Predictions for the next three matches

[The Black Bra]

So who have we actually lost to at home in competitive games over the last 15 years or so?

I can think of Germany, Spain, Italy, Wales, Belarus, Norway (I think, did they beat us 1-0 with a penalty, McFadden handled on the line?).

Any others? The point is we don’t lose at home very often. I don’t make us favourites against Russia but we’ve definitely got a decent chance. And for the play off against Finland. Anybody got a rough idea who we play of Finland qualify through the group? Hoping they do as they look dangerous.

[bonny78]

1 hour ago, The Black Bra said:

So who have we actually lost to at home in competitive games over the last 15 years or so?

I can think of Germany, Spain, Italy, Wales, Belarus, Norway (I think, did they beat us 1-0 with a penalty, McFadden handled on the line?).

Any others? The point is we don’t lose at home very often. I don’t make us favourites against Russia but we’ve definitely got a decent chance. And for the play off against Finland. Anybody got a rough idea who we play of Finland qualify through the group? Hoping they do as they look dangerous.

That's still a lot of losses

[Texas Pete]

1 hour ago, The Black Bra said:

So who have we actually lost to at home in competitive games over the last 15 years or so?

I can think of Germany, Spain, Italy, Wales, Belarus, Norway (I think, did they beat us 1-0 with a penalty, McFadden handled on the line?).

Any others? The point is we don’t lose at home very often. I don’t make us favourites against Russia but we’ve definitely got a decent chance. And for the play off against Finland. Anybody got a rough idea who we play of Finland qualify through the group? Hoping they do as they look dangerous.

We haven’t lost a competitive at Hampden since Germany in September 2015 so it will be almost exactly 4 years when Russia attempt to beat us next month.

I have a feeling the record will come to an end a couple of days later when we play Belgium but I will actually be pretty surprised if Russia beat us. A draw may well be the outcome though which won’t be good enough. 

Hopefully we’ll get a big crowd. A full Hampden is quite intimidating to play in for the opposition and can make a difference. 

[The Black Bra]

20 minutes ago, bonny78 said:

That's still a lot of losses

That goes back about 14 years...

[The Black Bra]

15 years actually. 6 competitive defeats in 15 years isn’t that bad when you take into account 3 of them were against teams who were world champions at the time (I think).

[Clyde1998]

3 hours ago, The Black Bra said:

So who have we actually lost to at home in competitive games over the last 15 years or so?

I can think of Germany, Spain, Italy, Wales, Belarus, Norway (I think, did they beat us 1-0 with a penalty, McFadden handled on the line?).

Any others? The point is we don’t lose at home very often. I don’t make us favourites against Russia but we’ve definitely got a decent chance. And for the play off against Finland. Anybody got a rough idea who we play of Finland qualify through the group? Hoping they do as they look dangerous.

We've only lost eight qualifiers at home this century, out of forty-six - including one in the last fourteen. Norway (2004), Belarus (2005), Italy (2007), Netherlands (2009), Spain (2010), Wales (2013), Belgium (2013), Germany (2015).

Six top seeds - Belgium (2001), Germany (2003), Italy (2005), France (2006), Croatia (2013) and England (2017) - have all failed to beat us at Hampden in that time. (I know Russia aren't top seeds, but it shows our home strength)

I don't know how our home record compares with other similar nations, but it's certainly a strong record.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Clyde1998

[Texas Pete]

1 hour ago, Clyde1998 said:

We've only lost eight qualifiers at home this century, out of forty-six - including one in the last fourteen. Norway (2004), Belarus (2005), Italy (2007), Netherlands (2009), Spain (2010), Wales (2013), Belgium (2013), Germany (2015).

Six top seeds - Belgium (2001), Germany (2003), Italy (2005), France (2006), Croatia (2013) and England (2017) - have all failed to beat us at Hampden in that time. (I know Russia aren't top seeds, but it shows our home strength)

I don't know how our home record compares with other similar nations, but it's certainly a strong record.

We’ve got an excellent home record over the last 20 years with the exception of a couple of slip ups against the likes of Lithuania. 

As others have pointed out if we had taken 6 points off the bottom seeds in every campaign we would have had several more playoffs and would have qualified a couple of times. 

