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Scotland XI to play Cyprus


The_Dark_Knight

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Each to their own, and yes it wasn't pretty and Cyprus were unfortunate not to grab a point ; but IMO, that was a confidence-building win.

How many times have Celtic, Liverpool, Juve or whoever gone away and won 2-1 and not looked great at all, but left with the three points.

After a pretty horrendous few months with those back-to-back hammerings, the confidence will be low with the side, and that's two wins on the bounce now.

I'm not deluded to think we will now qualify with ease, and those playoffs will be a very difficult set of match(es) for us ; but we've given ourselves a wee boost and that's all we can do for now.

Clarke has a chance to win on Tuesday now and have a 50% win rate.

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3 minutes ago, weekevie04 said:

Each to their own, and yes it wasn't pretty and Cyprus were unfortunate not to grab a point ; but IMO, that was a confidence-building win.

How many times have Celtic, Liverpool, Juve or whoever gone away and won 2-1 and not looked great at all, but left with the three points.

After a pretty horrendous few months with those back-to-back hammerings, the confidence will be low with the side, and that's two wins on the bounce now.

I'm not deluded to think we will now qualify with ease, and those playoffs will be a very difficult set of match(es) for us ; but we've given ourselves a wee boost and that's all we can do for now.

Clarke has a chance to win on Tuesday now and have a 50% win rate.

Unless things improve dramatically Kevie, the play off will not be a set of matches. It will be one match.

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1 minute ago, Marky said:

Unless things improve dramatically Kevie, the play off will not be a set of matches. It will be one match.

I agree, Marky. There's still a ton of work to be done and it wasn't great, but I'm trying to take the positives from that and there were a few if not many.

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1 minute ago, Marky said:

Unless things improve dramatically Kevie, the play off will not be a set of matches. It will be one match.

This.

Happy to bask in the relief of a fortunate win v Cyprus.

But, let's get serious, what's the point of being in the play offs? To qualify.

What's the point of qualifying if you are cannon fodder for the English and whoever else is in the group.

Thats the challenge for Steve Clarke and the players between now and March.

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1 minute ago, ErsatzThistle said:

Feckin hell I hope Willie Miller never tries to talk a potential jumper down from a big building.

Excessively negative and miserable. 

He's a cunt.

How the BBC justify giving that fraud a wage or consultancy fee from taxpayers' money warrants a Commons Select Committee.

Don't get me started on Preston and Young.

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1 minute ago, Barney Rubble said:

Listen to last Tuesday's (?) Sportsound on BBC catch up for incontrovertible evidence VDA.

His attitude towards Austin McPhee was both disgusting and disgraceful.

I heard it, I didn't agree with him but there will be plenty who did. 

I still dont see how that makes him a fraud. I listen to a lot of sportsound, it's the only coverage of our game which is semi decent. Miller is often infuriating but sometimes he calls it spot on especially when it comes to defending.

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In order to progress, we have to turn the corner. Stopping getting beaten, winning games. 

We got a 2-1 away which is better than a 2-1 at home. Not sure what else we could be expected to do - at this stage, for a mostly meaningless game and the call-offs.

The 2nd choice players who turned up had the responsibility to deliver a confidence-boosting win - simply for the fact of it being a win - and they got that. 

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19 minutes ago, vanderark14 said:

We must be of similar age. We've always stuttered to wins like today but they key was always just to win them and the do wel.at hampden. We have to get back to that.

We rode our luck at times but we could have done better with some fo the chances we had too.

A win is a win, we must finish third. Ideally a good performance and win against Kazakhstan will come this week and we can look to the playoffs with confidence 

Surely we’ll get at least a draw against Kazakhstan at home? That would be enough for third (not that I think that would be a good result). 

Finishing third in the group is probably what most of us would have expected when the draw was made and it would have gotten us a playoff under normal circumstances which most people would have considered an improvement from the last few campaigns. 

A good win on Tuesday would be good for our confidence going into the playoffs. It’s just a pity 4 or 5 of our normal starting 11 won’t be playing in the next match so Clarke will almost be starting from scratch again when the squad meets up in March.  

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3 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

Surely we’ll get at least a draw against Kazakhstan at home? That would be enough for third (not that I think that would be a good result). 

Finishing third in the group is probably what most of us would have expected when the draw was made and it would have gotten us a playoff under normal circumstances which most people would have considered an improvement from the last few campaigns. 

A good win on Tuesday would be good for our confidence going into the playoffs. It’s just a pity 4 or 5 of our normal starting 11 won’t be playing in the next match so Clarke will almost be starting from scratch again when the squad meets up in March.  

It has to be a win on tuesday and I believe we will win. 

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At the risk of repeating myself, it seems that the folk being positive are thinking that the folk being negative are being so because of the scoreline. I can only speak for myself by my criticism is of the performance, which for the most part (in my opinion) was horrendous.

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1 hour ago, aaid said:

The person having the worse game by a country mile is the referee.  The best you can say is he's not favouring either side, he's been equally bad for both. 

Yeah, he was horrendous. Cypriot boy lucky not to see red for the lunge at Taylor, as for Mcgregors booking.......🤣🤣🤣

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12 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

Surely we’ll get at least a draw against Kazakhstan at home? That would be enough for third (not that I think that would be a good result). 

Finishing third in the group is probably what most of us would have expected when the draw was made and it would have gotten us a playoff under normal circumstances which most people would have considered an improvement from the last few campaigns. 

A good win on Tuesday would be good for our confidence going into the playoffs. It’s just a pity 4 or 5 of our normal starting 11 won’t be playing in the next match so Clarke will almost be starting from scratch again when the squad meets up in March.  

Finishing third in this group might have been considered okay if we'd finished a close third behind Russia, if we'd been competitive in the group and there was confidence that we were putting a decent team together.  None of those are the case.

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2 minutes ago, dandydunn said:

Yeah, he was horrendous. Cypriot boy lucky not to see red for the lunge at Taylor, as for Mcgregors booking.......🤣🤣🤣

Still at a loss as to why Taylor was booked in that challenge - attacking his studs with his shin?

The ref struck me as one of those that would issue a lot of petty bookings but shite himself when it came to a red, weak,

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1 hour ago, Caledonian Craig said:

Far more inspiring than 3-0 defeat in Kazakhstan and hammerings against Belgium and Russia though.

 

1 hour ago, Texas Pete said:

Were you hoping for a 0-5 doing?

Belgium only beat them 0-2 in Cyprus. 

I thought we did pretty well considering everything. Full backs were pretty weak but we know our shortcomings there when Robertson and Tierney aren’t in the squad. 

We were luck, we won 2-2.

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1 hour ago, weekevie04 said:

McBurnie - I don't see what he offers. The odd fancy flick to the opposition or no man's land. Aye, he might think he looks the part, but a waste of a jersey

There's a reason why he now finds himself on the bench every week. At least Fletcher scored a decent amount of goals in the epl

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1 hour ago, Marky said:

Unless things improve dramatically Kevie, the play off will not be a set of matches. It will be one match.

Really? Cyprus away is not easier than Bulgaria at home particularly as for that game you'd like to think some of the better players might not get injured for that period....

Basically any away win to a team better than likes of San Marino, Andorra etc is a good away win to me in this period. Let's put it this way Cyprus aren't any worse than Kazhakstan given they are level on points in the group.

Guess it's simplistic but so far for me Clarke has won all the games he was expected to and all the games he's lost he was expected to so very much par so far either if you can obviously adjust that lower for individual games which many are doing.

He gets judged March 2020, simple as that.

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