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Scotland v Belguim - match thread


vanderark14

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16 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

About ten years ago, maybe more, I've lost track.

In 1993 Scotland went to Lisbon to play Portugal and lost 5-0

The footballing world responded with "The Night a Team Died" headlines and warned anyone that wanted to know that we were in trouble with a severe dearth of talent coming through

The SFA did nothing of note apart from a couple of sticking plasters

We limped onto France 98 and how we qualified with a really mediocre squad was more to do with the opposition we faced being not really that great either

Morocco put our ability into perspective and football really moved on

We never

And here we are in 2019 and the sticking plasters have run out 

Imagine the SFA had done something radical after 1993, say like Iceland, and really invested in facilities for the grassroots - we could be enjoying that golden era now

In short nothing will change - i have said this ad nauseam for years

The SFA will never change

We are the Faroes

 

 

Edited by Ally Bongo
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1 hour ago, KirkieRobRoy said:

In fairness it's this UEFA 'Week of Football' nonsense but other teams have Saturday games. Surelythe invisible trio, Maxwell, Petrie and Petries scary  moustache will be putting the case for Scotland fans?

No more fixture negotiations, it's UEFA's computer that decides the dates.

This time both games v Cyprus are Saturdays for us.

 

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Just now, Ally Bongo said:

In 1993 Scotland went to Lisbon to play Portugal and lost 5-0

The footballing world responded with "The Night a Team Died" headlines and warned anyone that wanted to know that we were in trouble with a severe dearth of talent coming through

The SFA did nothing of note apart from a couple of sticking plasters

We limped onto France 98 and how we qualified with a really mediocre squad was more to do with the opposition we faced being not really that great either

Morocco put our ability into perspective and football really moved on

We never

And here we are in 2019 and the sticking plasters have run out 

Imagine the SFA had done something radical after 1993, say like Iceland, and really invested in facilities for the grassroots - we could be enjoying that golden era now

In short nothing will change - i have said this ad nauseam for years

The SFA will never change

We are the Faroes

 

 

Excellent post, although very disrespectful to the Faroes who punch well above their weight for a population of 50k.

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I don't have a problem with giving Clarke time as he deserves it for his track record and for taking this poisoned chalice on. 

My problem is, how much better can he make us with the dearth of talent we have in the defensive third. 

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Braveheart - we have a play off, which if we consider the old days finishing 3rd would have got us that, this time we already have it.  I understand the manner we have been playing is hard to be positive about, but I do believe this is for the best - in the short term, I think with 4 games of no consequence truly in the group we can be a better team for next Spring/Summer.  What I meant to say is its been worse, we've been knocked out of contention in campaigns before with no play off opportunity or meaningful game in some times for 14 months. I am not excusing 2019, but its going to get better.  I believe in these next 4 games we will be undefeated, perhaps papering over the cracks I grant you, but we can now rebuild.  I say short term because long term problems need a resolution.  

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There was real negativity after wc 90 ; with a very sparse hampden welcoming rumania & switzerland ( less than 20k i think )

ditto the campaign for wc 94 where we played at ibrox ; was only 20k i think for portugal ; italy closer to 40k but still not full

there was a bit of a feeling of the world ending back then ; in comparison 

but more our ability to compete with the big boys dieing out as opposed to forseeing a dearth of future talent

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1 hour ago, romanticscot said:

Braveheart - we have a play off, which if we consider the old days finishing 3rd would have got us that, this time we already have it.  I understand the manner we have been playing is hard to be positive about, but I do believe this is for the best - in the short term, I think with 4 games of no consequence truly in the group we can be a better team for next Spring/Summer.  What I meant to say is its been worse, we've been knocked out of contention in campaigns before with no play off opportunity or meaningful game in some times for 14 months. I am not excusing 2019, but its going to get better.  I believe in these next 4 games we will be undefeated, perhaps papering over the cracks I grant you, but we can now rebuild.  I say short term because long term problems need a resolution.  

Depends what you mean by old days, when Euros was a 16 team tournament second is play off. Under the new system (24 teams qualifying.. which is almost half of Europe), 3rd place would get you a play off, I don't think we will finish 3rd in this group. 

Thank fuck for the Nations League. 

