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Their success is purely down to good management & committed players.

Talent level is below ours generally but they achieve far greater success and reap rewards of the above factors.

in 20 years time we probably will have qualified for 1 tournament at most, maybe none & they will probably have qualified for a few and yet their talent level for all that period will have been below ours. 

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35 minutes ago, ProudScot said:

Their success is purely down to good management & committed players.

Talent level is below ours generally but they achieve far greater success and reap rewards of the above factors.

in 20 years time we probably will have qualified for 1 tournament at most, maybe none & they will probably have qualified for a few and yet their talent level for all that period will have been below ours. 

We have entered a Wales style wilderness where even with decent, even good players, the apathy is so bad results worsen

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16 hours ago, ProudScot said:

Their success is purely down to good management & committed players.

Talent level is below ours generally but they achieve far greater success and reap rewards of the above factors.

in 20 years time we probably will have qualified for 1 tournament at most, maybe none & they will probably have qualified for a few and yet their talent level for all that period will have been below ours. 

I regard "commitment" as part of a players "talent level". I would say it's one of the most important parts.

It's doesn't matter how skilled a player is, if he isn't prepared to turn up then he is no better than you or me.

 

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23 hours ago, Orraloon said:

I regard "commitment" as part of a players "talent level". I would say it's one of the most important parts.

It's doesn't matter how skilled a player is, if he isn't prepared to turn up then he is no better than you or me.

 

Well guys like Robbo and McGinn do turn up pretty much every game and I'd say those two are better in their position than what NI have, maybe McTominay aswell although more closer call between him and Steven Davis.

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He's done a terrific job, although he needed a lot of time to get it working.

Although they had a terrible Nations League campaign. Maybe that's a bit harsh IIRC, they lost all four games (Bosnia-Herz and Austria) but by the odd goal ; and were unlucky in most of their games.

Although it shows you being A and B for the Nations League and having bad campaigns there (Iceland lost all 4 again in a group with the Swiss and Belgium) will more than likely give you a Playoff. Maybe not so much B now for this new system with the 4x4 groups? We'll see.

Also, NI have two very good central defenders plus Jamal Lewis is decent plus a solid pro in McNair (if he does play in mid ; is a defender too).

Still, fair dues to them ; but there's nae excuse for Scotland. We may lack a proper goal scorer, and decent defence but if Albania, Iceland, Ireland and NI can get to the Euros then we should at least being doing better than what we have of late.

 

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On 10/17/2019 at 9:52 PM, Texas Pete said:

Indeed. They are punching above their weight at the moment much as we did for years. Won’t last forever though but good luck to them. 

They are punching above their weight with terrible squads something we have never done on a consistent basis. 

60s,70s and 80s we had brilliant squads and underachieved most of the time. In the 90s we had a decent squad and we achieved what should of been expected imo. The noughties til now we have probably slightly underachieved but not by much as our squads have been really poor.

We have never punched above our weight unless you are referring to us producing top players which we have punched above our weight consistently until the late 90s. 

Ni are massively punching above their weight in terms of the performances they are getting out of very poor squads. They have absolute dross in their squads yet they seem to get decent results against good sides.

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2 hours ago, mccaughey85 said:

They are punching above their weight with terrible squads something we have never done on a consistent basis. 

60s,70s and 80s we had brilliant squads and underachieved most of the time. In the 90s we had a decent squad and we achieved what should of been expected imo. The noughties til now we have probably slightly underachieved but not by much as our squads have been really poor.

We have never punched above our weight unless you are referring to us producing top players which we have punched above our weight consistently until the late 90s. 

Ni are massively punching above their weight in terms of the performances they are getting out of very poor squads. They have absolute dross in their squads yet they seem to get decent results against good sides.

We are a small country that qualified for lots of tournaments. We didn’t have a great squad in the 90s and went to 2 world cups and 2 European championships. We were punching above our weight in the 90s. Trust me. 

At least until we got to the finals anyway where we were found out. 

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On 10/19/2019 at 5:08 PM, Texas Pete said:

We are a small country that qualified for lots of tournaments. We didn’t have a great squad in the 90s and went to 2 world cups and 2 European championships. We were punching above our weight in the 90s. Trust me. 

At least until we got to the finals anyway where we were found out. 

I'd say that we were lucky that we had players like Hendry, McAllister, Lambert, Collins and McCall.

Who do we have now that are comparable in their positions? McKenna, McGregor, McTominay, Christie and McLean. I'm giving McTominay a bye, as he's just pretty much starting out, and already he's playing for Manchester United.

