Expectation and Reality

[Texas Pete]

1 hour ago, Rolling hIlls said:

Aye. The board would be better off if I buggered off, didn't agree with you and didn't support Rangers.  Carry on Kid.  Told you before I don't get bullied by anyone.  Stand on kid.

I don’t remember that one. Was Sid James in it? 

[Mickey The Brave]

18 minutes ago, gkm_vancouver said:

Is it not about time that the TAMB Mods block the prat's IP address??

Feel free to label me a ‘crackpot’ or whatever else - I’d hope you’d give me a bit longer than a week though, to make such a scathing assessment of me.

However, I’m not the same person as whoever this other previously banned poster is. Hopefully my IP address would help me prove that, although I’m well aware that most nuisance posters with multiple accounts have ways around that. Way beyond my capabilities with technology though!

[hampden_loon2878]

5 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

We competed with the Czechs and England. On another day we could have got more points from those two games and got out the group. 

Obviously that didn’t happen so we didn’t deserve to progress but it’s not as if we were completely out of our depth in the tournament as some people are making out.

In my opinion Clarke seriously needs to consider ditching the formation he’s currently using as we aren’t doing any damage to teams using it. 

If we are going to go to Austria and win we are going to have to do something different. 

Agreed, the team is now evolving as confidence grows and new players start to come in, the system in place just now was put in place to make us hard to beat after a poor showing under mcleish. Personally i believe we have enough good player to be more than a hard to beat team who steals a win here and there

[Rolling hIlls]

2 hours ago, gkm_vancouver said:

Nothing to do with me pal. This is the TA Specific section which generally contains some decent posters and postings. If you defend this sad pathetic troll then you are asking for the criticism you will undoubtedly get. So stand up, sit down and do the hokey cokey or whatever it is that you mean

See this troll pish, I really don't get it.  I could accuse anyone on here of trolling but I wouldn't. It's an easy get out and a nasty thing to say.

[Texas Pete]

1 hour ago, hampden_loon2878 said:

Agreed, the team is now evolving as confidence grows and new players start to come in, the system in place just now was put in place to make us hard to beat after a poor showing under mcleish. Personally i believe we have enough good player to be more than a hard to beat team who steals a win here and there

Yeah hard to beat is one thing but hard to beat gets you nowhere unless you convert draws into wins. Being hard to beat is great against good teams but we need to be beating Israel and Austria etc at home and not just drawing with them. 

[Mickey The Brave]

27 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

Yeah hard to beat is one thing but hard to beat gets you nowhere unless you convert draws into wins. Being hard to beat is great against good teams but we need to be beating Israel and Austria etc at home and not just drawing with them. 

There’s a big difference between Israel and Austria, I don’t think you can lump them together like that - particularly as our seeding is slap bang in the middle of those two teams, so each of them relate to Scotland in totally opposite ways. 
 

Israel are seeded 9 places below us, so I agree, we really need to be looking to take 3 points at home to them. However, Austria are seeded 13 places above us, so even at home, that’s going to be a difficult gap to bridge by enough to achieve a victory. A draw there is probably a more realistic step in the right direction, given that we lost at home to the team from the pot above us in the last qualifying campaign. I wouldn’t think there will be many teams that beat the team from the pot above them - particularly in cases like ours, where the actual gap in seeding is more than one whole pot (13 places) - so I don’t think we can be too greedy with our expectations there.

[Mickey The Brave]

50 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

Yeah hard to beat is one thing but hard to beat gets you nowhere unless you convert draws into wins. Being hard to beat is great against good teams but we need to be beating Israel and Austria etc at home and not just drawing with them. 

Just had a look now, and so far in the World Cup qualifiers, across all the European groups, there have been twenty-seven matches where teams have faced an opponent from the pot above them, and only three have been won by the team who were in the lower pot. So it looks like quite a difficult task, if we’re currently at an 11% victory rate. Will be interesting to see where that number ends up, on the full sample size of 90 such matches, across the whole of qualifying, but I don’t see it being much higher than that. That should give a more realistic and impartial expectation of matches against higher seeds.

[Rolling hIlls]

13 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

I don’t remember that one. Was Sid James in it? 

Nice one, made me chuckle. 

[Orraloon]

One positive for us, might be that the Czech Rep could be a bit better than some folk think they are? They despatched the Netherlands in a fairly clinical manner. OK, the sending off helped, but I think they were well in control before that happened. I think their game with Denmark in the QF could be the tie of the round. Could go either way. Then England in the semi final. They could go all the way?

[Texas Pete]

36 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

One positive for us, might be that the Czech Rep could be a bit better than some folk think they are? They despatched the Netherlands in a fairly clinical manner. OK, the sending off helped, but I think they were well in control before that happened. I think their game with Denmark in the QF could be the tie of the round. Could go either way. Then England in the semi final. They could go all the way?

I’ll be very surprised if they beat Denmark. I don’t think they’d have won yesterday if it wasn’t for the red card. The match was finely balanced before the sending off but I’m not sure if I’d agree they were well in control. 

[er yir macaroon]

30 minutes ago, Texas Pete said:

I’ll be very surprised if they beat Denmark. I don’t think they’d have won yesterday if it wasn’t for the red card. The match was finely balanced before the sending off but I’m not sure if I’d agree they were well in control. 

