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Caledonian Craig

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2 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

The games against Wales they equalised in the 85th minute in Cardiff and 76th minute in Belgrade. 

Football is a results game. Going on that formula they, just like us, failed to qualify through the group stages. In the current Nations League we top our group and they are bottom. Their coach was being asked if he would resign if they did not beat Norway so thst says things have not been so rosy for them of late.

More boring stats for you in there 3 - 1 defeat in Russia they had 15 shots at goal with 6 on target.

Koralov was sent of just after half time in the 0-0 draw with Turkey and Serbia's main man Milinkovic-Savic didn't play.

I wish I hadn't started this, I'm going to end up backing Serbia to win the Euro's the Word cup and the Eurovision song contest at this rate.

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5 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

More boring stats for you in there 3 - 1 defeat in Russia they had 15 shots at goal with 6 on target.

Koralov was sent of just after half time in the 0-0 draw with Turkey and Serbia's main man Milinkovic-Savic didn't play.

I wish I hadn't started this, I'm going to end up backing Serbia to win the Euro's the Word cup and the Eurovision song contest at this rate.

And they leak goals. Poor temperament? A sending off is evidence of that. You could back Serbia to win all of them but you'd soon be skint with no winnings to pick up.

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7 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

And they leak goals. Poor temperament? A sending off is evidence of that. You could back Serbia to win all of them but you'd soon be skint with no winnings to pick up.

Last five games( or maybe not) 1 against Norway, 0 against Turkey, 0 against Paraguay and 1 against Germany.

Let in three against Russia when their first choice keeper was unavailable.

Just noticed Serbia had 62% possession against the Russians.

Time for a reality check about who we are up against I am afraid.

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2 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Last five games( or maybe not) 1 against Norway, 0 against Turkey, 0 against Paraguay and 1 against Germany.

Let in three against Russia when their first choice keeper was unavailable.

Just noticed Serbia had 62% possession against the Russians.

Time for a reality check about who we are up against I am afraid.

Or maybe it’s time to stop being frightened by stats?

The fact is Serbia are a decent side but they are nothing special. If they were they would already have qualified, wouldn’t be ranked 31st in the world and wouldn’t be bottom of their Nations League group. 

Bring them on. 

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6 minutes ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Last five games( or maybe not) 1 against Norway, 0 against Turkey, 0 against Paraguay and 1 against Germany.

Let in three against Russia when their first choice keeper was unavailable.

Just noticed Serbia had 62% possession against the Russians.

Time for a reality check about who we are up against I am afraid.

Possession count means nothing in football. It is results that matter. They never qualified through their group for the Euros? What happened there? Their manager's future hanging by a thread until late Thursday evening? Why? Hmm so they do not have strong back up in the keeper department. Was their No 1 keeper in goal when they got thrashed 5-0 by Ukraine?

Edited by Caledonian Craig
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13 minutes ago, Caledonian Craig said:

Possession count means nothing in football. It is results that matter. They never qualified through their group for the Euros? What happened there? Their manager's future hanging by a thread until late Thursday evening? Why? Hmm so they do not have strong back up in the keeper department. Was their No 1 keeper in goal when they got thrashed 5-0 by Ukraine?

Same keeper that let in 3 against Russia, not their number one choice now anyway, might have been then. 

Any way, enough is enough I was a lot more confident before you started giving reasons for us to be hopeful

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8 hours ago, ceudmilefailte said:

Same keeper that let in 3 against Russia, not their number one choice now anyway, might have been then. 

Any way, enough is enough I was a lot more confident before you started giving reasons for us to be hopeful

Hmmm highly unlikely. If you think that they never qualified by rights (with a higher seeding) as not a reason to be hopefil then I think you are taking the pish. If you think them being bottom of their Nations keague group is not a reason to be hopeful then again I am highly dubious. And then fact their manager was under pressure to get resukts or be sacked and a lot more.

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We will be underdogs, but if everyone is fit and play well we can get by them.

Serbia blow hot and cold. Almost every two year qualifying cycle ég they'll be great in WC qualifying then rank in the Euros. They're in pot c for a reason, saying that, they're probably best team left of the 8 playoff teams left. 

