Scotland starting XI vs Israel

[ghtresa]

12 minutes ago, Barney Rubble said:

Too many excuses - not enough reality.

Who are the four forwards who would walk into our time - and who would they replace?

The 3 that started plus Weissman who came off the bench would all comfortably win caps were they Scottish. 

Not a criticism of Dykes by the way, I just wish we had a bit more quality in attack.

[slasher]

5 minutes ago, Barney Rubble said:

Ah know - but dinnae crucify me for asking a legitimate question!!!

Lol. 😂

Dabour, Weissman and Zahavi would definitely walk into our squad, not sure about the other yin 👍

[tjm007]

Czech game off.

[Taylor1996]

Manor Solomon looks a real talent!

Yesterday a football "expert" was sneering about Kai Naismith, Barry Hebpurn, etc, being called up. Yeah, well, on that performance, we need to promote the youngsters. 

And is anyone aware that Israel played with a 3/5, too? So, Israel can play with a 3/5 better than us? That means they have better players.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Taylor1996

[Taylor1996]

11 minutes ago, Taylor1996 said:

That means they have better players.

That was sarcasm, by the way.

People are acting like we got thrashed 0:13.

The amount of disrespect shown to the Israel team is shameful. Israel got a point because they deserved it.

[Eassy]

1 hour ago, Third Lanark said:

Problem with 3 at the back is you leave yourselves wide open to players running the channels. And we don't have enough right footed CB's.

Aye spot on mate, that Solomon ran riot down McTominays side.. Our centre half options are all pretty similar, Gallagher, Cooper and McKenna are all competent defenders but very immobile.

[Eassy]

1 hour ago, daviebee said:

McLeish got fkin slaughtered for playing 3 at the back across in Israel and therefore fielding his 2 best players out of position.

Only one can be left-back and that has to be Robertson. Tierney is more versatile so put him at centre-half or further up in front of Robertson.  Just don't play fkin alien formations!  That was beyond rancid tonight.  Dykes did ok - at least the ball stuck to him most times when he tried to control it.  Anyone notice Burke's first touch?  Some like-for-like replacement that was.

Need to stop shoe horning players in, if it means dropping Robertson then so be it, best players in their positions should be picked. Was fuming when Burke came on as the central Striker, Dykes was one of the few pulling their weight.

1 hour ago, Taylor1996 said:

Thank you!

Apparently some of these people think Rome was built in a day.

Are you trying to get bites 😂.. it’s been 22 years of “transitions” and “rebuilding”. At what stage do you accept it’s not the manager that’s the issue and make a bigger change?

[mrniaboc]

On the plus side, at least Norway and Serbia both lost.

[ParisInAKilt]

Glad I never bothered getting up for that. 

[Taylor1996]

16 minutes ago, Eassy said:

Are you trying to get bites 😂.. it’s been 22 years of “transitions” and “rebuilding”. At what stage do you accept it’s not the manager that’s the issue and make a bigger change?

Agreed. It has been 22 years of failure, but a group of people want to preserve with what's failed us in the past.

Unequivocally, it's not the manager to blame. If you read my player rating thread you will see who I'm blaming.

On the plus side, the performance schools are starting to churn out footballers who can actually pass and control. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you give me a choice of watching the senior Scotlanx team or the u17s and u19, i'd rather watch the kids.

There's talented kids on the way, but we have to endure for a couple of years.

[Morrisandmoo]

2 hours ago, BucksburnDandy said:

Safe to say Clarke made an absolute rip roaring arse of it tonight. And we got a McLeish in Israel type performance.

We are not capable of playing 3-5-2 or the variation of it we played tonight:

1) We barely have any competent centre backs
2) None of our players are capable of playing wing back effectively
3) It stunts our attacking players and stops their effectiveness

No one needed to see tonight's game to know that, we learned it two years back. So why did our management team think that it was a sensible plan?

Gordon Strachan and Malky MacKay (yes Malky, you read it right) both came up with effective answers for Robertson and Tierney - Robertson is left back and Tierney either plays right back or left centre back in a back 4. It doesn't need to be overcomplicated if you want both to play.

Not that it excuses the players who once again gave the "we don't give a toss" performance that we have been served up so often since the start of 2018.

