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Scottish players in action 19/20


SkyBlueScot

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12 hours ago, mccaughey85 said:

Celtic have coasted through the first two rounds of the qualifiers and now that they have drawn away to the champions of Romania suddenly this proves your point that celtics Scottish players are rubbish and that we only in your opinion have four good players. No one has ever said christie, McGregor etc are world beaters, but imo they are good players who under good management should be contributing to our national team and helping us qualify for major tournaments. You don't need a team of players playing for top European clubs to qualify for major tournaments, most countries our size don't have a squad of world class players so expecting us to have that is ludicrous. As I have said before you don't need to be playing for an elite European club to be a good player. You also don't need to be Zidane or xavi til be a good player so comparing Christie and McGregor to them is daft and proves nothing. To qualify for a tournament we need a group of good players who play or are capable of playing at a decent level. Imo forrest, Griffith's, McGregor and Tierney could easily play at epl level and Christie is starting to look like he could as well. This is what we need in our squad to allow us to qualify for tournaments coupled with some genuine top class talent in guys like Robertson and Fraser. Expecting more than this is daft and I find it strange given the last 20 years of failure.

In my view there are six levels in football: Very poor; poor; average; good; very good; world class. To call McGregor and Christie, etc, as being average isn't the slight that you seem to think it is. It's middle-of-the-road. It's average, but it's not poor or very poor.

We need to get it out of our heads that our players are good. They aren't good. If they were good then we wouldn't have gotten beat off Israel or Kazakhstan. If they were good we wouldn't draw at home against Lithuania (scored in the last minute) or get trounced by Slovakia. If we were good we wouldn't suffer from the shakes whenever we come up against Georgia.

The reason we haven't qualified for anything for 21 years is because we are average. I'm afraid average teams with average players don't qualify for major tournaments.

To be honest, you don't have to be a good player to be able to make it in the EPL. Look at McArthur and Arfield, those two are average players, one of them did zilch in a Scotland shirt and one was so bad that he wasn't even considered good enough to be called up by Scotland.

You really have to get it out of your head that I "expect" things. As stated previously, the only thing that I expect us to do is beat teams like San Marino, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, etc. I expect us to struggle against everyone else, as this is where we are. In football terms we are average so I don't expect us to be beat good teams, or very good teams or word class teams.

McTominay is good, he might turn out to be better than that. Fraser is also good. Tierney's good, and with McTominay, he might be better than that some day. Robertson is world class. Now, if people here are saying that McGregor or Christie are good then I'm afraid they're delusional. If those two were with Man United they wouldn't be for long. 

So, we have four good players, one world class player and the rest are average. Doesn't help that two of our best players play in the same position.

Just to reiterate, I expect nothing from this Scotland side. I don't expect us to ever qualify for anything ever again. Scottish football and the SFA are rotten to the core and there's no appetitive for change.

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6 hours ago, SWMM82 said:

Am sorry but you must’ve been watching a different game from most of us..... McGregor and Christie weren’t at their best but they certainly weren’t “chasing shadows”.

And what else are you expecting from Forrest apart from a vital away goal (great finish by the way) and having their full back on toast most the game???

I do agree about Bain though. The goalkeeping situation concerns me.

I think the proof of the pudding will be in the second leg.

As for Bain, he's only getting a look-in because he's playing for Celtic. If he played for Hamilton or St Johnstone no way would be even be in the squad. 

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59 minutes ago, The_Dark_Knight said:

In my view there are six levels in football: Very poor; poor; average; good; very good; world class. To call McGregor and Christie, etc, as being average isn't the slight that you seem to think it is. It's middle-of-the-road. It's average, but it's not poor or very poor.

We need to get it out of our heads that our players are good. They aren't good. If they were good then we wouldn't have gotten beat off Israel or Kazakhstan. If they were good we wouldn't draw at home against Lithuania (scored in the last minute) or get trounced by Slovakia. If we were good we wouldn't suffer from the shakes whenever we come up against Georgia.

The reason we haven't qualified for anything for 21 years is because we are average. I'm afraid average teams with average players don't qualify for major tournaments.

To be honest, you don't have to be a good player to be able to make it in the EPL. Look at McArthur and Arfield, those two are average players, one of them did zilch in a Scotland shirt and one was so bad that he wasn't even considered good enough to be called up by Scotland.

You really have to get it out of your head that I "expect" things. As stated previously, the only thing that I expect us to do is beat teams like San Marino, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, etc. I expect us to struggle against everyone else, as this is where we are. In football terms we are average so I don't expect us to be beat good teams, or very good teams or word class teams.

McTominay is good, he might turn out to be better than that. Fraser is also good. Tierney's good, and with McTominay, he might be better than that some day. Robertson is world class. Now, if people here are saying that McGregor or Christie are good then I'm afraid they're delusional. If those two were with Man United they wouldn't be for long. 

So, we have four good players, one world class player and the rest are average. Doesn't help that two of our best players play in the same position.

Just to reiterate, I expect nothing from this Scotland side. I don't expect us to ever qualify for anything ever again. Scottish football and the SFA are rotten to the core and there's no appetitive for change.

I totally get what you're saying, but I think the problem is that your distribution is skewed, so that players you consider "average" are considered "good" by most other people. You've pushed your interpretation of average quite high up the ranks, so there is now very little space for the breakdown above that, of "good", "very good", and "world class" as you put it. This is demonstrated by the fact that you rate Fraser (a guy who last season created more goals and big chances than almost anyone else in one of the world's top leagues) as just being "good", rather than "very good".

In addition to this, both Scotland and Celtic (teams you would rank as average in professional football) both have rankings well above the actual average in the game. For what it's worth, many people do the same thing with movies. Ask someone to rank a movie out of ten and if they think it was average they will give it 6/7 out of 10 instead of 5. I call it the "imdb paradox".