Games like the one against Russia coming up are not the games that worry me. Travelling to Kazakhstan and Cyprus are the games that will be our undoing. Not that I think we’re guaranteed to beat Russia but we’ve got a great chance.  

[Orraloon]

4 hours ago, Clyde1998 said:

We've only lost eight qualifiers at home this century, out of forty-six - including one in the last fourteen. Norway (2004), Belarus (2005), Italy (2007), Netherlands (2009), Spain (2010), Wales (2013), Belgium (2013), Germany (2015).

Six top seeds - Belgium (2001), Germany (2003), Italy (2005), France (2006), Croatia (2013) and England (2017) - have all failed to beat us at Hampden in that time. (I know Russia aren't top seeds, but it shows our home strength)

I don't know how our home record compares with other similar nations, but it's certainly a strong record.

Sorry, but that's a load o shyte.

You need to be looking at how many games we have failed to win at home.

Back in the days that we qualified regularly, it was mainly because we won our home games, not because we didn't lose them.

  

Edited August 24, 2019 by Orraloon

[Texas Pete]

1 hour ago, Orraloon said:

Sorry, but that's a load o shyte.

You need to be looking at how many games we have failed to win at home.

Back in the days that we qualified regularly, it was mainly because we won our home games, not because we didn't lose them.

  

Good point but I would agree it’s a pretty strong record for a team that hasn’t qualified for anything in over 20 years and who are continually described as being shite by some people on here. 

[KirkieRobRoy]

On 8/24/2019 at 7:06 PM, Texas Pete said:

it’s a pretty strong record for a team that hasn’t qualified for anything in over 20 years

Why would anyone want, or praise, 'a pretty strong record' for a team that never qualifies? If we never qualify, our record clearly isn't strong enough.

I applaud your ability to see the silver lining when there isn't one, but there still isn't one.

[ParisInAKilt]

Ireland away in 2015 seemed to sum up why we don’t qualify or make play offs, settling for a point when a win was achievable away from home. 

[Texas Pete]

29 minutes ago, KirkieRobRoy said:

Why would anyone want, or praise, 'a pretty strong record' for a team that never qualifies? If we never qualify, our record clearly isn't strong enough.

I applaud your ability to see the silver lining when there isn't one, but there still isn't one.

I don’t think anybody said they wanted our home record or even praised it. I would have preferred to beat England, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and the rest. 

All I said was we have an unusually strong home record for a team that’s done hee haw. I haven’t done any research but I can almost guarantee you that every European team that is unbeaten at home for the last 4 years has qualified for something in that time and is probably one of the top Nations.

We are considered shite but haven’t lost at home for ages. That’s at least something to build on. 

[mrniaboc]

11 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

I don’t think anybody said they wanted our home record or even praised it. I would have preferred to beat England, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and the rest. 

All I said was we have an unusually strong home record for a team that’s done hee haw. I haven’t done any research but I can almost guarantee you that every European team that is unbeaten at home for the last 4 years has qualified for something in that time and is probably one of the top Nations.

We are considered shite but haven’t lost at home for ages. That’s at least something to build on. 

Yeah, we're a lot better at home than we should be, and a lot worst away from home than we should be. It's the Scotland Paradox. 

[Orraloon]

12 minutes ago, mrniaboc said:

Yeah, we're a lot better at home than we should be, and a lot worst away from home than we should be. It's the Scotland Paradox. 

It's not a "Scotland  paradox" at all. Teams get better results at home than they do away. I'm not sure why, but that's just the way it is. The only teams that win regularly away from home are the big football nations plus England. Even when we qualified for 5 World Cups in a row, we weren't that good away from home. Big Jock started to change that just a wee bit. Getting away wins in Sweden and Israel were unusual for us. We qualified because, at that time, we really did have a good home record. We qualified because we could beat teams like Czechoslovakia (twice), Spain, France etc. Dropping points at home to Belgium was seen as a disappointing result.

I'm starting to think that some folk are struggling to see the difference between "winning" and "not losing".

Our recent away record isn't very good but it never has been. The difference over the past 20 years, is that we are now not good enough to win our home games either. Not just against the top teams. We now struggle to beat the likes of Lithuania, Wales, Cyprus and Georgia. And probably Russia.

