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Scotland v Belguim - match thread


vanderark14

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45 minutes ago, vanderark14 said:

 

As I said, we under achieved back then just as we are now. Probably because our players don;t replicate their club form for Scotland

Underachieved in the past, should be performing better in present but making tournaments is not our level, if we finished third with four losses (Russia x2, Belgium x 2), i would say that is what I would expect. Now though.... not sure... if we will finish above where we are. 

We must win against Kazakhstan and Cyprus to regain confidence for the playoffs, should we fail to win those, it's curtains. 

Edited by infamous
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21 hours ago, gaz7 said:

I said on here when overwhelming majority said steve clarke was only man for job that all he had done was get kilmarnock to 3rd and i got slaughtered for it.

He had same credentials as levein who also got hearts to 3rd.

Scotland playing belgium is equivalent to celtic playing barcelona but what i am most annoyed about is getting pumped from them. We used to always give big teams a game not many years ago but now our confidence is rock bottom and the only upside is after russia away we have 3 winnable games before play off.

Standard of spfl is dire and showed when kilmarnock got beat over 2 legs by part time Welsh team.

Clarke may come good as he has been at big teams and i will give him benefit of doubt for that for now.

Our football is summed up by big Kirk Broadfooot who slaughtered Alessios training methods yet Pirlo one of best midfielders ever praises Alessio to high heavens.

Gordon parks in sunday mail was saying how bored scottish players get working on shape and training needs to be enjoyable which i have no doubt is true but if you cannot do basics and take on good information to help win football matches then maybe you should listen to someone who has worked at the highest level and knows how it is done and not some scottish dinosaur who wants training to be a right laugh.

Continually scunnered with our players who lets be honest do not give a fuck. Ryan Fraser top player in epl not even on last night was obviously saving himself for weekend and until we get a nmanager who gains respect things wont change.

All the media saying our midfield is strong and i actually thought it as well but I was wrong and unless Billy Gilmour keeps up his progress then all we have is Ryan Christie as he was the only one who looked bothered but Clarke didnt start him on friday noght which was a mystery.

Rant over

I agree with much of this but I don't think the manager is the issue. We're now onto our seventh permanent manager since we last qualified. Put Gardiola, Klopp, Mouriniho - whoever you like - in charge of the same group of players and Belgium would have still won that game. It's virtually inevitable when three quarters of your defence is made up of a has-been and two never-will-bes and you're playing probably the best international side on the planet.

Why we're in this situation I don't know, I don't think anyone really does, that's the problem, but what is clear is that simply changing the guy who picks the team every couple of years isn't the answer.

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7 minutes ago, scotlad said:

I agree with much of this but I don't think the manager is the issue. We're now onto our seventh permanent manager since we last qualified. Put Gardiola, Klopp, Mouriniho - whoever you like - in charge of the same group of players and Belgium would have still won that game. It's virtually inevitable when three quarters of your defence is made up of a has-been and two never-will-bes and you're playing probably the best international side on the planet.

Why we're in this situation I don't know, I don't think anyone really does, that's the problem, but what is clear is that simply changing the guy who picks the team every couple of years isn't the answer.

totally agree changing manager every couple of years doesnt work. what i was meaning was clarke will not get respect that say mourinho would get. i know thats maybe pie in the sky but those sort of people used to be candidates. we have no cash for them or ambition to get there. celtic are our best by a mile but in grand scheme of things they are a pot 2 or 3 europa league team which then puts our national teams performance in perspective

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We’re pretty quick to slag off the EPL as overrated so having half our team play mostly in their worst teams is hardly something to use as a measure we’re underperforming at international level. 

I’m not exaggerating when we’re one of the worst teams I’ve seen in this years European championships. We can’t defend, barely support the forward and can’t retain possession. To make matters worse we don’t have an identity, we’re trying to play like the continental sides but don’t have the skills to do it. We also look significantly less fitter than other teams as well. 

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3 hours ago, macy37 said:

Anyone ever stopped to think that that period of 74 to 98 was us punching way above our weight and now we are doing what we should be doing and some?

Im mid 40’s and I’m convinced I won’t see us at a major finals again. There’s not a chance we’ll get through these play offs. 