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6 hours ago, King Of Paisley said:

 

Clarke inherited a complete clusterfuck from McLeish. A team bereft of self belief and confidence. It's going to take time and patience to turn this round. The next four games is all about getting some points in the bag, building confidence, trying to secure third place for seeding purposes and be ready for next March. I back Clarke to ride out the storm and get us back on an even keel?

Scotland this bad? Nah. You old enough to remember the likes of Robbie Stockdale, Kevin Kyle, Warren Cummings, Lee Wilkie etc? We do have have a decent nucleus that are playing at a high level in the EPL. But they are on their knees confidence wise. Clarke needs time with them to get his ideas across and build them up

 

 

 

I'm more than old enough to remember those players but even they didnt have us finishing this low with so many defeats. I agree with you, Clarke deserves the chance to build for the play offs and the next qualifying campaign

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8 hours ago, King Of Paisley said:

 

Clarke inherited a complete clusterfuck from McLeish. A team bereft of self belief and confidence. It's going to take time and patience to turn this round. The next four games is all about getting some points in the bag, building confidence, trying to secure third place for seeding purposes and be ready for next March. I back Clarke to ride out the storm and get us back on an even keel?

Scotland this bad? Nah. You old enough to remember the likes of Robbie Stockdale, Kevin Kyle, Warren Cummings, Lee Wilkie etc? We do have have a decent nucleus that are playing at a high level in the EPL. But they are on their knees confidence wise. Clarke needs time with them to get his ideas across and build them up

 

 

 

This is true. We have had far poorer personnel than we do now. We are in a rut in terms of performance but we do have better players to choose from. The caveat being we lack leaders on the park and are unable to get our best players on the park with any regularity.

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1 minute ago, er yir macaroon said:

This is true. We have had far poorer personnel than we do now. We are in a rut in terms of performance but we do have better players to choose from. The caveat being we lack leaders on the park and are unable to get our best players on the park with any regularity.

Scottish football lacks leaders throughout, from the top of the SFA and its clubs to the players on the park. The leaders of the clubs are selfish cunts and the SFA are happy to plod along to their tune. 

 

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36 minutes ago, vanderark14 said:

Scottish football lacks leaders throughout, from the top of the SFA and its clubs to the players on the park. The leaders of the clubs are selfish cunts and the SFA are happy to plod along to their tune. 

Well yeah exactly,  there's a distinct lack of homegrown talent in our game and personally I'd like to see an SPFL ruling enforcing a minimum number of Scots in every starting XI, but you know the clubs would never buy into that.

 

Edited by Toepoke
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Prepared to give Clarke time (didn't Strachan lose something like 4 of his first 5 matches or something?) but had to listen to his match comments through gritted teeth (yes we did have a good spell in the first half.... right up to Belgium scoring their first goal, but that was our whole first half..... second half much better, but Belgium were just toying with us).

He is still effectively putting out a Eck team, and there is no real way of making sweeping changes.

Only player in midfield I would give "pass marks" to was McLean..... McGregor looks burnt out, McTominay looks to have found himself in a similar situation Burke did when it was clear he was not quite ready, Snodgrass had no idea where he was playing (looked like he was suppose to be playing out on the right to like up with SOD, but played for to central and SOD found himself exposed).

Can not fault Phillips as he was chasing lost causes all night.....

SOD yet again shows he is not good enough for international football, Mulgrew looks done and Cooper for all his years of screaming to get into the team has shown he is not any better than what we already have available.

Hopefully for next month Bates can get himself match sharp, and McKenna and Tierney are back (think we have no option now but to play him down the right... unless Clarke has a crack at Fredericks) and we can get Griffiths and Burke back into the team.

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27 minutes ago, wanderer said:

 

He is still effectively putting out a Eck team, and there is no real way of making sweeping changes.

SOD yet again shows he is not good enough for international football, Mulgrew looks done and Cooper for all his years of screaming to get into the team has shown he is not any better than what we already have available.

 

These two points are spot on and probably the most depressing off all. There is no obvious replacements who you think would make a difference who weren't included. We always want what we don't have, your point about Cooper emphasises that, but even the players we are thinking might be an improvement on what we already have aren't.

We are in a sorry state.

