being a balanced side, we also scored in every single one of those games.

We all know that Strachan's final year wasn't enough to qualify, but it was impressive and a good platform for the next manager to build on. Instead McLeish has seemingly torn it up, started again with a back3 and that mean defense feels like a long distant memory now.

As for back 4s at international level.. In our last qualifying campaign, in all 8 games against Slovakia, Slovenia, England and Lithuania, only once did any of them not use a back 4. Albania played a back 4 in the first game. Portugal, Mexico, Peru, Canada and the Netherlands all played a back 4 against us in friendlies recently. The only teams playing a back 3 against us competitively are Israel and Slovakia who haven't used it before nor since. So yeah, I'll go with the majority of international football teams and play a back 4, rather than.. just Israel.

"Skonto Riga and AEK Athens" That some teams lose games while playing a back 4 is not an argument not to play a back 4.

How many of our players are still in Europe? Umm.. probably a lot more than there are still in for Albania and Israel. Let's see.. err.. Forrest, Tierney, McGregor, Christie, Bain, Jack (tho he's just dropped out), Robertson, McTominay and McGregor. Right? So 8 or 9. I would argue that means nothing and they're not our best 8 or 9 players, but hey. How many shine? One. But I think for Israel that number is zero and for Albania it's also zero, tho they do have a couple of decent players. I'm not sure exactly what your point was, but it feels like it didn't land.

Last one, "Israel beat us, do you think we're better than them?"  err.. yes. I think we're a lot better than them. Anyone can lose a football match. MK Dons beat Man Utd 4-0 in the cup a few years ago. It doesn't make them better. Israel have a few decent players. Kayal is better than some on here seem to give him credit for. He's hard working and capable, if he was Scottish I'd probably want him in the side. Hemed can be difficult to play against. Dabbur seems to be well thought of. But the majority of the rest are very average players plying their trade in the Israeli league and all of their teams are already knocked out of Europe. It's not a quality league. It's true that bad players aren't ad bad as they used to be and we're not worldbeaters ourselves. But Israel is a team of ok footballers who work fairly hard when they feel like it. They lost 3-0 to Albania in World Cup qualifying last year, then just beat then 2-0 in the last round of fixtures. Since the beginning of 2017 they're won 3 competitive games and lost 6. We've won 5 and lost 1. In the FIFA rankings we're 40th, they're 91st. In the coefficient we're 25.7k they're 22.8k. I could go thru player by player and give you info on where they play and what they're assessed value or ability is. And all of this adds up to us being better than them. Does that mean we will win the game? no. The Man Utd team that lost to MK Dons included de Gea, Michael Keane, Shinji Kagawa, Johnny Evans, Welbeck, Anderson, Javier Hernandez. The better team can lose.

We often look at our players and think we've not got that much in the way of talent.
But it's about perspective, isn't it.
We only had 1 player in the Champions League final. Imagine we only had 1 in the English Premier League.
We haven't qualified for anything in 20 years. Imagine we hadn't qualified for anything in 48 years.
We started the year just outside the FIFA top 30. Imagine we started the year 1 place inside the top 100.
We only have 2 of 4 teams left in Europe. Imagine all of them went out in qualifying.
Sounds nightmare-ish eh? Well, that's the reality for Israel.

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3 hours ago, Chripper said:

Okay. Could someone please tell me why they think our players are suited, stable and balanced with 4 at the back. Where's the evidence of this? We've been nothing short of hopeless for 20 years playing 4 at the back. I'm not saying this is the only reason for our failings, but I'd say that it's a bloody big reason.

When is the last time that we qualified for a World Cup or a European Championships with a flat back four? 1990? That's a long time...

I keep saying this, international football is akin to European football. How many of our players shine in Europe? How many of our players are still playing In European competitions? Teams playing 4 at the back in the SPL is one thing, but once they do it in Europe they get beat against the likes of Skonto Riga and AEK Athens, etc.

And as stated previously, the groups for the Nations League is calculated by coefficients. Given that Israel ran us ragged, do you think we're better than them?

Maybe you can explain to us why you think a back 3 will work instead of giving us reasons why a back 4 doesn't. For the record, I'm not against a back 3. If we had the players, a tactically efficient manager and intelligence to play it then great, right now we don't.