The period between 1974 and 1998 had less teams in qualifying; a full twenty-one new countries have joined UEFA since the start of the 90s. In the latest FIFA rankings, Croatia, Ukraine, Slovakia and Bosnia are all above us and they didn't have independent teams until the 1990s (Czech Rep, Russia and Serbia are all above us too, but are considered the successor teams of Czechoslovakia, USSR and Yugoslavia respectively).

Other teams we've failed to beat since 2000 that didn't exist in the 70s and 80s include Kazakhstan, Belarus, Macedonia, Moldova and Georgia.

Most of our successful qualification attempts have seen us finish second in our group. With at least four countries having joined UEFA being better than us, it reduces the chance of us even finishing second - hence us most commonly finishing third in our group since 2000.

I think that we'd have qualified much less in the 1970s to 1990s if the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia had broken up before then - purely by increasing the number of teams who are regularly better than us.

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In fact, I've just gone through all our qualification records when we've qualified and compared it to the other qualifiers (only from Europe for World Cups), based on points per game).

  • 1954 - 10th of 11
  • 1958 - 7th of 10
  • 1974 - 5th of 8
  • 1978 - 6th of 9
  • 1982 - 9th of 13
  • 1986 - 10th of 13
  • 1990 - 12th of 13
  • 1992 - 7th of 7
  • 1996 - 6th of 15
  • 1998 - 8th of 14

We never qualified strongly, compared to the other qualifiers; only in 1996 were we in the top half of qualifying records among all the qualifiers. Having the newer nations join FIFA/UEFA earlier probably would've almost certainly stopped us qualifying for a lot of tournaments.

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15 minutes ago, Clyde1998 said:

In fact, I've just gone through all our qualification records when we've qualified and compared it to the other qualifiers (only from Europe for World Cups), based on points per game).

  • 1954 - 10th of 11
  • 1958 - 7th of 10
  • 1974 - 5th of 8
  • 1978 - 6th of 9
  • 1982 - 9th of 13
  • 1986 - 10th of 13
  • 1990 - 12th of 13
  • 1992 - 7th of 7
  • 1996 - 6th of 15
  • 1998 - 8th of 14

We never qualified strongly, compared to the other qualifiers; only in 1996 were we in the top half of qualifying records among all the qualifiers. Having the newer nations join FIFA/UEFA earlier probably would've almost certainly stopped us qualifying for a lot of tournaments.

Great summary. 👍

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6 hours ago, Ally Bongo said:

If you look at our squad for Italia 90 then compare it to the squads for Euro 96 and France 98 the reduction in talent is staggering 

 

Was some pretty average players at 90 too- or the actual performances by some of the “quality” players ; notably bett & mojo at costa rica ; suspect brown had a more pro squad by 96 & 98 - i certainly feel our midfield was way better

rambo in 90 was crap ; fleck ???

dave mcpherson etc.....

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36 minutes ago, Auchinyell Sox Change said:

Was some pretty average players at 90 too- or the actual performances by some of the “quality” players ; notably bett & mojo at costa rica ; suspect brown had a more pro squad by 96 & 98 - i certainly feel our midfield was way better

rambo in 90 was crap ; fleck ???

dave mcpherson etc.....

Dave MacPherson would walk into our side now, sadly

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14 hours ago, macy37 said:

Anyone ever stopped to think that that period of 74 to 98 was us punching way above our weight and now we are doing what we should be doing and some?

Im mid 40’s and I’m convinced I won’t see us at a major finals again. There’s not a chance we’ll get through these play offs. 

No, we had some amazing players back then. To give just one example, in the mid to late 70's the captain of Man Utd couldn't get into our back 4.  Could you imagine that now?  FFS Martin Buchan or David Bates?  Maks ye greet.

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I’ve said it a few times but look at the make up of our 1982 squad and look what they achieved in the immediate years before and after 1982. Multiple European Cup winners for one. 

In that period we had a competitive Premier League. Majority of clubs had mostly Scots playing for them and our league was strong enough to see Aberdeen win a European trophy and Dundee Utd make a final and a European Cup semi final.