I think they would have one regardless of the sending off. The Dutch team is poor. Czech v Denmark will be a close call, I think. 

[Texas Pete]

3 minutes ago, er yir macaroon said:

I think they would have one regardless of the sending off. The Dutch team is poor. Czech v Denmark will be a close call, I think. 

The Dutch aren’t great but they’re better than the Czechs. They didn’t play well yesterday in fairness so may well have lost even if they had kept 11 men on the pitch but we’ll never know. 

[ProudScot]

1 hour ago, Orraloon said:

One positive for us, might be that the Czech Rep could be a bit better than some folk think they are? They despatched the Netherlands in a fairly clinical manner. OK, the sending off helped, but I think they were well in control before that happened. I think their game with Denmark in the QF could be the tie of the round. Could go either way. Then England in the semi final. They could go all the way?

Nope. They’re dung. Holland are close to dung also. 

[vanderark14]

25 minutes ago, ProudScot said:

Nope. They’re dung. Holland are close to dung also. 

They're maybe not the greatest but any team getting to a euro quarter final can hardly be described as dung.

[er yir macaroon]

2 hours ago, Texas Pete said:

The Dutch aren’t great but they’re better than the Czechs. They didn’t play well yesterday in fairness so may well have lost even if they had kept 11 men on the pitch but we’ll never know. 

They may have some better players but they’re not a better team. The Czechs are big, fast and organised, and they’ve got a great striker. 

[thesaint]

On 6/26/2021 at 9:20 PM, hampden_loon2878 said:

Agreed, the team is now evolving as confidence grows and new players start to come in, the system in place just now was put in place to make us hard to beat after a poor showing under mcleish. Personally i believe we have enough good player to be more than a hard to beat team who steals a win here and there

That's right.Reach for the stars.

[thesaint]

3 hours ago, Orraloon said:

One positive for us, might be that the Czech Rep could be a bit better than some folk think they are? They despatched the Netherlands in a fairly clinical manner. OK, the sending off helped, but I think they were well in control before that happened. I think their game with Denmark in the QF could be the tie of the round. Could go either way. Then England in the semi final. They could go all the way?

The sending off completely decided the game.The Netherlands just folded after it.There was no way the Czechs were in control before the sending off.Don't know what game you were watching.

[thesaint]

3 hours ago, Orraloon said:

One positive for us, might be that the Czech Rep could be a bit better than some folk think they are? They despatched the Netherlands in a fairly clinical manner. OK, the sending off helped, but I think they were well in control before that happened. I think their game with Denmark in the QF could be the tie of the round. Could go either way. Then England in the semi final. They could go all the way?

Do you honestly think the Czechs will even get a sniff of the final?Surely not.

[Orraloon]

11 hours ago, thesaint said:

Do you honestly think the Czechs will even get a sniff of the final?Surely not.

I think they have a decent chance against Denmark. I would put Denmark as favorites but not by much. Denmark are a bit more of a smooth silky well organised outfit whereas the Czechs are a team of strong powerful athletes. And they are not short on a bit of skill either. It might come down to which squad handles their fitness levels best and probably a wee bit of luck here and there? 

But you're probably right about the final. They probably won't get past England. England's name is already on the trophy. 

[thplinth]

oooft that'll be the Swiss on the list with the Welsh (and the Irish).

Still we can look at all the progress we have made since 1954 as consolation.

[Toepoke]

A small crumb of comfort but we were eliminated by two of the top 3 goals of the tournament...

https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro-2020/news/026b-12bee5573e30-07a21f6d1f12-1000--patrik-schick-wins-uefa-euro-2020-goal-of-the-tournament/#

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by Toepoke

[Tartan blood]

53 minutes ago, Toepoke said:

A small crumb of comfort but we were eliminated by two of the top 3 goals of the tournament...

https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro-2020/news/026b-12bee5573e30-07a21f6d1f12-1000--patrik-schick-wins-uefa-euro-2020-goal-of-the-tournament/#

 

To be honest, that is quite comforting. 2 out of the 5 goals we conceded were world class. Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up. The other 3 we lost weren't atrocious either. It's the opposite end of the field I'm more concerned about.

[killiefaetheferry]

35 minutes ago, Tartan blood said:

To be honest, that is quite comforting. 2 out of the 5 goals we conceded were world class. Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up. The other 3 we lost weren't atrocious either. It's the opposite end of the field I'm more concerned about.

Alternatively, if you stand off world class players or take risks that give them opportunities, don't be surprised if they then have the time and space to do their world class stuff. 

[daviebee]

No comfort at all. We should be embarrassed to have been on the receiving end of them.  Our goalie making a total tit of himself and then a guy who'd spent the whole first half running the game still being allowed the freedom of Hampden in the second.  Both were totally preventable.

I suppose we finished where our seeding said we would, but 2 games at Hampden and 5 goals conceded?  Criminal.

[Tartan blood]

1 hour ago, killiefaetheferry said:

Alternatively, if you stand off world class players or take risks that give them opportunities, don't be surprised if they then have the time and space to do their world class stuff. 

True. It was no surprise to me at all that Modric got that space at the edge of the box. I've said many times that marking up and closing men down outside the semi-circle is our achilles heel. I'm actually surprised it wasn't exploited more. 

We are also absymal at set pieces. Defending and attacking them. England pretty much got to a semi-final and a final because they practised set pieces so much.