Those tweets from Gallagher, Robbo, McGinn etc have really buoyed me as well as the reaction from the players in winning the shootout. Think we'll give everything in this game, considering the history we could make , who's to know if that's enough to qualify but we'll see. 

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16 minutes ago, weekevie04 said:

We will be underdogs, but if everyone is fit and play well we can get by them.

Serbia blow hot and cold. Almost every two year qualifying cycle ég they'll be great in WC qualifying then rank in the Euros. They're in pot c for a reason, saying that, they're probably best team left of the 8 playoff teams left. 

Those tweets from Gallagher, Robbo, McGinn etc have really buoyed me as well as the reaction from the players in winning the shootout. Think we'll give everything in this game, considering the history we could make , who's to know if that's enough to qualify but we'll see. 

I haven't been this optimistic since the days of Smith/McLeish.

If we can keep it rtght against Serbia, cut out the errors, and come up with a few set-piece routines, I think we can win.

Set-pieces could be key. For the first time in my memory we're actually good in the air. (Dykes, McBurnie, McTominay, Burke) Let's face it,

England finished fourth in the 2918 World Cup playing the percentages and scoring the majority of their goals via set-pieces, I'm sure if we copy that blueprint, Serbia could get a rude awakening.

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13 hours ago, Caledonian Craig said:

And they leak goals. Poor temperament? A sending off is evidence of that. You could back Serbia to win all of them but you'd soon be skint with no winnings to pick up.

Their results in the qualifiers would certainly suggest that. Luxembourg and Lithuania even managed to score against them.

On the other hand, next month they'll be playing a team who managed a total of 0 shots on target in a home fixture against a workmanlike Israel team. 

12 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

Or maybe it’s time to stop being frightened by stats?

The fact is Serbia are a decent side but they are nothing special. If they were they would already have qualified, wouldn’t be ranked 31st in the world and wouldn’t be bottom of their Nations League group. 

Bring them on. 

They aren't anything special, that's true, but they're an appreciably better side than Israel, who we needed penalties to beat - at home.

It's also true that they finished third in their group but they had one (if not the) best records of any third placed team. They were only three points behind Portugal, who finished second in their group, while we finished nine points behind Russia.

We've got a chance, obviously, and I hope we can get two good results in the next couple of games to take us into this one on a high, but it'll be a much harder game than the one last Thursday.

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The Serbia game the first of three away games next month within a week Slovakia then Israel yet again.

if we pull it off In Serbia be interesting to see if many pull out of the next two, with suddenly having qualified for a finals. 

Can imagine clubs having nightmares players travelling to three countries within a week with all the COVID concerns.

 

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On 10/10/2020 at 11:00 AM, PASTA Mick said:

I think some players look at the clubs they play for and make a judgement and there is no doubt their squad is filled with players from some very good clubs.  We'd love to be picking players from Real Madrid, Inter, Sevilla, Ajax, Porto and a load of the other CL / EL clubs that Serbia are able to do.  

I think the biggest difference is they have much better strength in depth and their forwards are a class above ours.  However, if we anything close to our strongest squad available, we have a good chance.  

I imagine there will be some Serbia forum saying almost the exact same thing but in reverse. "We'd love to be picking players from Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea (soon) and a number of EPL teams, as well as from 2 teams playing in Europe (Old firm)."

We have a lot better players than we give ourselves credit for, and far better than we've had the last decade. I genuinely think we just need to find a way to gel the players together. Winning that penalty shootout will have gone a long way to creating camaraderie in the squad, which is something we were sorely missing. 

I don't expect us to have resolved all the issues by November, but if we have almost all our best players available, and have them fired up, I don't see any reason why we can't go toe to toe with Serbia.

 

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Can't really see much from this.

Haven't read thread yet so answer is probably in first two pages but one bonus would've been BCD and less of hostile atmosphere but I saw Bosnia had about 10k fans in v Norn Iron so perhaps they will allow some fans in.

As others have said will be doing well to get extra time here. Mitrovic already scored 35 goals in just 58 caps for them and also got Dusan Tadic and Jovic as options. Milinkovic-Savic is a fantastic midfielder aswell, was the difference v Norway.