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2 hours ago, andyD said:

I think people's problem with Fletch's is that he's scored in just 5 of his 31 caps. It's not that you can't rely on him to get a goal in an important game, it's that he's proved he's really unlikely to do it. Hence not wanting to rely on him. He's a decent link up player, for sure. Just not sure he's the guy i'd want to see on the end of chances.

As for Paterson, 3 in the last 4 feels like a bit of a streak. Fletch's 1 in 7 doesn't. The things Paterson have going for him are..
> he's a bit of an unknown quantity and that's likely to worry defenders as they wont be prepared
> he's pretty big and strong, so can put himself about
> he's always been good in the air
> he's on a high and confident, which counts for a lot

If we're going to play a 2, I'd probably go with him and McBurnie. I like Fletch, but he just doesn't score enough.

Aye I get what you’re saying about Fletcher but the lack of goals often overshadows important work like his link up play which is just as important. Remember he played most those games up front on his own, an often thankless task for Scotland! If he starts these 2 games, which is likely, and he misses multiple sitters then I’ll be the first to say bin him.  

I think starting Paterson up front for these 2 games is a helluva risk when you’ve got an experienced striker in the squad already. If he’s still banging them in for Cardiff when the qualifiers come around then absolutely give him a chance up front for us.

its not a position I’d like to be in if I was McLeish! If Fletch has a stinker everyone will slate him for not starting Paterson/McBurnie etc but if he goes with one of them and they don’t cut it he’ll look a fool!

Christ, I can’t remember the last time I was dreading a Scotland game this much lol

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46 minutes ago, kwhitelaw said:

Aye I get what you’re saying about Fletcher but the lack of goals often overshadows important work like his link up play which is just as important. Remember he played most those games up front on his own, an often thankless task for Scotland! If he starts these 2 games, which is likely, and he misses multiple sitters then I’ll be the first to say bin him.  

I think starting Paterson up front for these 2 games is a helluva risk when you’ve got an experienced striker in the squad already. If he’s still banging them in for Cardiff when the qualifiers come around then absolutely give him a chance up front for us.

its not a position I’d like to be in if I was McLeish! If Fletch has a stinker everyone will slate him for not starting Paterson/McBurnie etc but if he goes with one of them and they don’t cut it he’ll look a fool!

Christ, I can’t remember the last time I was dreading a Scotland game this much lol

Don't worry. This time next week we'll be on here chatting about two glorious wins and the excitement of a guaranteed playoff spot for Euro2020. I can't wait to see all the positivity flood back.

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57 minutes ago, stevenmcn said:

Maybe you can explain to us why you think a back 3 will work instead of giving us reasons why a back 4 doesn't. For the record, I'm not against a back 3. If we had the players, a tactically efficient manager and intelligence to play it then great, right now we don't.

I thought I had.

Our central defenders aren't very good, let's be completely honest, they are traffic cones with a wage. They aren't intelligent, football wise, so in lieu of this I would pick an extra defender to literally fill space. The basic way of saying is "strength in numbers". The way that it's been for 20 years is if one defender screws up then we concede, but it would be nice to have an extra body in there as insurance.

When we made the three at the back successful as we had of note was Colin Hendry, the rest weren't much better than we have now. Fine, the midfield back then was miles better than our current midfield, but again, that gap can be bridged by sheer work rate and endeavour.

Would it be fluid? Yes it would. Each time one of the wingbacks are bombing up the win, one of the central defenders come across, thus making it into a back four, as to keep up from being exposed down the flanks. 

To be honest, mate, I have tons of literal evidence that 4 at the back doesn't work (20 years worth) for us. We have NEVER been solid with a back four, at least not consistently. I have no proof that the back three wouldn't work.

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3 minutes ago, Chripper said:

I thought I had.

Our central defenders aren't very good, let's be completely honest, they are traffic cones with a wage. They aren't intelligent, football wise, so in lieu of this I would pick an extra defender to literally fill space. The basic way of saying is "strength in numbers". The way that it's been for 20 years is if one defender screws up then we concede, but it would be nice to have an extra body in there as insurance.

When we made the three at the back successful as we had of note was Colin Hendry, the rest weren't much better than we have now. Fine, the midfield back then was miles better than our current midfield, but again, that gap can be bridged by sheer work rate and endeavour.

Would it be fluid? Yes it would. Each time one of the wingbacks are bombing up the win, one of the central defenders come across, thus making it into a back four, as to keep up from being exposed down the flanks. 

