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Play Off Opponent Profiles


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2 minutes ago, dohadeer said:

I would hope he would, but I don’t think he’s chosen either before has he?

Hanley’s last cap was under McLeish I think but he was injured for part of last year I think. 

Cooper always seems to be injured but he played against Russia at Hampden under Clarke. 

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7 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

Hanley’s last cap was under McLeish I think but he was injured for part of last year I think. 

Cooper always seems to be injured but he played against Russia at Hampden under Clarke. 

Ok, I hope that Clarke is brave enough to throw them both in for however many play-off matches we have. It would make me very happy indeed if we could avoid using Scottish Premiership defenders.

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2 minutes ago, dohadeer said:

Ok, I hope that Clarke is brave enough to throw them both in for however many play-off matches we have. It would make me very happy indeed if we could avoid using Scottish Premiership defenders.

Hanley is a certainty to start if he’s available I think. Cooper not so much. I just have a feeling Clarke will try that partnership if they are both in the squad.
 

Or he might go with Findlay and Hanley. Scottish Premiership players aren’t as bad as you seem to think they are. Andy Robertson and John McGinn were playing up here not that long ago you know.

 

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Just now, Texas Pete said:

Hanley is a certainty to start if he’s available I think. Cooper not so much. I just have a feeling Clarke will try that partnership if they are both in the squad.
 

Or he might go with Findlay and Hanley. Scottish Premiership players aren’t as bad as you seem to think they are. Andy Robertson and John McGinn were playing up here not that long ago you know.

 

Good players will be discovered and move onwards and upwards. We’ve not produced a high standard of centre back for a long time now. I don’t think that Findlay, Gallagher, McKenna or Souttar will be moving upwards any time soon, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t really know enough about any of them, just the level that they play at.

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6 minutes ago, dohadeer said:

Good players will be discovered and move onwards and upwards. We’ve not produced a high standard of centre back for a long time now. I don’t think that Findlay, Gallagher, McKenna or Souttar will be moving upwards any time soon, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t really know enough about any of them, just the level that they play at.

Findlay won’t be at Kilmarnock for long and McKenna nearly got a move down south last year. Celtic were sniffing around him last year as well I’m sure.  Souttar makes me nervous.

Central defenders always seem to mature and peak later than other positions. Look at Van Dijk - he was at Celtic until he was 23/24 or something. Look at him now.

I’m not suggesting Findlay or McKenna are anywhere near as good as Van Dijk but they are young and inexperienced and will improve with age. They are not bad footballers. 

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13 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

Findlay won’t be at Kilmarnock for long and McKenna nearly got a move down south last year. Celtic were sniffing around him last year as well I’m sure.  Souttar makes me nervous.

Central defenders always seem to mature and peak later than other positions. Look at Van Dijk - he was at Celtic until he was 23/24 or something. Look at him now.

I’m not suggesting Findlay or McKenna are anywhere near as good as Van Dijk but they are young and inexperienced and will improve with age. They are not bad footballers. 

Fair enough.

I think that bottom of the English Premiership (Hanley) and top of the English Championship (Cooper) are much higher levels than our Scottish Premiership defenders, but yeah, maybe Findlay and McKenna haven’t reached their true level yet.

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22 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

I’d be surprised if any Scottish Premiership defenders start against Israel. Depends on injury issues though I suppose. 

I'm a bit worried about the clamour for proven bombscare Hanley in what would therefore be another untried partnership

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28 minutes ago, Bino's said:

I'm a bit worried about the clamour for proven bombscare Hanley in what would therefore be another untried partnership

Think the argument is that he has improved since his bombscare days. I'm not sure if we can find any heroic defensive performances over the last few years, so we are basically stuck with who ever is in form and has some experience at a decent level.

Feel sorry for whoever gets picked.

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Just now, ceudmilefailte said:

Think the argument is that he has improved since his bombscare days. I'm not sure if we can find any heroic defensive performances over the last few years, so we are basically stuck with who ever is in form and has some experience at a decent level.

Feel sorry for whoever gets picked.

That's the problem, we haven't got any great defenders, so it makes all all the more worse that the decent ones we have, haven't had matches to build up a decent understanding. Might be biased, but for me, Gallagher has been the most steady under the short Clarke era. So it would be him and one other

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We've got the best and worst of the draw.

