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I'm of the opinion that an irreversible rot set in to the Scotland national team whenever we tried going the Irish route and capping players whom aren't Scottish on the grandparent rule.

 

That's another tournament we've fucked up again.

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I'm of the opinion that an irreversible rot set in to the Scotland national team whenever we tried going the Irish route and capping players whom aren't Scottish on the grandparent rule.

 

That's another tournament we've fucked up again.

 

Incredibly we could still qualify via the Nations League. A semi-final on March 26th next year, then a final. Semi opponent is likely to be someone like Bulgaria; in the very slim chance we win that, it's a winner-takes-all against someone like Norway or Serbia.

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Incredibly we could still qualify via the Nations League. A semi-final on March 26th next year, then a final. Semi opponent is likely to be someone like Bulgaria; in the very slim chance we win that, it's a winner-takes-all against someone like Norway or Serbia.

I was seriously considering going to Cyprus for the game next month, but I think I'll give it a miss and do the nation's league semi final instead.

 

There is something seriously toxic about Scotland that we are destined to achieve fuck-all. Looking back on it, the Andy Roxburgh and Craig Brown era were Scotland's glory years, what we'd give to be like that once more.

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Clarke's doing a horiffic job. It's easy to say now of course, but I never wanted him for the job. Ludicrous that we're pinning our hopes on a manager who's had a failure of a career outside of a good 18 months at Kilmarnock. It's the Levein appointment all over again.

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Incredibly we could still qualify via the Nations League. A semi-final on March 26th next year, then a final. Semi opponent is likely to be someone like Bulgaria; in the very slim chance we win that, it's a winner-takes-all against someone like Norway or Serbia.

 

Norway and Serbia would both absolutely hammer us. Serbia, a bit like Scotland, seem to be less than the sum of their parts, but we still don't come close in terms of tournament experience and individual quality.

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Clarke's doing a horiffic job. It's easy to say now of course, but I never wanted him for the job. Ludicrous that we're pinning our hopes on a manager who's had a failure of a career outside of a good 18 months at Kilmarnock. It's the Levein appointment all over again.

 

Indeed. I read a quote from Clarke yesterday in which he said "for a reason I have yet to determine, we stepped off the game and allowed Russia to dominate us and impose their style of play on us," in regards to the game at Hampden. I think it's a quote from after that game rather than recently, but regardless of timing it's not really an acceptable thing for a manager to be saying. It's his job to be able to identify what's going wrong in real-time, and to at least give the air of having done so after the game.

There is absolutely no way that Russia are that good, and no way that we are (or should be) so bad.

 

The entire framework (and context, if you will) of Scottish football needs to be changed. We so readily accept failure and mediocrity, we're never going to start winning games and qualifying for tournaments until we stop thinking getting beat off of average teams is acceptable. Admittedly giving it big licks in the press conferences isn't going to change the picture overnight, but if you look at Strachan's reign in particular, a huge part of our failure was down to the negativity and complacency of the manager.

 

We haven't beaten a good team since Croatia in 2013, yet there's no way in that time we've been so bad at every turn. We've been architects of our own downfall time and time again and continue to be so. We should not be close to as bad as the group table tells us we are.

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You would think we could certainly be set up to be harder to beat. It hard to imagine a Strachan team being as shambolic as this for instance.

 

Ultimately we're going to come up short at international level because we dont have a single semi-competant centre back. There's pundits genuinely asking why we cant be like NI and in the same breath hoping for the return of Souttar and McKenna. Evans and Cathcart are a better defensive pairing than any we've had in the last 20 years.

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You would think we could certainly be set up to be harder to beat. It hard to imagine a Strachan team being as shambolic as this for instance.

 

Ultimately we're going to come up short at international level because we dont have a single semi-competant centre back. There's pundits genuinely asking why we cant be like NI and in the same breath hoping for the return of Souttar and McKenna. Evans and Cathcart are a better defensive pairing than any we've had in the last 20 years.

 

That's true. About 500 apperances in the EPL between them. Add in Gareth McAuley, Aaron Hughes and Chris Baird and that's an extra 700. 

 

 

You're probably going back to the times of Hansen before we could get anywhere near that number.

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You would think we could certainly be set up to be harder to beat. It hard to imagine a Strachan team being as shambolic as this for instance.

 

Ultimately we're going to come up short at international level because we dont have a single semi-competant centre back. There's pundits genuinely asking why we cant be like NI and in the same breath hoping for the return of Souttar and McKenna. Evans and Cathcart are a better defensive pairing than any we've had in the last 20 years.

Strachan failed twice to qualify. This idea of his time being some sort of benchmark needs binned.

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Strachan done a good job on the whole, but it was the right time to split. The good thing about Strachan is that he was pragmatic with his tactics and realised there's very little chance of sitting in and being tight defensively when all you've got is big haddies like Martin and Hanley at CB.

 

A lesson Clarke is yet to learn.

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Of course Strachan should have been sacked. Sacking him was never going to solve all of the issues at the SFA or beyond, but how many headed/set-piece goals did we lose over his reign? Strachan's reign is NOT the benchmark. 

You address me by my proper title, you little bollocks! 


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Gordon Strachan went to Dublin and started Craig Forsyth ahead of Andy Robertson. 

 

I didn't say he was perfect. His reign when looked at in its entirety was more positive than negative. He took over the absolute shambles Levein left us in, re-united and harmonised a broken team spirit, moved us up 40 places in the world rankings and got us playing good football and actually challenging the bigger nations instead of the Steve Clarke cowardly capitulations.

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I didn't say he was perfect. His reign when looked at in its entirety was more positive than negative. He took over the absolute shambles Levein left us in, re-united and harmonised a broken team spirit, moved us up 40 places in the world rankings and got us playing good football and actually challenging the bigger nations instead of the Steve Clarke cowardly capitulations.

 

Aye, he started very well in fairness, but at a certain point (I'd pinpoint the moment we went ahead at Parkhead against Ireland...), it seemed like we all of a sudden stopped doing what we were doing well and regressed.

 

There was a clear change in tact on and off the pitch (as in, interviews), it was almost as if Strachan had decided "hold on a minute, this isn't on" and the wheels started coming off - again, the team selection in Dublin was abysmal and a harbinger of things to come. He preferred to play the "our players are all shite" card at every turn rather than accepting that we were actually quite good, ingraining the inferiority complex to the point that it seems impossible to shrug off. His last campaign was awful.

 

Either way, the bigger picture remains the same: we could immediately improve our lot by appointing a good manager outwith the same tired, failed Scottish pool, but in the long run the entire governing body needs dismantled and rebuilt. Even if you ignored the decades of failure, the shambolic pursuit of O'Neill that eventually led to McLeish being appointed was enough in itself to necessitate the latter. That was a fuckin disaster by any measure.

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The rain is the clear winner of this game.

For the first time in ages I was in no hurry to see the game finish and get to fuck out of there. If that was a Scottish League game it would be abandoned mid-way through the second half. Preferably before the Torbetts* start that 67 mins shite with their phones. Fucking cringeworthy that.

 

*edited to make Torbett plural instead of singular, as there is more than one of them. In every sense.

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