To be honest, mate, I have tons of literal evidence that 4 at the back doesn't work (20 years worth) for us. We have NEVER been solid with a back four, at least not consistently. I have no proof that the back three wouldn't work.

I don’t doubt you’ve been compiling a dossier on the subject for the past 20 years.

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1 hour ago, kwhitelaw said:

its not a position I’d like to be in if I was McLeish! If Fletch has a stinker everyone will slate him for not starting Paterson/McBurnie etc but if he goes with one of them and they don’t cut it he’ll look a fool!

It's a situation he knew about before he took the job. It's not like he didn't know anything about the players before he took the job. He was aware of our striking options, with the exception of Paterson who's only recently started playing, and scoring, up front.

For me, we need 2 wins. If we lose the first then confidence takes a knock, the crowd's unhappy and we are in danger at home to Israel. Teams love coming to places where the crowd is hostile to the home team. Win the first and we're confident and happier going into the 2nd.

Against Israel he played 7 primarily defensive players. Only 2 of the 11 were actually forward-minded. It was a pretty scared looking side, like we were trying to just go there and get a point. My fear is we go to Albania in the same mindset, and just try not to lose.

So I guess I'm worried that McLeish, for all his talk of being gallus, is actually just a coward. If we want to go there and win, we play 4 forward minded players. A striker supported by Fraser, Christie and another.. be it GMS or Forrest or Russell. 532 with Tierney at right back feels like such a timid approach. I'd put Paterson up front and support him with 3 guys. Play to win. If it's not working at half time, you've got subs to make a change if that's what's needed. My heart will sink if i see an isolated front 2 or some weird system like he played against Costa Rica with Fletch on his own up front.  Just try.. and if it needs changing chance it. That's what being a manger is.

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1 hour ago, andyD said:

The back 4.. see Strachan's final year.
Excluding the England game, cos we played a back 3, we played 5 competitive games with a back 4 (and a couple of defensive minded midfielders in front of them). In those 5 games we conceded 2 goals. So in our recent history we have been tight at the back, and against teams with better coefficients than we're currently playing against. In terms of being a balanced side, we also scored in every single one of those games.

 

(I'm busy so I'm going to have to whiz through these)

Why do you want to ignore the England game? Because we played with a back 3 and almost got a famous victory? And the 4-2-3-1 was far too defensive, at least it was the way that Strachan played it. Essentially it was 6 players defending and 3 attacking, and to make that formation to work the three behind the strikers have to be able to actually control the ball...

 

2 hours ago, andyD said:

As for back 4s at international level.. In our last qualifying campaign, in all 8 games against Slovakia, Slovenia, England and Lithuania, only once did any of them not use a back 4. Albania played a back 4 in the first game. Portugal, Mexico, Peru, Canada and the Netherlands all played a back 4 against us in friendlies recently. The only teams playing a back 3 against us competitively are Israel and Slovakia who haven't used it before nor since. So yeah, I'll go with the majority of international football teams and play a back 4, rather than.. just Israel.

I really don't care what the majority do. No revolution began with someone following the crowd.

2 hours ago, andyD said:

How many of our players are still in Europe? Umm.. probably a lot more than there are still in for Albania and Israel. Let's see.. err.. Forrest, Tierney, McGregor, Christie, Bain, Jack (tho he's just dropped out), Robertson, McTominay and McGregor. Right? So 8 or 9. I would argue that means nothing and they're not our best 8 or 9 players, but hey. How many shine? One. But I think for Israel that number is zero and for Albania it's also zero, tho they do have a couple of decent players. I'm not sure exactly what your point was, but it feels like it didn't land.

I'm not talking about Celtic or Rangers. I'm talking the rest of our Scottish clubs that have zero transfer funds and zero clue on how to bring through good youngsters.

