McLeish Report

[Tiny Tim]

38 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Your not allowed to post facts , people on here don't like them .

 

Seems like I’m not allowed to post anything on here 😂

[ErsatzThistle]

3 minutes ago, dohadeer said:

I think that judging from their reply, they’d rather believe the facts and stats than second or third-hand anecdotal evidence.

I’m trying to remember if I was six or seven-years-old the last time that I heard a story that started with the words ‘My pal’s Dad.......’. 🤔🤔

Three at the back 

[Tartan Chris]

2 hours ago, dohadeer said:

I don’t think it’s fair to throw out the label ‘awful managers’ so readily. 

Apart from Alex McLeish’s second spell, when he didn’t really have the recent credentials to merit getting the job - although you could still argue that his success first time around had earned him a second chance - every time we have appointed the best Scottish manager available. The problem is, that we are racing through managers at such a rate, that we’ve run out of worthy candidates.

 

Apart from George Burley, when his Scotland side finished third when seeded second, every other manager has played to our seeding in the qualifying group. The fact that that is so easily labelled as ‘awful’ rather than ‘average’ is surely more an indication that our expectations are too high than anything else.

 

I didn't mind Burley in fairness, good club manager just couldn't get to grips with the increased expectation after 2006/07 and had his issues with some of the big names and bad luck as said before.

Did not rate Levein one little bit. Can anyone remember the other candidates being linked in early 2010? It's a shame the Vogts experiment went so badly so SFA simply won't appoint any foreign manager.

If they'd appointed Lars Lagerback at any point in last decade I'm sure he'd have got Scotland to at least one major tournament given Iceland got to their first major final while co manager and could well get Norway out of the tournament wilderness.

[dohadeer]

6 minutes ago, Tartan Chris said:

I didn't mind Burley in fairness, good club manager just couldn't get to grips with the increased expectation after 2006/07 and had his issues with some of the big names and bad luck as said before.

Did not rate Levein one little bit. Can anyone remember the other candidates being linked in early 2010? It's a shame the Vogts experiment went so badly so SFA simply won't appoint any foreign manager.

If they'd appointed Lars Lagerback at any point in last decade I'm sure he'd have got Scotland to at least one major tournament given Iceland got to their first major final while co manager and could well get Norway out of the tournament wilderness.

I think that although it may seem like there’s a plethora of great foreign managers out there, it would be really difficult for any of them to come in and do a good job for Scotland. 

I’d rather a Scottish manager who has built up knowledge of the players available over a number of years. I’m not sure how a foreign manager can learn enough required to manage Scotland - they would end up basing their selections on as little knowledge as we on this message board all have - and that would be a disaster. As happened with Vogts - decent manager, did an ok job for us, in hindsight, but he obviously didn’t have enough knowledge of Scottish players, so he just ended up trying anyone and everyone, hoping that he’d find the magic combination of international-level players.

I’d much rather we selected the best available Scottish manager at the time - which we usually do - but then gave them enough time to make a success of it, instead of hounding them out at the first sign of trouble, or the first bad result.

[ErsatzThistle]

17 minutes ago, Tartan Chris said:

I didn't mind Burley in fairness, good club manager just couldn't get to grips with the increased expectation after 2006/07 and had his issues with some of the big names and bad luck as said before.

It didn't help either that a resentful media had it in for Burley from day one all because their favourite, Souness, never got the job.

[ErsatzThistle]

1 minute ago, dohadeer said:

I think that although it may seem like there’s a plethora of great foreign managers out there, it would be really difficult for any of them to come in and do a good job for Scotland. 

I’d rather a Scottish manager who has built up knowledge of the players available over a number of years. I’m not sure how a foreign manager can learn enough required to manage Scotland - they would end up basing their selections on as little knowledge as we on this message board all have - and that would be a disaster. As happened with Vogts - decent manager, did an ok job for us, in hindsight, but he obviously didn’t have enough knowledge of Scottish players, so he just ended up trying anyone and everyone, hoping that he’d find the magic combination of international-level players.

I’d much rather we selected the best available Scottish manager at the time - which we usually do - but then gave them enough time to make a success of it, instead of hounding them out at the first sign of trouble, or the first bad result.

And what about other countries who have done well after appointing non-native managers ?

The vast majority of Scottish managers are the embodiment of failure and mediocrity.

[Tartan Chris]

7 minutes ago, ErsatzThistle said:

It didn't help either that a resentful media had it in for Burley from day one all because their favourite, Souness, never got the job.

Interesting. Souness last job in football was in January 2006 when Newcastle sacked him. He was only 52 at that point and you only have to look at managers in premier league to see that's a very young age to retire as a manager.

Perhaps he'd have taken the job but in his autobiography he'd said he'd had enough of management dealing with guys like Bellamy. There was a vacancy of course in early 2007 and after Burley got sacked so other chances to take it if he so desired.

Thought Burley was a good choice as he had solid record in England. Took Ipswich into premier league and got Derby and Southampton into the play offs of the championship. Indeed it was looking likely he was going to lead Hearts to the SPL before Romanov sacked him, didn't Hearts start that season with 7 wins in a row?

