Scotland vs Russia [06/09/2019] - Match Thread - Page 9 - TA specific - Tartan Army Message Board Jump to content

Scotland vs Russia [06/09/2019] - Match Thread


Clyde1998

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really thought we would have enough players playing at a high level to see of a competent but hardly outstanding Russian side.what followed our goal was absolutely chronic.team couldn't  defend,couldn't break from defence quickly enough to cause any real problems and to be honest couldn't pass the ball two yards to a team mate.the midfield went missing and it was absolute torture to watch.as you might guess,realy looking forward to Monday and Cyprus away in November.to be almost out of a campaign at this early stage is a disgrace.

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1 hour ago, thesaint said:

really thought we would have enough players playing at a high level to see of a competent but hardly outstanding Russian side.what followed our goal was absolutely chronic.team couldn't  defend,couldn't break from defence quickly enough to cause any real problems and to be honest couldn't pass the ball two yards to a team mate.the midfield went missing and it was absolute torture to watch.as you might guess,realy looking forward to Monday and Cyprus away in November.to be almost out of a campaign at this early stage is a disgrace.

Were out after the Kazak game

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9 hours ago, Orraloon said:

Massive friendlies

Pretty much.

 

10 hours ago, Dalgety Bay TA said:

I don’t think they froze, I just think that Russia actually woke up and started to get into the game. Even before the goal we were doing well and getting at them/getting a few corners but they still looked sharp at times. Once they got the wake up call of the goal they upped their performance and pinned us back. Sometimes you just aren’t good enough to counter that. 

Re desire , I would doubt any player playing professional football at international level doesn’t have the desire to succeed and win. It’s why they are there in the first place, the elite of their nation. It’s just that some of our players have better options beside them at club level hence there performances there look better. Additionally some of them won’t be playing against the same level of quality that the Russian national team has week in week out. 

 

Our base problem is that 3 out of our 4 defenders are not international quality. It’s been that way for a long time. With a good level of defender you will always have a chance. Without it you will always struggle. The one who is quality is also probably best known for his attacking displays at Liverpool, quite often against teams they dominate. If he does make mistakes or is caught out of position, as he can be from time to time, he has the qualities of likes of VVD or Fabinho to cover for him.

The other main problem we have is that when we are under pressure we don’t have a forward who can take in and hold balls to relieve the pressure on us.

Combine a below average defence with no attacking relief and you can see why we lose games.

An admirable summary, sir. On Radio Scotland this PM Chico Young, Willie Millar etc addressed the issue of 'Andy R - why so good for Liverpool and not so much for Scotland?' but though going on for much longer I don't think they nailed it the way you do.

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23 hours ago, SMcoolJ said:

Don’t disagree with that. But there were different levels of individual poor tonight and I think the players feed off of each other. I know I’m singling out O’Donnell but that’s what I saw. Forrest was on a hiding to nothing playing in front of him. 

You could also say O'Donnell was on a hiding to nothing playing behind Forrest who contributed nothing and gave him next to no support. SoD was poor though, no doubt about that, as were most of the rest of them.

Having these 2 wee guys - Forrest and Fraser - in the team might work against the likes of Albania and Israel, but it's a luxury we can't afford against higher levels of opposition. Last night we were crying out for extra bodies with some presence in the middle of the park.  FFS the Russians were fkin GIANTS! We've got to start matching teams physically and show we're not going to be pushed about. That was fkin embarrassing from a Scotland side supposedly playing at home.

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21 hours ago, KirkieRobRoy said:

Pretty much.

 

An admirable summary, sir. On Radio Scotland this PM Chico Young, Willie Millar etc addressed the issue of 'Andy R - why so good for Liverpool and not so much for Scotland?' but though going on for much longer I don't think they nailed it the way you do.

Robertson has been ok for Scotland, it's just expectations are for him to amazing because he plays for Liverpool. The Scotland defence is just not good enough overall but alot of our problems came from the overall team performance on Friday night.

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On 9/7/2019 at 7:28 PM, scotlad said:

Okay, thanks. I'm even less confident we could go to Oslo or Belgrade and win though!

Finland look well placed in their group to qualify automatically at the moment so it might well be that we get Bulgaria at home. Bulgaria look a shadow of their former selves and England have just beaten them without getting out of second gear, so we might have half a chance.

That said, there is probably someone on a message board in Bulgaria right now going 'Scotland look a shadow of their former selves and Russia have just beaten them without getting out of second gear, so we might have half a chance...'