Finally, the problem with Scotland fucking up against smaller teams like Georgia and Kazakhstan, isn't as simply put down to raw technical ability of the players as you think. A lot of it is mental, as with all sports, and Scotland have developed a real losing mentality which seems to rear its head most when we play teams we're expected to beat. You as demonstrating some confirmation bias in not also pointing out that these same players who have struggled against the world's worst teams have also often had amazing games against some of the better teams like England, Spain, Croatia, and Germany in recent years. So ask yourself, do they suddenly acquire more technical ability on those days, or could it more likely be down to mentality and coaching?

Edited by mrniaboc
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1 hour ago, The_Dark_Knight said:

McTominay is good, he might turn out to be better than that. Fraser is also good. Tierney's good, and with McTominay, he might be better than that some day. Robertson is world class. Now, if people here are saying that McGregor or Christie are good then I'm afraid they're delusional. If those two were with Man United they wouldn't be for long. 

They're not delusional. They just have a different method of rating players.

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1 minute ago, Tartan_McCole said:

They're not delusional. They just have a different method of rating players.

Would anyone call Scott McTominay world class? No. No one.

Would anyone call him very good? Maybe some would.

Would anyone call him good? Yes. I think it's fair to say that he's won a fair percentage of the United fans over.

In my view, McTominay is a step or two ahead of Christie and McGregor (and the rest of our midfielders). Therefore, if Christie or McGregor was at United they wouldn't even make the bench. And bear in mind, this Manchester United midfield is weaker than it's ever been. Matic is over the hill. Pogba only bothers from time-to-time and Fred is hit and miss.

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1 hour ago, The_Dark_Knight said:

In my view there are six levels in football: Very poor; poor; average; good; very good; world class. To call McGregor and Christie, etc, as being average isn't the slight that you seem to think it is. It's middle-of-the-road. It's average, but it's not poor or very poor.

We need to get it out of our heads that our players are good. They aren't good. If they were good then we wouldn't have gotten beat off Israel or Kazakhstan. If they were good we wouldn't draw at home against Lithuania (scored in the last minute) or get trounced by Slovakia. If we were good we wouldn't suffer from the shakes whenever we come up against Georgia.

The reason we haven't qualified for anything for 21 years is because we are average. I'm afraid average teams with average players don't qualify for major tournaments.

To be honest, you don't have to be a good player to be able to make it in the EPL. Look at McArthur and Arfield, those two are average players, one of them did zilch in a Scotland shirt and one was so bad that he wasn't even considered good enough to be called up by Scotland.

You really have to get it out of your head that I "expect" things. As stated previously, the only thing that I expect us to do is beat teams like San Marino, Faroe Islands, Gibraltar, etc. I expect us to struggle against everyone else, as this is where we are. In football terms we are average so I don't expect us to be beat good teams, or very good teams or word class teams.

McTominay is good, he might turn out to be better than that. Fraser is also good. Tierney's good, and with McTominay, he might be better than that some day. Robertson is world class. Now, if people here are saying that McGregor or Christie are good then I'm afraid they're delusional. If those two were with Man United they wouldn't be for long. 

So, we have four good players, one world class player and the rest are average. Doesn't help that two of our best players play in the same position.

Just to reiterate, I expect nothing from this Scotland side. I don't expect us to ever qualify for anything ever again. Scottish football and the SFA are rotten to the core and there's no appetitive for change.

McTominey, Fraser and Tierney are all "good" whereas Robertson is "World class"

To paraphrase, Techie Tam, my old Technical Drawing teacher, a man with a glass eye and the other one stuffed up with an oily rag could see that there is that distance in ability between those players.

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31 minutes ago, aaid said:

McTominey, Fraser and Tierney are all "good" whereas Robertson is "World class"

To paraphrase, Techie Tam, my old Technical Drawing teacher, a man with a glass eye and the other one stuffed up with an oily rag could see that there is that distance in ability between those players.

Can Techie Tam play right back? If so he could be our best option 

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3 minutes ago, ProudScot said:

Can Techie Tam play right back? If so he could be our best option 

Since it was nearly 40 years ago and he was in his sixties then, I suspect he's long gone.  Great guy though. 

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I see Scott Arfield has scored again for Rangers, how's he generally done since moving there?

Always like him at Burnley when he hit a good run of form in one of their promotion seasons and was bemused he never got a Scotland call up. Still only 30 now. Think he could've done a solid job filling the void left by likes of Brown and McArthur retiring.

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9 minutes ago, Tartan Chris said:

I see Scott Arfield has scored again for Rangers, how's he generally done since moving there?

Always like him at Burnley when he hit a good run of form in one of their promotion seasons and was bemused he never got a Scotland call up. Still only 30 now. Think he could've done a solid job filling the void left by likes of Brown and McArthur retiring.

He's been good at Rangers, but he plays international football for Canada. 

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53 minutes ago, mrniaboc said:

He's been good at Rangers, but he plays international football for Canada. 

Hence why my comment on him was in the past tense!! "could've done a job filling in when Brown retired" Think he got his first cap for Canada in 2017, Brown retired that year I think.

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21 hours ago, Tartan Chris said:

Hence why my comment on him was in the past tense!! "could've done a job filling in when Brown retired" Think he got his first cap for Canada in 2017, Brown retired that year I think.

He’s not a swap for Brown, very different players, but he’s easily good enough for our squad. 

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Don't rate Hanley tbh, very much in the Liam Cooper camp of being slow and cumbersome. He hardly played last season although don't know if he was injured. Norwich first choice CB is injured so it will be back to the bench when he's fit again just like at Newcastle.

Hopefully McLean can hold his own in premier league, there's a nice group of central midfielders bubbling at the top level now.

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