It didn't work out, that can happen even if the appointment appears logical.

[dohadeer]

19 minutes ago, ErsatzThistle said:

And what about other countries who have done well after appointing non-native managers ?

The vast majority of Scottish managers are the embodiment of failure and mediocrity.

There must be far more failures than successes when appointing foreign managers to a national team? Surely it’s easier for us to see/remember the successful ones.

I think that it would be a near-impossible job for a foreign manager to select a Scotland squad, because our players are spread so far and wide. If England, for example, were to appoint a foreign coach, the majority of their players play for five clubs - Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Man United and Tottenham - and also there are so many different kick-off times across the weekend in the English Premiership, that would be an example of an easy squad for a foreign coach to learn about and select.

 

Contrast that with our potential pool of players, which is spread across the Scottish Premiership, the bottom half of the English Premiership, the whole of the English Championship, and then a few odds and ends elsewhere as well - League One, top half of the English Premiership, some playing abroad. As shown with Vogts, there is no way you could begin to keep track of it. There wouldn’t even be enough hours in the week to sit down and watch video footage of all the Scotland players before the next round of fixtures came round! 

We have appointed the best Scottish managers available, all with very impressive club achievements, but we turn them into failures so quickly, by expecting perfectionism from them, and turning against them at the first sign of trouble.

I wish that we’d stop convincing ourselves that the grass is greener somewhere else, and just give one of these managers time to do the job.

[daviebee]

9 hours ago, dohadeer said:

There must be far more failures than successes when appointing foreign managers to a national team? Surely it’s easier for us to see/remember the successful ones.

I think that it would be a near-impossible job for a foreign manager to select a Scotland squad, because our players are spread so far and wide. If England, for example, were to appoint a foreign coach, the majority of their players play for five clubs - Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Man United and Tottenham - and also there are so many different kick-off times across the weekend in the English Premiership, that would be an example of an easy squad for a foreign coach to learn about and select.

 

Contrast that with our potential pool of players, which is spread across the Scottish Premiership, the bottom half of the English Premiership, the whole of the English Championship, and then a few odds and ends elsewhere as well - League One, top half of the English Premiership, some playing abroad. As shown with Vogts, there is no way you could begin to keep track of it. There wouldn’t even be enough hours in the week to sit down and watch video footage of all the Scotland players before the next round of fixtures came round! 

We have appointed the best Scottish managers available, all with very impressive club achievements, but we turn them into failures so quickly, by expecting perfectionism from them, and turning against them at the first sign of trouble.

I wish that we’d stop convincing ourselves that the grass is greener somewhere else, and just give one of these managers time to do the job.

Wow - I wonder how the Icelanders manage it with their squad spread all over Scandinavia and a few in continental Europe.

[kwhitelaw]

12 hours ago, ErsatzThistle said:

It didn't help either that a resentful media had it in for Burley from day one all because their favourite, Souness, never got the job.

To be fair it was one of the few times the media turned out to be right.  Souness would've handled the big names in the dressing room a lot better than Burley was able to

[Orraloon]

17 hours ago, Tartan Chris said:

I haven't read report but would be interested to see what the general recommendations are. I imagine it will be the usual of building more indoor centres and getting things right at youth level.

That's important but realistically for a small nation with population there are always many factors in play.

You take Belgium for example. Population of 11m so limited compared to the other teams they were in later stages of world cup with. Not a huge football culture and generally been insignificant in international football for most of their existance. Had a good team in the 80s and then similar to Scotland had a no frills defensive team that made two World cups in the 90s.

They didn't qualify for a major tournament from 2002 up to world cup 2014. Now they're one of the world's best teams?

Perhaps they've invested a huge amount in youth facilites but sometimes it's a simple case of just 5-6 World class footballers all being born in the same era. Wales is a little similar.

Scotland currently have more players playing at top level (would also include Burke given he is in La Liga and regularly getting minutes) than at any point since the last near miss in 2007 even if they don't all play in key positions. It's frustrating not to have any world class forward like Norway and Serbia and the lack of any decent CBs is a massive issue but in other positions the players are more than competant if not pretty good and they show it for their club sides on a regular basis.

Was there anything in the report looking at why there's so many call offs from every international round? That remains a big issue although I suspect due to the importance in March hardly anyone will pull out and then play for their club on April 4th, it will be just long term injured who miss out like Tierney and McGinn.

Said it before but you see likes of Bale and Ramsey racing to join up with Wales squad and they play for some of the biggest teams in world football and this is for mundane qualifiers.

Many of the Welsh squad grew up together in the youth teams so it's very much a club side mentality, same for Northern Ireland. It's a thing lacking in the Scotland set up so imo it's too easy to pull out from squads. You also then don't have that backs to the wall mentality to pull through when 0-0 in a tough away qualifier. This is a quality that will be needed in Oslo or Belgrade if the team get to the final.

Another problem is some of the awful managers that have been appointed since 2007. Strachan was best of the lot but he couldn't capitalise on good periods of form.

You could have read it in the time it took to type that post.

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by Orraloon

[Farcity]

23 hours ago, ErsatzThistle said:

Three at the back 

It's back I see.