I think Bulgaria are about a similar level to us at the moment. We have a decent chance of beating them especially as we have home advantage. But we shouldn't be fooled by their current position in their qualifying group. That is a tough group they are in. England are obviously at a level way above the rest of them, but the other 4 teams are of a pretty similar standard to each other.

Edited by Orraloon
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On 9/7/2019 at 12:08 PM, Dalgety Bay TA said:

I don’t think they froze, I just think that Russia actually woke up and started to get into the game. Even before the goal we were doing well and getting at them/getting a few corners but they still looked sharp at times. Once they got the wake up call of the goal they upped their performance and pinned us back. Sometimes you just aren’t good enough to counter that. 

I can completely understand this take on how the game panned out, but I genuinely believe most of our problems are psychological. Add to this a lack of leadership on the park and it’s a recipe for disaster. 

Russia have some good players, but no superstars....and they have an absolute unit up front who I would imagine most centre halves would have trouble dealing with. 

And what I will say about the Russians is that they never panicked when we scored....they had enough BELIEF in their own abilities to stick to a game plan, began to keep the ball better and smelt blood when we started to shit the bed and retreat into our shells.

Look what happened to us in Kazakhstan....we lose an early goal and fall to pieces! 

We have good players, playing at a high level who perform week in week out for their respective clubs, but when they pull on a Scotland shirt, you can visibly see the belief draining from them. 

The performance of Robertson was a snap shot of what I am talking about..... nearly EVERY TIME he received the ball his first touch was inside whereas with Liverpool he is always on the front foot. 

Clarke was at a loss after the game about what happened....he watched them train all week, said he was really impressed with the quality and application, then when it comes to the match, despite getting off to a flier, as soon as they were put under a bit of pressure, they completely crumbled.

 

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22 hours ago, KirkieRobRoy said:

Pretty much.

 

An admirable summary, sir. On Radio Scotland this PM Chico Young, Willie Millar etc addressed the issue of 'Andy R - why so good for Liverpool and not so much for Scotland?' but though going on for much longer I don't think they nailed it the way you do.

It was a nice pass he played into the box for the russian goal

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2 hours ago, Auchinyell Sox Change said:

It was a nice pass he played into the box for the russian goal

Should have just got it clear with his right foot.

Not only do we seem to have an abundance of left footed players (as well as a right footed winger who prefers to play on the left) but they all seem incredibly reluctant to ever use their weaker foot. So many times we slowed down so Mulgrew/Cooper/Robertson/McGregor/McGinn/Christie could get it on their left foot

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3 hours ago, csinclair said:

Should have just got it clear with his right foot.

Not only do we seem to have an abundance of left footed players (as well as a right footed winger who prefers to play on the left) but they all seem incredibly reluctant to ever use their weaker foot. So many times we slowed down so Mulgrew/Cooper/Robertson/McGregor/McGinn/Christie could get it on their left foot

Harsh on Mulgrew who was happy to clear it/punt it none too accurately with his right. 

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15 hours ago, SWMM82 said:

 

We have good players, playing at a high level who perform week in week out for their respective clubs, but when they pull on a Scotland shirt, you can visibly see the belief draining from them. 

The performance of Robertson was a snap shot of what I am talking about..... nearly EVERY TIME he received the ball his first touch was inside whereas with Liverpool he is always on the front foot. 

 

 

But its back to the point that Robertson probably performs well because he has VVD inside him and not Liam Cooper, he has the option to pass to Wijnaldum or Mane rather than McBurnie. He's also playing for a team who, in the main, dominates their domestic games. Apart from the lowest ranked sides he will never have that scenario when playing for Scotland. The same questions were being asked when Dalglish was winning European Cups for an outstanding Liverpool side but "never really did it" for Scotland.

We do have some good players playing a decent level but, week in week out, they aren't playing in sides with Charlie Mulgrew or SOD. Additionally the likes of McGregor and Forrest look good at times for Celtic but they aren't playing against the levels of the Russian national side week in week out. If they were they wouldn't stand out like they do at times.

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Excluding David Marshall everyone was poor.  Maybe too much responsibility put on Robertson who is a nice boy but maybe we need a bit more of a leader/bastard as captain? 

Some slack passes, out of position players and switching off coupled with a very effective opposition with some impressive players who are ignored as most play in Russia and a collective "shiting it" which is a weird phenomenon which impacts lowly 5-a-side teams all the way to fulltime internationalists.

It's all about Nations League play offs.

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12 minutes ago, Alan said:

maybe we need a bit more of a leader/bastard as captain? 