 

 

[The_Dark_Knight]

On 8/8/2019 at 5:41 PM, The_Dark_Knight said:

I think we'd all agree that the next three matches will make or break this European Championship campaign, so what are your next three predictions?

Scotland 1  Russia 1

Scotland 0  Belgium 3

Russia 4 Scotland 0

I genuinely got goosebumps when I saw the latest squad... And not for the good reasons.

I'm changing my answers:

Scotland 0  Russia 2

Scotland 0  Belgium 3

Russia 5 Scotland 0

[csinclair]

Scotland 2 Russia 1
Scotland 1 Belgium 3
Russia 1 Scotland 1

[Texas Pete]

4 hours ago, The_Dark_Knight said:

I genuinely got goosebumps when I saw the latest squad... And not for the good reasons.

I'm changing my answers:

Scotland 0  Russia 2

Scotland 0  Belgium 3

Russia 5 Scotland 0

Who on earth were you expecting to be in the squad that would have got your original results? Belgium didn’t even beat us 4 or 5 nil in Brussels but you think Russia will in Moscow? 

You really are the most negative person I have ever seen on this board (and I’ve seen a lot over the years). Why do you even bother coming on here? Are you even a Scotland supporter anymore because this board is for Scotland supporters. 

You’re not happy with the current set up at the SFA and you’re not happy about our current squad. We get it. You don’t need to keep going on about it at every opportunity. 

[KirkieRobRoy]

On 8/27/2019 at 5:36 PM, Texas Pete said:

Belgium didn’t even beat us 4 or 5 nil in Brussels

Beat us 4-0 at Hampden. Aye, just a friendly but they all played with slippers on reading newspapers and smoking cigars

[Texas Pete]

16 minutes ago, KirkieRobRoy said:

Beat us 4-0 at Hampden. Aye, just a friendly but they all played with slippers on reading newspapers and smoking cigars

Makes a big difference.

We haven't lost a competitive game at home for 4 years but we've lost plenty of friendlies.

I'm not saying Belgium aren't capable of beating us by 4 or 5 at Hampden. It could certainly happen but based on our competitive home record and our last game against Belgium it's not likely to. 

[bonny78]

6 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

Makes a big difference.

We haven't lost a competitive game at home for 4 years but we've lost plenty of friendlies.

I'm not saying Belgium aren't capable of beating us by 4 or 5 at Hampden. It could certainly happen but based on our competitive home record and our last game against Belgium it's not likely to. 

So 1-4 it is then. 

[Lairdyfaeinverclyde]

On 8/27/2019 at 12:59 PM, The_Dark_Knight said:

I genuinely got goosebumps when I saw the latest squad... And not for the good reasons.

I'm changing my answers:

Scotland 0  Russia 2

Scotland 0  Belgium 3

Russia 5 Scotland 0

If Scotland don't score a goal over the 3 games i will donate £20 to a charity of your choice. If they do score you stop posting on this board for a month?

[ceudmilefailte]

4 hours ago, Lairdyfaeinverclyde said:

If Scotland don't score a goal over the 3 games i will donate £20 to a charity of your choice. If they do score you stop posting on this board for a month?

I think he has

[romanticscot]

On 8/27/2019 at 7:26 AM, csinclair said:

Scotland 2 Russia 1
Scotland 1 Belgium 3
Russia 1 Scotland 1

That would be fantastic if this happened. 

[Texas Pete]

14 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

I think he has

He’s probably been banned again. 

[Tartan Chris]

On 8/24/2019 at 11:10 AM, The Black Bra said:

15 years actually. 6 competitive defeats in 15 years isn’t that bad when you take into account 3 of them were against teams who were world champions at the time (I think).

Even those were reasonably close, 2-2 with Spain until 20 minutes left and think it was same with Germany in 2015.

Team generally picks up enough points to be competitive in groups. Already win over Cyprus and surely home wins over Kazahkstan and San Marino. Point v Russia and that would be 10/15 so not bad at all.

Problem remains away from home. Any team who seriously wants 2nd needs to go and win in Astana (Russia already done this) and win in Cyrprus (that again feels like a typical Scotland 1-0 defeat like in Macedonia and Georgia). If Scotland got 9 points on the board in the away games then that would be 19 points and very close to qualifying as generally 20 points is usually enough but will more likely be 14-15 and staking everything on March 2020.