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Don't think I have ever seen anything as scary as that central defence. It is shocking at any level never mind against a top 10 team. Mulgrew has had his day ( well i think he has ) and Cooper is showing why ex managers have consistently ignored him. Absolutely no idea where we go from here.

The irony is we probably have a better chance of qualifying than Wales or Northern Ireland via the play offs.

Clarke should be given to the play offs and see if he can mould something resembling a defence in that time. No suggestions required but somebody has got to break through.

If somehow we do mange to qualify then the buzz will be incredible and that can only help the younger players coming through, like all the weight taken off their shoulders.

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That was pish, didnt expect much but we lacked any ideas going forward on the rare occasion we got the chance. A lot of backwards and sidewards passing, Phillip made some good runs which were ignored by the guys with the ball, there was no width at all, Robertson looked for someone to play down the wing to and the midfielders were all standing together in the centre.Snoddy and SOD just kept tapping it back and forward to each other with neither really being keen to overlap for the other, although in saying that i thought Snoddy was probably our best player.  Belgium just sauntered about doing whatever they wanted though and could have had about 8 if they had pushed it a bit. De Bruyne was trying to be cute and playing daft wee passes where usually for city he would have bent it in the top corner.

We aren't good enough and we just don't have the football brains either. Utter shite and I doubt I'll be back anytime soon

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1 hour ago, Dalgety Bay TA said:

These two points are spot on and probably the most depressing off all. There is no obvious replacements who you think would make a difference who weren't included. We always want what we don't have, your point about Cooper emphasises that, but even the players we are thinking might be an improvement on what we already have aren't.

We are in a sorry state.

Scratching my head trying to think who can come in and make any real kind of difference.... at the back, its basically only Tierney, as no matter what, we are stuck with this long list of CB's (Cooper, Hanley, McKenna, Bates, Mulgrew, Cooper.... and really, so far the best looking pair from that lot has been Mckenna and Bates, so that says something about our defense....).

Midfield, can only really think Cairney coming in (given Fulham's recent run of good form), but this is the one area we should not be struggling with, given every week you can turn on MotD and see McTorminay, Frazer, Snodgrass and McGinn playing at that level, and Sportscene to see McGregor bossing Celtic games (v Accies and Livi....).

McTominay is suspended for next set of qualifiers? So I suppose this is a good chance for the likes of Cairney or Armstrong to come in.

Upfront really only Griffiths and Burke, but I doubt either of them would have fared any better last night (maybe Griffiths would have slotted the free kick we had in a excellent position last night).

So really that is Tierney, Cairney, Burke and Griffiths, and I do not think any of them being in the squad/team would have made much difference over these two games (maybe more so v Russia than against Belgium).

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1 hour ago, wanderer said:

Scratching my head trying to think who can come in and make any real kind of difference.... at the back, its basically only Tierney, as no matter what, we are stuck with this long list of CB's (Cooper, Hanley, McKenna, Bates, Mulgrew, Cooper.... and really, so far the best looking pair from that lot has been Mckenna and Bates, so that says something about our defense....).

Midfield, can only really think Cairney coming in (given Fulham's recent run of good form), but this is the one area we should not be struggling with, given every week you can turn on MotD and see McTorminay, Frazer, Snodgrass and McGinn playing at that level, and Sportscene to see McGregor bossing Celtic games (v Accies and Livi....).

McTominay is suspended for next set of qualifiers? So I suppose this is a good chance for the likes of Cairney or Armstrong to come in.

Upfront really only Griffiths and Burke, but I doubt either of them would have fared any better last night (maybe Griffiths would have slotted the free kick we had in a excellent position last night).

So really that is Tierney, Cairney, Burke and Griffiths, and I do not think any of them being in the squad/team would have made much difference over these two games (maybe more so v Russia than against Belgium).

Yep, the bottom line is there is no one who isn't involved or who has been involved which would have made a significant difference. Griffiths would have been lost against that Belgium defence last night. Tierney might have improved us a bit defensively over the two games but we were still well beaten in both no matter what the Russia scoreline says. The others, well I know you are just coming up with some possibles but as you say, wouldn't make the significant difference to the side that we need made.

A few numpties on FB saying "throw in the U21's". That's mental. I don't even know half of them and they are even further away from being options for us. Its a very long tunnel and there isn't any light at the end of it unfortunately.

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