2 hours ago, andyD said:

Last one, "Israel beat us, do you think we're better than them?"  err.. yes. I think we're a lot better than them. Anyone can lose a football match. MK Dons beat Man Utd 4-0 in the cup a few years ago. It doesn't make them better. Israel have a few decent players. Kayal is better than some on here seem to give him credit for. He's hard working and capable, if he was Scottish I'd probably want him in the side. Hemed can be difficult to play against. Dabbur seems to be well thought of. But the majority of the rest are very average players plying their trade in the Israeli league and all of their teams are already knocked out of Europe. It's not a quality league. It's true that bad players aren't ad bad as they used to be and we're not worldbeaters ourselves. But Israel is a team of ok footballers who work fairly hard when they feel like it. They lost 3-0 to Albania in World Cup qualifying last year, then just beat then 2-0 in the last round of fixtures. Since the beginning of 2017 they're won 3 competitive games and lost 6. We've won 5 and lost 1. In the FIFA rankings we're 40th, they're 91st. In the coefficient we're 25.7k they're 22.8k. I could go thru player by player and give you info on where they play and what they're assessed value or ability is. And all of this adds up to us being better than them. Does that mean we will win the game? no. The Man Utd team that lost to MK Dons included de Gea, Michael Keane, Shinji Kagawa, Johnny Evans, Welbeck, Anderson, Javier Hernandez. The better team can lose.

I think we're on par with Israel as well as Albania. We'll probably beat Israel at Hampden and then lose to Albania in Albania. I think a lot of people here like to overestimate our midfield. The way that some people talk it's like we have midfielders who play for Juventus and Real Madrid. Truth is, we're the paupers of football.

2 hours ago, andyD said:

We often look at our players and think we've not got that much in the way of talent.

But it's about perspective, isn't it.
We only had 1 player in the Champions League final. Imagine we only had 1 in the English Premier League.
We haven't qualified for anything in 20 years. Imagine we hadn't qualified for anything in 48 years.
We started the year just outside the FIFA top 30. Imagine we started the year 1 place inside the top 100.
We only have 2 of 4 teams left in Europe. Imagine all of them went out in qualifying.
Sounds nightmare-ish eh? Well, that's the reality for Israel.

This is the part where you've lost me.

It seems to me like you're accepting our lowly place in world football and by comparing us to a less successful nation you're vindicating our failures. You're pretty much saying that Israel have a worse record than us, ours is bad, but it isn't as bad, so we should be content and happy with where we are.

That's a typical Scottish attitude.

I'm much rather that we compare ourselves to countries of similar population, and who have been successful, and to reach for the stars. Countries like Uruguay and Croatia are countries who we should aspire to. We shouldn't be happy because we aren't as bad as we could be, we should be livid that we aren't as good as we could or should be. Why should we? Because football is supposed to be our national game, and yet our mentality towards it is basic and brainless.

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9 minutes ago, Chripper said:

Why do you want to ignore the England game? Because we played with a back 3 and almost got a famous victory? And the 4-2-3-1 was far too defensive, at least it was the way that Strachan played it. Essentially it was 6 players defending and 3 attacking, and to make that formation to work the three behind the strikers have to be able to actually control the ball..

No, i only discounted it cos it wasn't a back 4. No subterfuge. And I agree, a lot of the time Strachan should have been more adventurous, tho you could argue he didn't have fantastic options to play the 3 positions behind the striker. Fraser and Christie seem perfect. Forrest, GMS and Russel seem capable. So it feels like we're in a good place to play that way.

9 minutes ago, Chripper said:

I really don't care what the majority do. No revolution began with someone following the crowd.

Your original point was that a back 4 only worked in the Scottish Prem, not in Europe or internationally. So.. I find it odd that you now don't care what the majority do. Clearly a back 4 works perfectly fine at international level.

10 minutes ago, Chripper said:

I'm not talking about Celtic or Rangers. I'm talking the rest of our Scottish clubs that have zero transfer funds and zero clue on how to bring through good youngsters.

And the situation for Albanian and Israeli clubs is even worse.

10 minutes ago, Chripper said:

I think we're on par with Israel as well as Albania.

Why do you think that? Do you have some evidence other than one 90 minute match? Because that's the definition of just being a knee-jerk football fan. You need to look at the wider picture, not just what happened in 90 minutes one time. Did you believe that MK Dons were better than Man Utd after that game? I assume not, because that would be silly. So ask yourself why you want to believe Scotland are on a par with Israel just because of that result. I've shown you 47 different ways they're a lot worse off than us.

13 minutes ago, Chripper said:

You're pretty much saying that Israel have a worse record than us, ours is bad, but it isn't as bad, so we should be content and happy with where we are.

No, you've missed my point, and i'll take responsibility for that. What I meant was, we might look bad from where we're sat. But we're not. From Israel's point of view they'd love to be like us. Being like us would be a massive success. To me we're on a down at the moment, but we're still in a much better place than Israel. What I'm saying is, we're not on a par. I'm like you in that I think we're awful for how Scotland should be doing. But that doesn't mean we're among the worst and it doesn't excuse McLeish's cowardly fumblings in Israel. Even at our worst we are a lot better than that game showed.

