Scary Bear

Ideally we want a win, but avoiding defeat would do.

Is that Cammy Fraser modelling it?

It’ll be funny when you lose.

I see we’ve moved on from the ticket-bumping. Not sure this is an improvement though.

When I can be bothered filling in these dissertation requests, I do it from the perspective of a Stranraer fan. My general comments are usually around why the ferries left and when they are coming back. I’ve never completed one as a paranoid Celtic fan.

At least you hoors gave us a decent amount of tickets.

@Frankie S. I agree with your post, but towards the end of it, my heart sinks. If we are still needing to hunt round for someone with a Scottish granny and try and convince them to join up with Scotland, it just shows that Scotland still isn’t up to creating enough quality players. How long has it been the case that Scotland don’t produce enough decent players? If the Euros don’t go well, I fully expect to hear calls for change again. Change might take a while though.

It was a great move that’s turned into a shite move. Hopefully one of two things happen: 1. He gets a transfer; 2. Sean Dyche gets the sack. Personally I hope it’s 2 as I absolutely despise Sean Dyche and his dreadful anti-football. And his voice. And his stupid goatee beard. And the way he expresses himself. And everything about him.

Too much for poor Luigi to deal with.

From my point of view, I think I’d have liked to have seen us try and get more game time for Ferguson, to see if he can push on and become an important international player for us. He’s doing well in Serie A, but can he do it for Scotland? It would be nice to have seen him start a game in the position where Steve Clarke sees him playing. However, we have a lot of midfielders so I recognise it’s difficult to get them all enough game time. I think the main issue with the Scotland team is - and this may be a bit unkind but it’s how I see it - that we are basically 3 decent full backs - Hickey, Robertson, Tierney - and 3 decent midfielders - McGinn, McTominay, Gilmour. The full backs have all been out of sorts with injuries and the rest of the team while okay, are just okay. If most of those 6 players mentioned aren’t playing out their skins, then Scotland don’t play well.

It is a bit worrying. What development did we get from that game? We didn’t find a way to break down a fairly poor team. We picked players who aren’t getting a regular game for their clubs and/or who are out of form and we found out that isn’t a great idea. We found out our defence still isn’t great, our forwards aren’t doing the business and we rely heavily on our star turns in midfield. If it was me in charge at the SFA, I’d get the Think Tank warmed up because it won’t be long until things are falling to bits again and everyone is wailing and gnashing their teeth at the state of the game in Scotland. There’ll be calls for more Scottish boys to get a regular game in the Scottish Premiership, more foreign coaches from successful footballing countries, more indoor pitches. While the fans sit and fester in the rain. The circle of life for Scottish Football. Glorious.

One day we’ll sing in time with the music.

I’m not a big fan of friendlies but I’ll be watching on TV. I’ll make an exception for the game against Finland in June as that’ll be the send off to the Euros for the team.

Dundee polis bottling it too? Madness.

Yes. Then I look and see if there’s any info on how to register for an account to buy United tickets. It seems strange that United don’t want a capacity crowd for this game. You can only imagine the reasons behind that.

For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t think the reason we have a lack of quality strikers is to do with us not playing on ash or poor quality grass pitches. From October to March the team I am involved with train on artificial pitches. We also play friendlies on artificial pitches and there’s even indoor artificial pitches at Glenrothes which are excellent. If we had more indoor pitches that would be the way to go. Then March comes around, the season starts and we’re mainly back on grass pitches. Some of the teams play on outdoor artificial pitches but most are on grass. We’ve played 4 league games so far and they were all on grass. The grass hasn’t been cut yet so you can imagine what the pitches are like. None of the pitches have seen a roller. They are bobbly, uneven and sometimes on a slope. They aren’t great quality pitches but we get by. The teams in our league are from Kirkcaldy / Glenrothes right up to St Andrews. My personal thinking is that the more artificial pitches we have, the better. Especially indoor pitches. Having flat pitches is great, but you still have to put up with the Scottish weather. In terms of why we don’t produce great strikers, I think it is to do with the coaching ethos in Scotland, and probably a bit to do with the way the youth system is structured, with fun 4s, then 5s, then 7s, then 9s, then 11s. The team I coach are playing 7s. We do have one player who is an out and out centre forward, but he’s the exception. The rest are a mix, and if our league is anything to go by, I can see from watching the teams why we produce good midfielders and wing backs.

Maybe start with previous Scotland teams.

The budget didn’t stretch to that.

Dunno. How old is Falkirk’s pitch? It looks fairly new. Ours looked brilliant when it was first laid, but now it has that horrible shiny look on TV.

The pitch does look really good on TV.

I thought someone on here mentioned that Alba was getting an HD channel. Still blurovision by the looks of it. I switched to iplayer and that seems to be HD.

Is this the match thread for the Final?

Looking at the highlights, we played well for 70 minutes then fell to bits. I wonder what the outcome would have been if that Shankland effort had nestled in the top corner. Then the second goal goes in shortly after. Then the third and fourth go in and it’s another heavy defeat.

Those other teams from history are the benchmark. Some of those teams had much better players than we have now. Anyway, let’s come back to this at the end of June.

Give us some more tickets Luigi ya p***k.