I wouldn't say that we were "found out", though. We drew with Holland and Norway, lost to Brazil because of an OG, unlucky against England, with the penalty miss, we beat the Swiss and we got beat by Morocco.

5 points from 6 matches isn't that bad. If we played those teams now, we'd be lucky to have a shot on target.

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15 hours ago, The_Dark_Knight said:

I'd say that we were lucky that we had players like Hendry, McAllister, Lambert, Collins and McCall.

Who do we have now that are comparable in their positions? McKenna, McGregor, McTominay, Christie and McLean. I'm giving McTominay a bye, as he's just pretty much starting out, and already he's playing for Manchester United.

I wouldn't say that we were "found out", though. We drew with Holland and Norway, lost to Brazil because of an OG, unlucky against England, with the penalty miss, we beat the Swiss and we got beat by Morocco.

5 points from 6 matches isn't that bad. If we played those teams now, we'd be lucky to have a shot on target.

What about Costa Rica in Italy?

We were the lowest ranked team (or maybe second lowest?) at France 98.

We weren't one of the big guns and did fantastically well to qualify for 4 major tournaments in the 90s and did the sum total of hee haw when we got there. No shame in that as we were either the third or fourth seeds in our group. I would say that the fact we only missed one tournament in the 90s was punching above our weight. Just my opinion though.

We certainly had better players at our disposal than we do now, which probably explains why we qualified for tournaments back then.

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On 10/22/2019 at 12:36 AM, infamous said:

Our weight is third in the group. Will see at end of campaign if we are below above or where we would have ended up.

The Russian squad play entirely within Russia, other than golovkin and cheryshev

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On 10/17/2019 at 10:44 PM, ProudScot said:

Their success is purely down to good management & committed players.

Talent level is below ours generally but they achieve far greater success and reap rewards of the above factors.

in 20 years time we probably will have qualified for 1 tournament at most, maybe none & they will probably have qualified for a few and yet their talent level for all that period will have been below ours. 

I think people are getting carried away with their "success".  They've only reached 1 major finals in the last 30 years.

  • Euro 2020 - beat Belarus and Estonia.  Lost to Netherlands and Germany.  I won't be better on them in the play-offs.
  • Nations League - Lost all 4 matches against Bosnia and Austria.
  • World Cup 2018 - Finished 2nd in a group with under-performing Czech and Norway sides.  Lost in play-offs.
  • Euro 2016 - Very lucky that the top seed finished bottom of the group.  They did however do really well in this group.  

They have shown what a difference having a couple of good centre-backs can make, and a forward that can score on a semi-regular basis.  

 

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21 hours ago, PASTA Mick said:

I think people are getting carried away with their "success".  They've only reached 1 major finals in the last 30 years.

  • Euro 2020 - beat Belarus and Estonia.  Lost to Netherlands and Germany.  I won't be better on them in the play-offs.
  • Nations League - Lost all 4 matches against Bosnia and Austria.
  • World Cup 2018 - Finished 2nd in a group with under-performing Czech and Norway sides.  Lost in play-offs.
  • Euro 2016 - Very lucky that the top seed finished bottom of the group.  They did however do really well in this group.  

They have shown what a difference having a couple of good centre-backs can make, and a forward that can score on a semi-regular basis.  

 

I think they've got two Premier League players in their team, who are both their centre-backs. They don't concede many: I count six goals in their last two qualifying campaigns (fourteen games), excluding the top seeds - so just under a goal conceded every two games (0.4 per game). Add the Nations League in and it's thirteen against in eighteen games (0.7 per game). We're at 1.3 per game in qualifiers and 1.2 per game including the Nations League.

They do score less than us, but their average goal difference is +1.2 in qualifiers and +0.7 including the Nations League compared to +0.6 and +0.8 respectively for us (they were obviously in a higher NL league than us). Their good defence allows them to get better results than us; sadly, our defence is probably the weakest part of our team right now.

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It is believed Stoke are negotiating with the Irish FA over how much compensation would have to be paid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50330200

Wow. 

He probably should look to get out whilst his stock remains high from 2016 in particular, because with the age of their players and the dearth coming through it looks like it could be a return to grim times in the next 5-10, but you'd think he'd want to hold on for better than the basket case that is Stoke City. Other managers in that league will get punted. 

He lives in Edinburgh but for some reason I cannae see him taking either of the vacant Edinburgh jobs... 

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