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4 minutes ago, ProudScot said:

Now either Hendry or Bates to partner McKenna. Or maybe all 3 if a back 3 

That sucks. Had a it of hope around Devlin and McKenna since they've got the club partnership pretty much sorted. Now it's going to be a young untried pairing. Far from ideal. I think I'd go with Bates & McKenna.

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5 minutes ago, andyD said:

No, i only discounted it cos it wasn't a back 4. No subterfuge. And I agree, a lot of the time Strachan should have been more adventurous, tho you could argue he didn't have fantastic options to play the 3 positions behind the striker. Fraser and Christie seem perfect. Forrest, GMS and Russel seem capable. So it feels like we're in a good place to play that way.

Okay. I see. The players you listed really aren't good enough, though. The only one of the players who have proved themselves (at a high club level) is Fraser. None of them have done a thing at international.

8 minutes ago, andyD said:

Your original point was that a back 4 only worked in the Scottish Prem, not in Europe or internationally. So.. I find it odd that you now don't care what the majority do. Clearly a back 4 works perfectly fine at international level.

Well, a back four would work in any league and any competition... if you have central defenders who know how to defend. We don't.

10 minutes ago, andyD said:

And the situation for Albanian and Israeli clubs is even worse.

With all due respect to Albania, but we're one of the original inventers of football. 

11 minutes ago, andyD said:

Why do you think that? Do you have some evidence other than one 90 minute match? Because that's the definition of just being a knee-jerk football fan. You need to look at the wider picture, not just what happened in 90 minutes one time. Did you believe that MK Dons were better than Man Utd after that game? I assume not, because that would be silly. So ask yourself why you want to believe Scotland are on a par with Israel just because of that result. I've shown you 47 different ways they're a lot worse off than us.

Do I have evidence? Can I use the qualification groups to '96 and '98? If not then sucks for me. Berti Vogts brought back the flat back four and every subsequent manager has followed suit. I can't point to any evidence, from a recent viewpoint, as it doesn't exist. Yes, McLeish has played with a back three, but only sporadically. We're on a par with Israel because we're in the same group as them. Plus they beat us, relatively easily, so you can hardly say that we're better than them.

19 minutes ago, andyD said:

 

No, you've missed my point, and i'll take responsibility for that. What I meant was, we might look bad from where we're sat. But we're not. From Israel's point of view they'd love to be like us. Being like us would be a massive success. To me we're on a down at the moment, but we're still in a much better place than Israel. What I'm saying is, we're not on a par. I'm like you in that I think we're awful for how Scotland should be doing. But that doesn't mean we're among the worst and it doesn't excuse McLeish's cowardly fumblings in Israel. Even at our worst we are a lot better than that game showed.

I don't think we should feel a sense of pride or schadenfreude because we aren't in a bad a state as Albania or Israel. 

We're bad and we're getting worse. There's no shoots of recovery on the horizon. As I've said previous, the SFA don't care, the clubs don't care and it would appear that the fans are happy to settle for the status quo as long as we aren't ranked as badly as Albania. 😋

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1 hour ago, Chripper said:

I thought I had.

Our central defenders aren't very good, let's be completely honest, they are traffic cones with a wage. They aren't intelligent, football wise, so in lieu of this I would pick an extra defender to literally fill space. The basic way of saying is "strength in numbers". The way that it's been for 20 years is if one defender screws up then we concede, but it would be nice to have an extra body in there as insurance.

When we made the three at the back successful as we had of note was Colin Hendry, the rest weren't much better than we have now. Fine, the midfield back then was miles better than our current midfield, but again, that gap can be bridged by sheer work rate and endeavour.

Would it be fluid? Yes it would. Each time one of the wingbacks are bombing up the win, one of the central defenders come across, thus making it into a back four, as to keep up from being exposed down the flanks. 

To be honest, mate, I have tons of literal evidence that 4 at the back doesn't work (20 years worth) for us. We have NEVER been solid with a back four, at least not consistently. I have no proof that the back three wouldn't work.

