craigkillie

Correctly voting against continuing the protectionism of that rule did not help Motherwell in any way - indeed it made their chances of future relegation higher.

We also had 4 goalkeepers in the last squad, but we won't be taking 4 to Germany with us. I think that was about avoiding having to "drop" someone prematurely if there ended up being injuries anyway. The last Euros squad only had 10 defenders in it out of 26 players, albeit McTominay also played centre-back at the tournament. There were 4 full-backs and 6 centre-backs (including Tierney). Even if you add an extra centre-back to account for McTominay, that's only taking you to 11. Clarke is loyal to his core group of players, but there has always been a cut-off point for that loyalty, and players have eventually been dropped, including guys like Palmer being binned for the last tournament when he could obviously easily have been taken ahead of someone like Turnbull who was a new face to the squad.

Russell scored 16 goals in MLS in the 2021 season, but all of them were from July onwards. Prior to the Euros squad being announced he hadn't scored a goal in 8 months (albeit much of this was the close season and I think he may have been injured right at the start of the season).

I don't think we need 12 defenders in the squad for 5 places.

The semi-automated offside being used in UEFA competitions and due to be introduced in England next season is basically this - as far as I'm aware it requires a model to predict the position of players in between frames of the camera.

Because they only measure to the nearest hundredth or thousandth of a second and don't have the precision to measure smaller times/distances.

Someone asked a question, I gave them an answer and you disagreed with me.

It's still optional, the competition rules can vary from it if they wish, it's just "up to a maximum of five". In terms of the squad size, I don't see it as a bad thing for us, it definitely gives Clarke some more options and also the possibility of giving our injured guys a bit more of a chance.

Thought he was generally a decent player for us in what was not the best era of Scotland teams.

There is no club north, south, east, west or in Dundee that I don't have a grievance against, that's surely how football works.

I would argue it is mathematically impossible for two objects in continuous space to be absolutely in line with each other. They might be in the same place to the nearest centimetre, or to the nearest millimetre, or even to the nearest 100th of a millimetre, but if you continue to increase the precision you will always be able to separate them. https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3328594/why-is-the-px-x-0-when-x-is-continuous

They probably won't be because the new TV deal will kick in next season and Sky can pick more games per season. The 4 games per stadium deal imposed by the clubs in the current deal is the main reason those Edinburgh derbies weren't shown.

There is no such thing as level, there will always be one player slightly further forward than the other. The offside law is the exact same whether there is VAR or not, the only difference is the level of precision to which a decision can be analysed.

Fraser was in the last Euros squad and continued to be picked after that, so I think a lot of the "bad egg" stuff is overblown. He definitely seems to have attitude issues but I don't think they'd be to the extent that he'd be completely ruled out. I would be astonished if Calvin Ramsay has even the tiniest chance of being involved, he can barely even get in matchday squads at English League 1 level. Likewise, I don't see any way he would possibly even consider Doig or Taylor as right wing-backs in this system, they have absolutely none of the requisite abilities to be able to play that role, both are basic one-footed left-backs. Taylor played a handful of times at right-back for Killie (not under Clarke) in his first season after breaking through, and maybe a couple of times in central midfield in Clarke's early games in charge, but has never played anywhere other than LB/LWB for club or country in the last 6 years. As far as I'm aware, Doig hasn't ever played any position other than LB/LWB in his career - I could possibly see a future for him in a Tierney-style centre-back role. If we were using a makeshift RWB in an emergency situation I think it would be Ryan Jack or possibly even Stuart Armstrong. I don't think we're anywhere near O'Donnell being in the squad though, his time has passed. If it's not Ralston it will be McCrorie, I can't see anyone else being in consideration at this stage. Johnston hasn't played nearly enough football to be thinking about.

I saw this on the Sky Sports website (I think), but it looked like it was just a copy and paste job from the England squad information and not necessarily actually the case.

He was aye, that's why it's particularly brilliant to see them failing to get out of the Highland League yet again, even if it's not the same chairman any more.

What was the point in paying that expensive German consultancy firm all that money then, if their big answer was to appoint a guy you already knew about and considered. Almost as though they saw Cormack coming a mile off.

They haven't really actively avoided it, there's a not insignificant chance that it could be decided on that date.

This is a bit of a difficult question to answer since there were two major periods of reconstruction in Scottish football, first in 1975 to go from two divisions to three, and then in 1994 to go from three divisions to four. Some teams were in the old second tier (of two) for large periods without ever making the top flight, but that's quite different to being in the current second tier without going up or down.

Buckie's title win being partly down to beating a team 13-1 on aggregate in the final week of the season isn't really doing that argument very much good. That same team subsequently losing 11-0 on the final way on their way to conceding over 150 goals is also not a particularly good argument for this being a sensible league structure.

He's had a good season on the whole, just had a couple of high profile stinkers recently. Which is sort of standard for him, 8/10 about 80% of the time, 2/10 the other 20%. Not ideal for a centre-back.

Rangers have been awful but Hearts not taking advantage at all.

If Turnbull had gone down south and been remotely decent at Cardiff he'd be right in this conversation, but he appears to have done nothing since he got there.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how VAR works. Referees are not allowed to do this.

Surely it's the Highland League's "turn" to get the extra team in the League Cup anyway? And that will work out nicely for the cartel since they can do their pals at Brechin a favour.