Callum McGregor is hopeless for Scotland, Strachan was correct not to play him. He contributes very little positive to our play. Forrest is another who is an imposter. Both are grand for thumping Hamilton Accies but they are very limited.

McGinn wasn't match fit, McTominay is not a centre back as shown quite often tonight, Jack was OK but nothing more.

Andy Robertson is very limited positionally, unable to play anywhere else but left back. It has to be said his performances for Scotland since the start of 2018 have been nothing short of shite, consistently shite. Greg Taylor has been better, quite comfortably so.

Fair play to Lyndon Dykes who worked hard for no return, Ryan Christie who tried a lot but didn't get much payout, Scott McKenna and Kieran Tierney who both played fine.

Ultimately Clarke really does need to look at himself tonight, question why he moved away from 4-2-3-1 and also question his faith in certain players who more often than not fail to perform. Perhaps also reflect on what Strachan or MacKay did with Robertson and Tierney. Our fans are drifting away into disinterest generally and stuff like tonight cannot be tolerated.

True that. 

[Texas Pete]

37 minutes ago, Taylor1996 said:

Agreed. It has been 22 years of failure, but a group of people want to preserve with what's failed us in the past.

Unequivocally, it's not the manager to blame. If you read my player rating thread you will see who I'm blaming.

On the plus side, the performance schools are starting to churn out footballers who can actually pass and control. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you give me a choice of watching the senior Scotlanx team or the u17s and u19, i'd rather watch the kids.

There's talented kids on the way, but we have to endure for a couple of years.

You still can’t admit it can you? 😂

[ParisInAKilt]

We’re just not very good, as we have been since I started watching us, we can analyse why that is all night long, is it the players or the manager, end of the day it doesn’t really matter. 

As a fan*

Edited September 5, 2020 by ParisInAKilt

[Taylor1996]

24 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

You still can’t admit it can you? 😂

Admit what?

I'll assume that you're talking about the formation, as that's what everyone seems to talk about on here... Snore. 😛

Did I expect us to win 10:0 just because we switched to a three? No. Of course not. Did I expect a good performance? Again, not really.

Here is the situation, from 2000-2020 we've played with a four. We've achieved nothing. We play with a three for one match, we DRAW, and people want to go back to the tried, tested and failed method? It is insane.

We didn't actually lose the match. Do people realize this? 

Israel are what, 50 places below us in the rankings, and they drew with us. They played 5 at the back. If we can replicate that, we'll be doing well.

Plus, most of the predictions in the prediction thread had us winning this match by one goal. Is a draw really that unexpected?

[Guest ElChris04]

Main take from the game - 

Did someone tell Callum McGregor Halloween wasn’t until the end of next month? He did a fantastic job at dressing up as Casper The Ghost tonight. 
 

totally invisible for 90 minutes. 
 

absolutely brutal viewing with his side/back passing and this isn’t just for Scotland either, domestically he’s been awful or average for over a year now, done nothing of note since the first 2 seasons under Rodgers.
 

He’s coasting for club and country and it’s depressing to watch at this point, criminally overrated doesn’t cover it. 

Edited September 5, 2020 by ElChris04

[Taylor1996]

7 minutes ago, ElChris04 said:

Main take from the game - 

Did someone tell Callum McGregor Halloween wasn’t until the end of next month? He did a fantastic job at dressing up as Casper The Ghost tonight. 
 

totally invisible for 90 minutes. 
 

absolutely brutal viewing with his side/back passing and this isn’t just for Scotland either, domestically he’s been awful or average for over a year now, done nothing of note since the first 2 seasons under Rodgers.
 

He’s coasting for club and country and it’s depressing to watch at this point, criminally overrated doesn’t cover it. 

Agreed.

Apparently, we're strong in midfield and yet our midfield couldn't impose themselves on a 90th Seed Israel team.

It was 3-4-3. We aren't good enough to play with two central midfielders, even against teams like Israel.

[Taylor1996]

5 hours ago, BucksburnDandy said:

We are not capable of playing 3-5-2 or the variation of it we played tonight:

And which formation are we capable of playing?

A variant of 4-5-1?  There's a reason why McLeish, Strachan and now Clarke have experimented with a 3.