They're not so strong in defence but getting the ball off them will be tough enough.

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17 hours ago, Caledonian Craig said:

Well we can safely say then that Wales are better than us as Wales drew with them twice in that World Cup qualifying campaign.

Also it is weird. Recently we scrambled to a win over minnows and our fans go apopleptic but Serbia have done the same in that time but its overlooked.

They still won the group. Also drew with ROI twice but remembered to finish above them (they won away to Georgia which you need to do to get top 2 in a group....)

Not making them into Brazil or France but they did make the recent World cup so need to be respected compared to Israel who last played an international tournament in I think 1986. And Norway last played in euro 2000.

Looking at the other play off teams... Northern Ireland, Slovakia, Georgia, North Macedonia, Iceland and Hungary and Serbia is toughest opponent of the lot.

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Had a quick look at the highlights from their game against Norway. Five of their chances shown (I think of six shown; the other was a long range effort IIRC) came from defensive errors from the Norwegians, some beyond acceptable at this level. Hopefully our more compact defensive in recent matches will make it much harder for the Serbs to get chances like they did in that game.

They're obviously a step up from Israel and may be better than either Slovakia and the Czechs, but in a one-off game where we'll be able to counter attack, we have a chance now we look more resolute at the back.

Edited by Clyde1998
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2 hours ago, scotlad said:

Their results in the qualifiers would certainly suggest that. Luxembourg and Lithuania even managed to score against them.

On the other hand, next month they'll be playing a team who managed a total of 0 shots on target in a home fixture against a workmanlike Israel team. 

They aren't anything special, that's true, but they're an appreciably better side than Israel, who we needed penalties to beat - at home.

It's also true that they finished third in their group but they had one (if not the) best records of any third placed team. They were only three points behind Portugal, who finished second in their group, while we finished nine points behind Russia.

We've got a chance, obviously, and I hope we can get two good results in the next couple of games to take us into this one on a high, but it'll be a much harder game than the one last Thursday.

Of course Serbia are a much better team than Israel but Scotland are the type of team that will draw with Macedonia at home in a group but go to Croatia and win. OK so that was 8 years ago but we’ve always struggled to beat teams that we are allegedly better than (apart from the proper minnows).

We don’t appear to be very good at breaking teams like Israel down who pack their defence and play on the counter. 

We will have more space against Serbia going forward and if we can keep it tight at the back we have a decent chance. 

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2 hours ago, DAVIDB46 said:

The Serbia game the first of three away games next month within a week Slovakia then Israel yet again.

if we pull it off In Serbia be interesting to see if many pull out of the next two, with suddenly having qualified for a finals. 

Can imagine clubs having nightmares players travelling to three countries within a week with all the COVID concerns.

 

In all honesty all I care about is beating Serbia and staying in League B in the Nations league which we should do if we can get 4 points from our next 2 games. 4 or 5 points from our last 4 games really should be enough as well. 

Getting promoted to League A would be great but with it’s not really essential so if a few players pull out after the Serbia match (which I don’t think will happen anyway) it wouldn’t be the end of the world as long as we are already safe in League B. 

If things keep going the way they are with the virus then I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nations League games are scrapped next month anyway. 

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11 minutes ago, thesaint said:

Let's be more positive.Serbia lost at home to the mighty Hungary.They are bottom of the league,and very ordinary.Get into tjhem.

Very ordinary might be a bit strong but we shouldn’t be scared of them. 

We are unbeaten in 7 and they are not. We are top of our group and they are bottom. 

They will have no or very few fans in the playoff final so their home advantage will be minimal or possibly even non-existent. 

The way some folk on here go on you’d think we were playing Portugal or Belgium or something. 

Edited by Texas Pete
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I agree with you, Texas. This is, unequivocally, our best chance of qualifying  since we headed to Amsterdam with our dreams intact in 2003. Beating a top Italy side in 2007, who had just won the World Cup the year before, was always an uphill task.

Serbia are decent and will rightly be favourites, but they will have a go at us and will likely play an open, attacking game, which will suit our counter attacking at pace style with Fraser, Burke, Dykes, Christie, Robertson, and Tierney all having good pace. If we have most of our best players available, we are in with a good shout.

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