That's something I have noticed. Since Scott Brown's been out of the squad, our form has collapsed. The same thing happened during his brief first international retirement after the Euro 2016 qualifiers.

He's a player that we don't really appear have a replacement for; don't know how much of an impact his retirement has made or if the poor form is just coincidence.

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Absolutley dreading this tonight and wish I hadn't bothered buying tickets last week. The weather has also been shite all day and a soaking at hampden looks likely. We could be in for a severe scudding tonight.

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Marshall - Made a couple of decent stops, and didnt have a chance with either goal. I still don't trust his distribution tho. We gave the ball away far too easy all night and he was part of that.
O'Donnell - His worst game for Scotland by a distance. Looked bereft of confidence.
Mulgrew - Did ok for me. Managed to draw a fair few fouls from Dzjuba and made him do his best work away from the goal.
Cooper - Poor. Abandoned his man resulting in the 1st goal and squares up making the ball in behind him easy for the 2nd.
Robertson - Another below par game. Armband is a curse for him it seems. Should have done better for the 1st goal.
McTominay - Seemed to be our only center mid all night and got utterly overrun as a result.
McGregor - Disappeared. It was why I was loathe to pick him before the game and sadly he's shown it again. Sometimes he just doesn't turn up and in international football every game is vital. Really can't afford to have him in the side, which is a huge shame because he has talent.
Forrest - Quiet, but we didn't really supply our wingers much. Could have tucked in and helped the midfield more, but I feel like his (and Fraser's instructions were to stay up and look for breaks. Our distribution was so poor and hurried that we never found them.
McGinn - Goal aside did very little. Had expected to see his energy shine in this game, but instead he seemed to get lost in that attacking mid role. Didn't do enough defensively and should have dropped a little deeper to congest the midfield at 1-0.
Fraser - Much like Forrest. Kind of cut off from the rest of the team as out center mids and fullbacks were as far forward as we managed to hold possession.
McBurnie - No supply at all, so can't really knock him.

McLean - Poor. Came on and caused calamity. He's either trying way too hard or just isn't good enough. Embarrasses the players around him. Offered for an easy ball from McTominay who was under pressure. Then as McTominay plays the easy ball, McLean sprints forward to receive and impossible pass.. so McTominay's pass hands possession to the Russians on the edge of our box. I no longer care if Armstrong's only getting a handful of minutes, he's better than this.
Christie - A bright spark when he came on. Brave on the ball, willing to try something and got his head up. Would start him every time he's available tbh.
Phillips - Standard Phillips.. nothing much to say.

Bit worried by Clarke for the first time too.
We stuck to 4231 thru-out. Didn't adjust anything to what was happening in the game. e.g. if at 1-0 we'd dropped McGinn to man-mark Golovin, that might have made a big difference. If we'd dropped from the desires 4231 to a 451, narrowed the midfield we might have congested it enough to stifle Russia. But we just carried on as we were, I guess trying to win 2 or 3 nil, even when the game was swinging Russia's way. We also went defensive in response to going behind.. only returning to the same sort of thing we had before with 10 minutes left. I'm not sure what we were trying to achieve there.. a draw was as good as a loss, so to try and shut up shop at 2-1 down, steady the ship and nick a goal at the end is as much folly as just losing 3-1. It didnt make sense to me at the time and a few days later it still doesnt.

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17 hours ago, mccaughey85 said:

Robertson has been ok for Scotland, it's just expectations are for him to amazing because he plays for Liverpool. The Scotland defence is just not good enough overall but alot of our problems came from the overall team performance on Friday night.

Not sure I’d say he’d been ok for Scotland. I don’t think I’ve ever been impressed with him in a Scotland jersey. Possibly in Lithuania a couple of years ago but can’t think of much else since.

Ok so he’s playing with a lower quality of player than he does at Liverpool but how does that make him fail to get past opposition RBs and right midfielders with the ball the way he does for Liverpool? Or why did he make a colossal arse of his first touch and play the ball straight to a Russian player in his own box for their first goal? I don’t remember him making too many schoolboy errors like that for Liverpool.

If Tierney does well for Arsenal I can see Robertson getting dropped which would be ridiculous considering he’s our captain and a champions league winner. 

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5 hours ago, Kirk said:

Absolutley dreading this tonight and wish I hadn't bothered buying tickets last week. The weather has also been shite all day and a soaking at hampden looks likely. We could be in for a severe scudding tonight.

I think you might be right. :(

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