Some, not all, of our better players went to England. They moved to top sides who were also excelling in European competition. Why? Because at that point English sides tended to pick from a very small market of players which was Scotland and other clubs within the English leagues. Very few clubs had European or further away players. There were the exception - Thijssen and Muhren at Ipswich, Villa and Ardiles at Spurs, a few others about but when the top clubs wanted to bring in players outside of England they came to Scotland.

Nowadays English clubs are still the main buyers of Scottish players but their marketplace is worldwide. So in many cases the English clubs who are buying Scots are not the top sides, they are a few levels below that. Likewise with Scottish clubs themselves, sometimes they buy from within but a lot of the time non Scottish players arrive from outside of Scotland.

We just don’t have the level of players we once had playing in successful sides either here or in England. We aren’t the only nation to face this - England & Italy are just two years examples who have less players playing for their top sides nowadays than they had in years gone by. They have both struggled internationally over the last 15 years as their eligible players start playing for teams who aren’t at the very top level. Meanwhile there are probably more Spanish and French players playing at the very top level club sides in the last 10 years or so than there ever has been. 

Edited by Dalgety Bay TA
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12 hours ago, ParisInAKilt said:

We’re pretty quick to slag off the EPL as overrated so having half our team play mostly in their worst teams is hardly something to use as a measure we’re underperforming at international level. 

I’m not exaggerating when we’re one of the worst teams I’ve seen in this years European championships. We can’t defend, barely support the forward and can’t retain possession. To make matters worse we don’t have an identity, we’re trying to play like the continental sides but don’t have the skills to do it. We also look significantly less fitter than other teams as well. 

You’re bang on.

We are one of the worst, in about or maybe just slightly above the real Minnows. Watched the England game last night & think Kosovo would hammer us. England would destroy us by an embarrassing scoreline.

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7 hours ago, Auchinyell Sox Change said:

Was some pretty average players at 90 too- or the actual performances by some of the “quality” players ; notably bett & mojo at costa rica ; suspect brown had a more pro squad by 96 & 98 - i certainly feel our midfield was way better

rambo in 90 was crap ; fleck ???

dave mcpherson etc.....

Our National Team has been blighted for decades by players who were outstanding for their clubs at home and in Europe but never the same when they pulled on the dark blue.

Even Dalglish was criticised regularly

However the point i am making is that we had more recognised outstanding club players in 1990 which was severely diluted come 1998

1990 - McLeish, Gough, McStay, Johnston, McCoist, MacLeod

1998 - Boyd, McKinlay, Jackson, Elliott, Whyte

The make up of the 1990 squad was also younger (5 players over 30) compared to 1998 ( 9 players over 30)

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4 hours ago, daviebee said:

No, we had some amazing players back then. To give just one example, in the mid to late 70's the captain of Man Utd couldn't get into our back 4.  Could you imagine that now?  FFS Martin Buchan or David Bates?  Maks ye greet.

valid point ; but some younger punters may need a crash course on the standing of man utd in the english league in that era - better than chelsea and man city for sure... but a few trips to wembley aside

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8 hours ago, daviebee said:

No, we had some amazing players back then. To give just one example, in the mid to late 70's the captain of Man Utd couldn't get into our back 4.  Could you imagine that now?  FFS Martin Buchan or David Bates?  Maks ye greet.

A double European Cup winning captain wasn’t good enough to get a Scotland cap. 

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51 minutes ago, Toepoke said:

He probably was, unfortunately the manager didn't realise he was Scottish. 

Is that really true? Are we saying that none of WIllie Ormond, Ally McLeod or Jock Stein were aware that John McGovern was Scottish, when he was playing for Derby and Forest and on telly lifting European Cups? I find that very hard to believe.

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3 hours ago, Dalgety Bay TA said:

Is that really true? Are we saying that none of WIllie Ormond, Ally McLeod or Jock Stein were aware that John McGovern was Scottish, when he was playing for Derby and Forest and on telly lifting European Cups? I find that very hard to believe.

Ally admitted it himself IIRC.

Edit... just seen McTeeko's link.

 

Edited by Toepoke
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