Israel - out of sorts of late after a very decent start to qualifying ; but they proved last time they can worry us and if it wasn't for McGregor it may well have been us playing them in Tel Aviv now. Still, a lot has changed in 18 months and slowly but surely, Clarke has turned us around after a difficult start. It will be a difficult game, but I think we can go on and win 2-0 to get to the final.

I have a feeling it'll be Norway. Lagerback, Haaland plus Norway's desire - as much as ours - to get to their first tournament in 20 (22 for us) years as an incentive along with their love of England and playing at Wembley against the Guvnors - Lagerback described it as a dream scenario. Just have to hope that Norway-Serbia is a dirty game ; with a lot of Serbs in Scandinavia plus a good traveling support they'll have a good support in Oslo. Serbia are the better squad IMO, let's hope for Extra Time and penalities and if its Norway a suspension or a 3-4 day injury for Haaland to miss the final.

I think we'll do well in these games, but we'll fall just short in the final. Hope to god I am wrong, and we need to beat Israel first before even thinking of anything.

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15 minutes ago, weekevie04 said:

We've got the best and worst of the draw.

Israel - out of sorts of late after a very decent start to qualifying ; but they proved last time they can worry us and if it wasn't for McGregor it may well have been us playing them in Tel Aviv now. Still, a lot has changed in 18 months and slowly but surely, Clarke has turned us around after a difficult start. It will be a difficult game, but I think we can go on and win 2-0 to get to the final.

I have a feeling it'll be Norway. Lagerback, Haaland plus Norway's desire - as much as ours - to get to their first tournament in 20 (22 for us) years as an incentive along with their love of England and playing at Wembley against the Guvnors - Lagerback described it as a dream scenario. Just have to hope that Norway-Serbia is a dirty game ; with a lot of Serbs in Scandinavia plus a good traveling support they'll have a good support in Oslo. Serbia are the better squad IMO, let's hope for Extra Time and penalities and if its Norway a suspension or a 3-4 day injury for Haaland to miss the final.

I think we'll do well in these games, but we'll fall just short in the final. Hope to god I am wrong, and we need to beat Israel first before even thinking of anything.

 

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58 minutes ago, weekevie04 said:

We've got the best and worst of the draw.

Israel - out of sorts of late after a very decent start to qualifying ; but they proved last time they can worry us and if it wasn't for McGregor it may well have been us playing them in Tel Aviv now. Still, a lot has changed in 18 months and slowly but surely, Clarke has turned us around after a difficult start. It will be a difficult game, but I think we can go on and win 2-0 to get to the final.

I have a feeling it'll be Norway. Lagerback, Haaland plus Norway's desire - as much as ours - to get to their first tournament in 20 (22 for us) years as an incentive along with their love of England and playing at Wembley against the Guvnors - Lagerback described it as a dream scenario. Just have to hope that Norway-Serbia is a dirty game ; with a lot of Serbs in Scandinavia plus a good traveling support they'll have a good support in Oslo. Serbia are the better squad IMO, let's hope for Extra Time and penalities and if its Norway a suspension or a 3-4 day injury for Haaland to miss the final.

I think we'll do well in these games, but we'll fall just short in the final. Hope to god I am wrong, and we need to beat Israel first before even thinking of anything.

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say that Clarke has turned us around.

We’ve had very few games to judge our level on, over the past few years. In the previous major championship campaign (World Cup 2018), we had matches against Slovakia and Slovenia, who probably have similar aspirations to us, to judge ourselves on.

In the 14 competitive matches towards Euro 2020, the only team we could really measure our level against are Russia - although they are pretty strong at the moment, so even they’re not the best guide to our level.

I don’t think that you can claim that Clarke has turned us around based on winning dead rubbers against teams ranked much lower than us.

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1 hour ago, thesaint said:

Serbia don't have that big a travelling support.Crotia have a bigger travelling support.Why are there a lot of Serbians in Norway of all places.

There's a lot of ex Yugoslavians all over Scandinavia and Germany. Various reasons - guest workers from the 70s onwards, refugees and migrants 

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3 hours ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Think the argument is that he has improved since his bombscare days. I'm not sure if we can find any heroic defensive performances over the last few years, so we are basically stuck with who ever is in form and has some experience at a decent level.