Apologies if you have explained it before mate, I must have missed it 👍. I do think you touch on our defensive issues by touching on how your midfield perform. I feel our midfield very rarely take control in matches, which isn't going to help whether you've 3 or 4 at the back. Yes, we do lose a fair few goals at set pieces which isn't down to midfield, but on the whole our central defenders simply aren't good enough or playing regularly at a high enough level. You can't just say they're all shit so just play more of them to compensate. What if we did that at the other end and just played 3 centre forwards cause Fletcher and McBurnie are crap? Anyway enjoying the debate. 👍

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7 minutes ago, stevenmcn said:

Apologies if you have explained it before mate, I must have missed it 👍. I do think you touch on our defensive issues by touching on how your midfield perform. I feel our midfield very rarely take control in matches, which isn't going to help whether you've 3 or 4 at the back. Yes, we do lose a fair few goals at set pieces which isn't down to midfield, but on the whole our central defenders simply aren't good enough or playing regularly at a high enough level. You can't just say they're all shit so just play more of them to compensate. What if we did that at the other end and just played 3 centre forwards cause Fletcher and McBurnie are crap? Anyway enjoying the debate. 👍

Nah, you're alright. :)

Fair point about the midfield, which is refreshing to hear, as it would appear that there are certain people who think we have good midfielders. We're as weak in midfield as we are in defence, maybe not as weak, but it's certainly a weak area. That being the case, we should look towards the midfield as we do the defence (load up the middle) and see how far we get. If McLeish can organize us, enough that every single player knows their job and what's expected of, then we could do something.

To be fair, you might be saying that tongue in cheek, but you aren't far off. We are weak in attack (it seems to be a theme) so we should play two strikers. As am I. :cheers3:

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39 minutes ago, Chripper said:

Nah, you're alright. :)

Fair point about the midfield, which is refreshing to hear, as it would appear that there are certain people who think we have good midfielders. We're as weak in midfield as we are in defence, maybe not as weak, but it's certainly a weak area. That being the case, we should look towards the midfield as we do the defence (load up the middle) and see how far we get. If McLeish can organize us, enough that every single player knows their job and what's expected of, then we could do something.

To be fair, you might be saying that tongue in cheek, but you aren't far off. We are weak in attack (it seems to be a theme) so we should play two strikers. As am I. :cheers3:

Lol, so just to clarify, apart from goalkeeper and left back, we're a bit shit. Think we're going to have to petition FIFA to be allowed a 5-5-4 line up. 😂😂😂

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2 hours ago, stevenmcn said:

Lol, so just to clarify, apart from goalkeeper and left back, we're a bit shit. Think we're going to have to petition FIFA to be allowed a 5-5-4 line up. 😂😂😂

Yeah, that sounds about right... watch out world, we're coming!! We'll take out two players, well, three if we can formulate a formation that uses 2 left backs... 😋

Actually that's not a bad idea, perhaps we can get special dispensation on the account of us being handicapped with being... ya know... a bit shit. 😜

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Guest ElChris04

4-2-3-1 

McGregor 

Tierney-Bates-McKenna-Robertson

Armstrong-McGregor

Forrest-Christie-Fraser 
 
Russell 
 
Forget about target forwards. We need to strike these teams quick and if we are going with a player who is clinical and Pacy up front then it’s Russell for me. His form has been class for Kansas and he has that extra energy that gives defenders no rest. On another note Christie HAS to play.. in the form off his career with us at Celtic and his link up with players like jamesie & McGregor will be Crucial in midfield. Can’t lie I’ve lost hope thanks to the dinosaur mcleish and how far he’s set us back as a national team but I still believe the Bhoys will be the one carrying the national team again. 

 

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On 11/14/2018 at 4:50 PM, er yir macaroon said:

I’m not advocating calling up Grimmer.

I know, I just couldn’t be arsed scrolling back up through all the other posts to find the original post about the lack of Scottish right backs.

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15 hours ago, Chripper said:

Nah, you're alright. :)

Fair point about the midfield, which is refreshing to hear, as it would appear that there are certain people who think we have good midfielders. We're as weak in midfield as we are in defence, maybe not as weak, but it's certainly a weak area. That being the case, we should look towards the midfield as we do the defence (load up the middle) and see how far we get. If McLeish can organize us, enough that every single player knows their job and what's expected of, then we could do something.

To be fair, you might be saying that tongue in cheek, but you aren't far off. We are weak in attack (it seems to be a theme) so we should play two strikers. As am I. :cheers3:

So maybe if Levein had played 5-5-0 instead?... 

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