That game should never, ever have been arranged to be played at that time of day and at this time of year. That's just given them a huge advantage. As for the first half, just how negative can you be when you are a goal behind after 5 minutes? They waited 60 minutes to try and change things and only after Commons and Maloney came on did they pose any sort of threat. And even then they never really looked like scoring. Gutted for the supporters who made the trip. A harder game coming up on wednesday. Another defeat and it's over before it's begun. It's to be hoped the manager has learned from this shambolic display.

Piss poor preperation, piss poor starting eleven, piss poor tactics, piss poor reaction to the way the match developed.

Don't let this happen again George.

Never play hartley again.This is how they should of lined up today

Gordon

Naysmith
Caldwell
Mcmanus

Commons
Brown
Fletcher
Maloney

Mcfadden

Boyd
Miller

Aye, the biggest lesson is that Burley isn't good enough.

I thought they looked more fucked than we did with about twenty minutes to go.

Thats because we did f**k all in the first 70!!

It's great how everyone's the expert after the game.

The starting XI was as strong as we could have hoped for, we just fúcked it up, with a big dose of help from the awful officials.

End of.

There's no point going over who you think SHOULD have started....would it really have made that much of a difference?....and if so, why are you sitting at a keyboard instead of going for your UEFA Pro licence?

Get a fucking grip.

Fucken right

We should learn that there's no point relying on officials to call a game right, you need to go out as if you're 1-0 down already. We didn't.

If we'd played that team, we'd have lost about 8-2.

That's certainly the lesson I've taken from it.

A pitiful display, exceeded only by his post match interview.
Blaming officials for that defeat is laughable.

At least we would of scored.

He didn't want to do the Berti thing and blame players, pissing them off and losing important players for the team.

That's ok, when Macedonia come here it will be dark, freezing and pishing doon, advantage Scotland.

isn't it always like that?

dissapointing result
Hopefully we can pick up 3 points against iceland, was really hoping for atleast 4 points out of theese 2 games, look like itl just need to be 3 hopefully

I didn't mean that he blamed the ref in particular, although I can see that it looked as if that's exactly what I was saying.

I was more critical of the posters on here who are saying such things.

The Burley comments I found stunning were the ones involving the words "excellent" and "outstanding" in reference to what we all watched from Scotland this afternoon.

Still cross about it.

The hard fact is that in none of Burley's games have we looked remotely like winning. We havent been the best team in any of those games, and in fact we havent really looked that much of a goal threat. Its sad to say but even with the defensive formations that McLeish and Smith lined up with, we looked far more threatening and actually scored a very respectable number of goals. Whilst indeed those of us at the keyboard are not likely to pass the UEFA pro licence, it is also true to say that you dont need to be a time served plumber to see when pipe is leaking.
Anything less than 3 points against Iceland and the campaign will be nothing more than warm up games for the Euros campaign.

Playing 4-4-2 with no wide players against 4-3-3 is a schoolboy error.
Burley is clueless.

Teams used to fear playing us years ago because we played a particular kind of football - fast and hard. Now we seem to be trying to play like some kind of peely-wally Italy - constantly playing the ball along the back four and allowing the opposition to regroup.

How many times today did a pass barely reach the man it was intended for because there simply wasn't enough pace on it? How many times did the ball reach a player in a wide position only for him to stop the ball, himself and any momentum we may have been building?

Now I'm not for 1 second advocating a return to the days of humping the ball into the penalty box and hoping for the best but we really need to remember who we are rather than try to play like somebody we're not.

Deflation.

Didn't agree with Burley's tactical layout myself. Personally, I would have gone for a 4-5-1 form and set-up shop to be fairly stuffy ourselves with counter-play being the road to goal if any. Typically speaking, it's what we're best at.

Injuries considered I don't think the 4-4-2 was an astute choice. I would never be completely comfortable with it minus Ferguson (amongst others) and without great pace/energy at the back or in the midfield it seemed inevitable that we would struggle. The midfield men were in two minds about joining attacks; clearly the fear of having toil backward outweighed any want to commit forward. This isn't to place blame on them however as they can only perform within their own competence, the sort of exertion required to successfully implement what Burley had in mind lay out with the span of their skill.

As such, there was no real service to the front two. The midfield was unable to act as a link layer without the afore mentioned pace/energy* and the patently off-boil Kenny Miller didn't help our cause either. Ordinarily his offer of an out ball, his running in the channels, his hold up play gives us another option but he didn't do it at all this afternoon. Macedonia were narrow and it's perhaps true that this probably hampered Miller moreover but there were large spells throughout the game where he simply didn't do the work at all. Be it through the heat or a conflict in style with McFadden, In my opinion somewhere between the two, he just didn't look up to it.

