What would be a 'good' tournament?

[ThistleWhistle]

How good this tournament has been will hopefully become apparent over the next four years - coherent approach to our next tough two away games with a decent tilt at playoffs plus qualifying for 2024 via the front door with tournament experience in the bag and a pot 4 team to possibly beat would be real progress which this could be the catalyst for.  

A half arsed remaining WC qualification campaign and not qualifying for 2024 and it'll have been a complete waste apart from a day out in London.  

[AlfieMoon]

36 minutes ago, ThistleWhistle said:

How good this tournament has been will hopefully become apparent over the next four years - coherent approach to our next tough two away games with a decent tilt at playoffs plus qualifying for 2024 via the front door with tournament experience in the bag and a pot 4 team to possibly beat would be real progress which this could be the catalyst for.  

A half arsed remaining WC qualification campaign and not qualifying for 2024 and it'll have been a complete waste apart from a day out in London.  

I think that’s a fair summation. 
 

We are heading in the right direction but I think the players and manager need to learn from this experience. Clarke has admitted as much.  
 

We desperately need to find something that works better in the final third with the limitations that we have.  
 

The major positives are the squad unity, some talented younger players coming through and the fact that a lot of the squad are starting to rack up a decent number of caps. For far too long we’ve had a squad chopping and changing and nothing demonstrated that more than the lowly average number of caps. It was particularly evident versus other nations and not helped by friendly call-offs all the time. Now we have a core set of guys at a decent age who are building excellent experience. 

[exile]

9 hours ago, Caledonian Craig said:

I suppose it is much to do with the context of the thread question of 'What would be a good tournament?'

Personally, considering the previous 23 years it has been a good tournament just having Scotland qualify. But of course there is always room to want more but at present we are not quite there to offer more especially given the draw we had. Every country in it were ranked above us and two had a very successful World Cup three years ago and are ranked way above us and have been for too long to remember.

If you look back over the past 6 to 12 months of posts on here discussing our matches you'll find there are far more posts denigrating our players such as McBurnie, McGregor, Dykes, Fraser and O'Donnell to name but a few. Other posts slating our performances in the last two Nations League matches and the World Cup qualifiers against Austria and Israel. From that alone it tells us that even our own fans recognised our shortcomings yet we are expected to string wins together and qualify from perhaps one of our toughest groups we have ever faced in a major tournament. I can't work that one out.

Anyway apologies exile if I snapped.

No problem. It's a bit of a subtle issue, and depending which way you put it, it can seem as if a dig in one direction or the other.

I guess the original point was I was curious how this tournament would compare with others. Obviously it's a matter of opinion what is meant by good, and what is meant by expect. 

So for example, I think it was great we got here, but a 'good' tournament to me honestly would probably have to be one where we went further than before. But then again, I woud not expect us to do that, because we never have a good tournament (except maybe we exceeded expectation in 1974? - but even that must have been a disappointment, to go out unbeaten). 

I have a general feeling that this tournament was not as abject or agonising as previoous ones - maybe partly because of hope it is the start of an era rather than the end of an era.  Also because failure against teams ranked much higher is not as abject as some of the defeats in the past. (Though being beaten comfortably at home is tough to take) And/but  also because the eventual placing was clear cut and so not as agonising as in the past extis. Even so, on the chosen stats, it is worse than the others, which was the point about being objectively worse, even if it didn't feel so bad.

 

[ceudmilefailte]

3 minutes ago, exile said:

 

So for example, I think it was great we got here, but a 'good' tournament to me honestly would probably have to be one where we went further than before But then again, I woud not expect us to do that, because we never have a good tournament (except maybe we exceeded expectation in 1974? - but even that must have been a disappointment, to go out unbeaten). 

 

 

1974 was the closest we got to qualifying for the next round and I might have been young and naive but we expected to beat Yugoslavia.

The only unbeaten team achievement wasn't celebrated at the time.

[Caledonian Craig]

There are various factors to weigh up and in doing that I'd say 1998 was worse than this. Much tougher group this time compared to 1998 when we had, what we thought then, was a strong squad. Hammered 3-0 by Morroco is sure a lot worse than lising 3-1 tothe World Cup runners-up. Also that squad in 1998 had major tournament experience unlike the current squad. And I'd bet anything you like the current squad had more efforts on goal than we had in the 98 campaign against lesser opponents.