Feel sorry for whoever gets picked.

The two who played together in the last two successful games surely by default are favourite

Edited by Bino's
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It's not often a Scotland manager gets the luxury of being able to pick a settled team from game to game. The amount of injuries and no shows that we have makes that difficult. I think we had the same starting line up in the last two games, and they were starting to look like players who had actually met each other before. If it was up to me, he should start with the same line up again unless there is a very good reason not to. Clarke might think that having Robertson fit and available would be a good enough reason for dropping Taylor - I wouldn't.

Any defence we play is a bit of an experiment as they are all so inexperienced. Even bringing back an experienced Hanley is an experiment since he hasn't played for us for so long.

We had a poor qualifying campaign but at least we finished with a couple of decent wins against teams of a similar standard to Israel. Give those same guys a chance to do it again is my opinion. 

 

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1 hour ago, Orraloon said:

It's not often a Scotland manager gets the luxury of being able to pick a settled team from game to game. The amount of injuries and no shows that we have makes that difficult. I think we had the same starting line up in the last two games, and they were starting to look like players who had actually met each other before. If it was up to me, he should start with the same line up again unless there is a very good reason not to. Clarke might think that having Robertson fit and available would be a good enough reason for dropping Taylor - I wouldn't.

Any defence we play is a bit of an experiment as they are all so inexperienced. Even bringing back an experienced Hanley is an experiment since he hasn't played for us for so long.

We had a poor qualifying campaign but at least we finished with a couple of decent wins against teams of a similar standard to Israel. Give those same guys a chance to do it again is my opinion. 

 

It’s strange how there are two completely different beliefs on this.

I don’t believe that performances for Scotland four months ago are very relevant when picking the team in March. I don’t think that you can ‘carry over’ international form like that, when there are so many matches in-between. Also the two matches you are referring to were meaningless matches against teams ranked much lower than us.

I’m surprised that people put such weight in a handful of Scotland performances, rather than judging players on their 20-odd club matches that have taken place since then.

 

Your viewpoint was perfectly reasonable, until you mentioned not playing Andy Robertson. That’s when your argument falls to pieces I’m afraid, as that’s a ludicrous suggestion. ‘Let’s leave out the first player we have in 40 years who is up there with the best in the world.’ 🤨

Edited by dohadeer
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On 2/19/2020 at 8:11 PM, dohadeer said:

Too right. I think he has about six hat-tricks this season, he can probably get six hat-tricks in 90 minutes against Scottish Premiership defenders.

Why is it ok for you to constantly slag Scottish mens players but if someone says the woman are shite then you get "shocked and upset"? 

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12 minutes ago, Terry Munro said:

Why is it ok for you to constantly slag Scottish mens players but if someone says the woman are shite then you get "shocked and upset"? 

Do we need to drag up a debate about equality again, on a football forum? Can we not leave those kind of conversations for the people on Twitter?

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2 hours ago, Orraloon said:

It's not often a Scotland manager gets the luxury of being able to pick a settled team from game to game. The amount of injuries and no shows that we have makes that difficult. I think we had the same starting line up in the last two games, and they were starting to look like players who had actually met each other before. If it was up to me, he should start with the same line up again unless there is a very good reason not to. Clarke might think that having Robertson fit and available would be a good enough reason for dropping Taylor - I wouldn't.

Any defence we play is a bit of an experiment as they are all so inexperienced. Even bringing back an experienced Hanley is an experiment since he hasn't played for us for so long.

We had a poor qualifying campaign but at least we finished with a couple of decent wins against teams of a similar standard to Israel. Give those same guys a chance to do it again is my opinion. 

 

Robertson is (currently) our only world class player. I'd rather play him in goals than bench him. Even if he plays terrible, if gives us a huge psychological advantage.

We are all quaking in our boots over Haaland. It is a much more daunting prospect coming up against a high quality player, regardless of form or performance. We will all be nervous of playing Norway because of him. The same can be said if we play Robertson. We need to be intimidating. No disrespect to Taylor, Gallacher et al, but they won't strike fear into the heart of our opponents.

If we have the option of playing 2 players of a similar standard (Gallacher or Hanley) and 1 plays in the premier league, we should be playing the guy that is in the premier league every time.

We massively underestimate the value of psychology in football. 

 

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