All of the above accounted for though, we weren't that far away from grasping the point(s) which we would have liked. The Macedonians' goal was a result of an individual error on the part of Scott Brown. You could argue Hartley's implication I suppose. Brown naively followed the decoy to open up the wall and bing, bang, bong. We're in a compromised position, at a deficit with only minutes gone. McFadden should have been awarded a penalty in the later stages and I suspect had Commons, Maloney & Boyd been introduced earlier we would have got one goal back at least. The former two's pace and trickery troubled Macedonia and in turn brought about the width which at last opened up the tight opposition. (Tying in with what I've said about the starting four's lack of energy/pace etc.)

I don't know how we'll take three points off of Iceland but I would guess it's going to be a must.

I agree with most of the points you have made. one point I dissagree with is blaming Scott Brown for the goal. Big Mick should not be diving into tackles around the box albeit on this occassion it was not a foul he still dived in. Next thing no one followed up
to clear the rebound - 3 of their players did so what happened to our guy's?.Very poor all round. Surely we cant play as bad again!!

Maybe we should start concentrating and playing from minute one instead of minute 45.

The hot weather was the same for both teams. All macedonian starters play abroad so its not like they are used to 35 degree weather. Plus I am sure we will not like your weather when we come back. Too bad the stadium was beeing renovated otherwise it would have been a nice night game. But I think that the TV rights owner also moved the game even futher up to ensure good scheduling time for the game.

heads up, you play a strong, physical game and you can play well against Netherlands and Iceland.

playing a 4-5-1 wouldnt of made a difference it hasnt any other time we have played at away, apart from the france game. we got beat in Ukraine, Italy, Georgia trying to play a 4-5-1.

Burleys tactics were spot on it would have been impossible to come out in the first 45 and attack like we did in the second half. it wasnt a great performance but we dint deserve to loose, and had two penaltys denied so looking at it that way, we had a game stolen from us again.

If we lose on Wednesday we're effectively out of it after just 4 days

At least Norway and Iceland cancelled each other out yesterday, probably the best result for us

Playing Robson, Brown, Hartley, and Fletcher, 4 typically central midfielders who don't provide width against a 3-4-3 is pretty poor tactically. That team deserved to lose the game, and by more than 1-0.

Burley saying Scotland were 'outstanding' just adds the cherry on top of that performance. No doubt he thought landing in Macedonia less than 24 hours before kick off, and sleeping at a hotel in the city centre of Skopje was 'a magnificent idea' as well.

I was staggered that they didn't travel on Monday or Tuesday instead of running around in the pissing rain in Dumbarton

They paid for it in the end. Even sleeping at a hotel in the middle of the city centre when the locals would be creating havoc isn't smart.

Amateur stuff from the blazers in charge.

Couldnt agree more. One of the things Roxburgh and Brown always made sure of was they we were professionally prepared for games. I know lots of fans look on both with disdain since they were guilty of being both articulate but also reaslitic about the tactics we needed to get to tourneys, but they would never have had us rock up 24 hrs before hand hoping that we would magically adapt to the heat.

What pish. You can't 'adapt' to heat in 4 days. They decided on the advice of medical staff that travelling a day before would be best.

Sorry but's that's garbage. Robson's played wide plenty of times in his career and pretty much all of Brown's caps have been wide right.

So why was there no width at all against Macedonia until Commons, and Maloney came on?

Robson, and Brown in particular are crap out wide.

Scotland fans are starting to annoy me.

Before we had even played Macedonia people were on Burley's back. "Not good enough" blah blah blah.

To be honest, I'm undecided. But i'll give him time. I was the same with McLeish, then we know what he done.

Granted we played shite in that game, but honestly, who expected us to win it? Shite opening fixture, If i remember correctly Macedonia haven't lost a home game in 15. Okay, they got the goal from a shitey free kick.. But we're Scottish, we see shite refs every week so it shouldn't bother us too much.

If it wasn't for the free kick the game would have finished 0-0 ( Neither of us looked like scoring )and that would have been a cracking result. But no doubt some idiots still expect us win by 3 or 4 goals.

In the toilet at half time in the pub "How d'ye hink wur getnoan eh day lads?" Said some scummy c**t. "We're playing shite, but i don't expect us to win anyway" i replied. "Aye. Fat wis McGregur in gowls heeda pure saved aht".

Gordon did fucking save the free kick, a fucking good save too. The problem wasn't Gordon, it was the fact our defence didn't really give a shite about the 3 Macedonians running in for the rebound. I think we only had McManus trying to stop it, and he tried to hack it off the line.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say the pubs will be dead for the game on wednesday. Good. The sooner we rid ourselves of these pathetic hangers on the better. Let them come back with a few games to go when it looks like we might be able to make it.