Someone please show me the evidence that we can play well with four at the back. Please. Over the past 20 years, where's the success using the four? Everyone keeps stating that we can't play with a three, but they can't show me any evidence that we can play with a four.

The most recent time we qualified for either a European Championships or a World Cup is 1990. 

It's weird. It's like, when Berti Vogts took over in 2000, and changed the successful template of 3-5-2, to a 4-4-2, everyone completely forgot about the success we had under Craig Brown.

Hopefully Steve Clarke doesn't listen to the media or the insane block of the Tartan Army.

[ParisInAKilt]

4 hours ago, ElChris04 said:

Main take from the game - 

Did someone tell Callum McGregor Halloween wasn’t until the end of next month? He did a fantastic job at dressing up as Casper The Ghost tonight. 
 

totally invisible for 90 minutes. 
 

absolutely brutal viewing with his side/back passing and this isn’t just for Scotland either, domestically he’s been awful or average for over a year now, done nothing of note since the first 2 seasons under Rodgers.
 

He’s coasting for club and country and it’s depressing to watch at this point, criminally overrated doesn’t cover it. 

I don’t watch Celtic but that’s his Scotland career to date summed up 

[er yir macaroon]

The problem with 3-6-1 or whatever is that we don’t have the players for it. My heart sank when I saw the side because what followed was so predictable. Forrest is not athletic enough for wing back. I’d sooner see him as a supporting striker off Dykes.

Robertson needs to play on the overlap and is never a wing back. He could do this with Tierney as a conventional left midfielder. If he continues to be shite at LB drop him and play Tierney there. 

[gonzohiggy]

Before the match I was fine with the back 3 as in theory it allowed tierney and Robertson to play in (nearly) their positions for club sides whilst also perhaps making us harder to beat.

While I thought we did look reasonably solid at the back, because of the formation or the way it was implemented, the team generally was far too deep. There was lots of passing in our own half but no width in the attacking third and very little options in middle to front. If we play it again we need a more dynamic midfield and starting positions higher up the park from everyone.

Individually thought Tierney, McKenna and Dykes did well enough. The rest were average apart from Callum McGregor who was comfortably the worst player on the park with loose touches and poor passes all over place.

 

[er yir macaroon]

2 minutes ago, gonzohiggy said:

Before the match I was fine with the back 3 as in theory it allowed tierney and Robertson to play in (nearly) their positions for club sides whilst also perhaps making us harder to beat.

While I thought we did look reasonably solid at the back, because of the formation or the way it was implemented, the team generally was far too deep. There was lots of passing in our own half but no width in the attacking third and very little options in middle to front. If we play it again we need a more dynamic midfield and starting positions higher up the park from everyone.

Individually thought Tierney, McKenna and Dykes did well enough. The rest were average apart from Callum McGregor who was comfortably the worst player on the park with loose touches and poor passes all over place.

 

and sold himself (again) for the Israel goal. 

Edited September 5, 2020 by er yir macaroon

[bigfingers]

The level we are at now... a draw at home to Israel is probably a good result. We may win the play off semi and tbh a play off final away from home is probably a blessing. 

[dezmondo]

4 hours ago, Taylor1996 said:

And which formation are we capable of playing?

A variant of 4-5-1?  There's a reason why McLeish, Strachan and now Clarke have experimented with a 3.

Someone please show me the evidence that we can play well with four at the back. Please. Over the past 20 years, where's the success using the four? Everyone keeps stating that we can't play with a three, but they can't show me any evidence that we can play with a four.

The most recent time we qualified for either a European Championships or a World Cup is 1990. 

It's weird. It's like, when Berti Vogts took over in 2000, and changed the successful template of 3-5-2, to a 4-4-2, everyone completely forgot about the success we had under Craig Brown.

Hopefully Steve Clarke doesn't listen to the media or the insane block of the Tartan Army.

I think you might be 8 years and 3 more competitions out 

[loanhead-tartan]

Was impressed with dykes last night . Played better in those 72 mins than mcburnie has in any of his previous 9 caps 

[Bino's]

19 minutes ago, er yir macaroon said:

and sold himself (again) for the Israel goal. 

He's consistently awful