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Scotland Vs Belgium/albania


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I agree but arguably he is still our best striker - Naismith has hardly been prolific and/or a stand-out in a Scotland strip. Don't get me wrong Griffiths is a complete daftie who plays for a horrible club but over the years the Scotland team has had its fair share of ****. Not sure a low IQ or over-sized ego should debar any player from being in the squad.

 

 

 

 

You hear this all the time, but I've never really seen anything that justifies it. In almost every game he's played his performances have been average at best in every area: he doesn't bring the rest of the team into the game, he doesn't link up very well, not particularly great at holding the ball up and most crucially his decision making and finishing have been poor. The amount of times he does the wrong thing in dangerous areas isn't really acceptable for somebody who has ideas of being unstoppable. 

 

There's a bit of a myth that's built up around Griffiths that's totally at odds with anything he's done in a Scotland shirt. 2 goals from open play in 19 caps (one of which was the ball coming back of the post and hitting off of him against Malta) speaks for itself, but the overall performances have barely hit mediocre. There's moments, for sure, such as the turn and pass that led to the winner against Slovakia but there's just not enough of them.

 

Fact of the matter is he's had more than enough chances and hasn't done anything to prove he deserves to be an automatic. If other players are preferred then he can't blame anyone else.

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I'd have had Armstrong in for McDonald but otherwise it's the right team. 

 

Predictably, the Glasgow victims are now whinging about Forrest not playing. He's another one in the same vein as Griffiths, he's been rotten in nearly every appearance for Scotland so he can't complain. We'd need to reshuffle the entire team to accommodate him and a) he hasn't earned that in previous caps and B) he's not close to good enough to be worth doing it for. If you had a Bale-esque figure emerging then by all means shape the team to suit him, but James fuckin Forrest? No chance.

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With all due respect to St. Johnstone just because Forrest had the game of his life against them doesn't mean he should start.

 

Armstrong isn't getting enough minutes to come into the team either, imo.

 

But it's a good problem to have, selection dilemma like this.

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Pretty ****in grim, that.

 

We started well enough and probably deserved to go ahead, and even in the run-up to half time we were just about holding our own. Thought we'd have made a tactical change at half-time and even at the time thought the enforced like-for-like change of Mulgrew for McKenna might be a problem as you'd be reluctant to be making another change to quickly. Even at that though, that first 15/20 minutes of the second half were a distaster, at the very least Naismith could have been brought over on to the right side of the midfield to tighten up but as it was it was an onslaught down that side.

 

I've never been convinced by O'Donnell and he was well and truly shown up there, although in his slight defence he was left brutally exposed. McDonald is dreadful and his general pishness caused problems all around him, bizarre that he was preferred to Armstrong and Callum McGregor...I just dunno. Is he good? Sometimes he looks alright, other times he just doesn't seem to offer much at all. McGinn was poor, although like O'Donnell he was badly exposed by the way people were able to get behind him down the wing. Forrest, incidentally, done hee-haw to justify the hype when he came on and even managed a few Tiffoney-esque jogs, and McBurnie was ****in annoying the way he just kept strolling back on side. Move ya dick, yer just on.

 

Nobody apart from McGregor in goal played well enough to be worth remarking on.

 

On the slight plus side, when we did get the ball in front of their defence there were chances to be had even if we didn't particular make them. I wouldn't be worried about them at Hampden. 

 

As s***e as it was though, I think there's a danger of over-egging it. I'm still of the view that we're a team very much in a transition phase with a lot of young, inexperienced players and that the Nations League is going to be a real learning curve for the group, so with that in mind I think there's fairly obvious lessons to be learned from it as galling and chaotic as it was. We're perfectly capable of winning the next two games and if we do we win the league, so there's no point getting too overwrought about it. 

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Is there any particular reason Darren Fletcher isn't getting a look in btw? I haven't saw anything of him for Stoke, but if he's playing regularly then surely he's got a role to play.

He's been done for 4 years. Absolutely not.

 

The designated one paced carthourse role is being filled by McDonald

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That puts the writing on the wall for McLeish already, frankly.

 

It's easy to talk about Scotland losing games like this regularly, Scotland fans having a misplaced sense of our place in the world and so on, but even if you accept arguments like that this is still an utter humiliation. It sits comfortably among the worst Scotland results of all time - of course, McLeish presided over one of the few ahead of tonight in that embarrassing list.

 

This can be forgotten if qualification is delivered one way or another; if not a full on show trial Stalinist purge outing every grubby little Malkkky Mackkkay involved detail in his appointment is the only resolution.

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Oh Lord, Brian Wake

 

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That puts the writing on the wall for McLeish already, frankly.

 

It's easy to talk about Scotland losing games like this regularly, Scotland fans having a misplaced sense of our place in the world and so on, but even if you accept arguments like that this is still an utter humiliation. It sits comfortably among the worst Scotland results of all time - of course, McLeish presided over one of the few ahead of tonight in that embarrassing list.

 

This can be forgotten if qualification is delivered one way or another; if not a full on show trial Stalinist purge outing every grubby little Malkkky Mackkkay involved detail in his appointment is the only resolution.

 

It's not even one of the worst results of the last decade. In that time we have:

 
* Lost 2-0 at home to pre-AFC Australia
* Drawn 2-2 with the Faroes in Toftir (the same day we lost 3-2 to St. Mirren at home in the League Cup after being 2-0 up, Mark Yardley scoring the winner in ET)
* Lost 1-0 in Lithuania
* Drawn 1-1 with New Zealand, long before they qualified for the World Cup of 2010
* Lost 1-0 at home to Belarus, when they were whipping boys
* Lost 3-0 to Wales back when they were gubbins
 
This is all in the last 10 years, remember. And we could very nearly have added a 1-1 with Liechtenstein to that list. Go back even further and we have defeats to Turkey in 1960 (long before they were anything other than Malta-esque also-rans in UEFA), endless losses to Northern Ireland, a 0-0 draw with Luxembourg in 1987 in a competitive game, and don't forget 1-1 with Iran in Cordoba.

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It's not even one of the worst results of the last decade. In that time we have:

 

* Lost 2-0 at home to pre-AFC Australia

* Drawn 2-2 with the Faroes in Toftir (the same day we lost 3-2 to St. Mirren at home in the League Cup after being 2-0 up, Mark Yardley scoring the winner in ET)

* Lost 1-0 in Lithuania

* Drawn 1-1 with New Zealand, long before they qualified for the World Cup of 2010

* Lost 1-0 at home to Belarus, when they were whipping boys

* Lost 3-0 to Wales back when they were gubbins

 

This is all in the last 10 years, remember. And we could very nearly have added a 1-1 with Liechtenstein to that list. Go back even further and we have defeats to Turkey in 1960 (long before they were anything other than Malta-esque also-rans in UEFA), endless losses to Northern Ireland, a 0-0 draw with Luxembourg in 1987 in a competitive game, and don't forget 1-1 with Iran in Cordoba.

You’re omitting a 0-0 draw in Kaunas in Levein’s infamous 4-6-0 campaign. That game was often overlooked because of the horrendous performance in Prague a month or so later, but was probably the worst I can remember seeing from countless away trips. I’ll sober up before ranking tonight’s abomination.

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You’re omitting a 0-0 draw in Kaunas in Levein’s infamous 4-6-0 campaign. That game was often overlooked because of the horrendous performance in Prague a month or so later, but was probably the worst I can remember seeing from countless away trips. I’ll sober up before ranking tonight’s abomination.

 

Yep, I did forget all about that, and the 4-6-0 game only didn't get mentioned because although it was a disgusting performance, as a result it wasn't unexpected.

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