France vs Scotland

[Shadwell Dog]

When you look at the standard of some of the players getting a gig just now it just doesn't make sense that Strachan avoids players like arfield and Rhodes that have proven themselves at levels far above the Scottish championship. Our standard of player is poor enough without Strachan picking the strongest players available.

I've always said if your playing a team that's better than you at least make them have to do something special to beat you. Last night we gave them 3 easy goals that any half arsed side could've scored.

[1320Lichtie]

This is my favourite argument, as if kids in Norway and Wales are all sitting there on strict diet regimes and jogging forty miles every morning. Its a load of old bollocks, as you'll find most kids involved at youth level don't sit eating fish suppers except on the very odd occasion.

Exactly

Don't think the fitness of the players is a problem tbh... It's more about their ability on the fucking ball.

[Scary Bear]

Same boys that will call Old Firm fans glory hunters now not supporting Scotland because they are shite without a hint of irony.

Not quite the same. Scotland haven't qualified for a tournament for 18 years. We are the new (old) Wales. Even when we were qualifying for tournaments we never got through the group stages. Where was the glory?

The players aren't getting any better, so we need a manager who can get more out of the players we have.

In saying that, a couple of end of season friendlies against two of the best teams in Europe is not how to gauge progress. My only criticism would be the choice of opposition. Why play two teams we know will beat us? No way to improve our ranking there.

[wellboy1991]

Sad fact is, im really starting to not give a f**k about the national team.

I've felt like that for a few years tbh. We are really uninspiring.

Nothing to do with not qualifying, just the style and poor quality on show. Negative football consistently.

[Scary Bear]

It's all relative. Stopping caring about your football team because they are doing so badly is the hallmark of a glory hunter tbh.

For me, a glory hunter is someone who only supports a team that's pretty much guaranteed to win trophies. See Old Firm fans and the various Scottish Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal fans.

The only 'glory' for Scotland is actually qualifying for a tournament. Giving up on Scotland after 18 fruitless years is not the same, even in relative terms.

[OFFS DUNDEE!!]

A lot of hysterical nonsense being spouted on here recently. We've just played two of the best side in Europe whilst our players are in holiday mode. What lessons were expected to be learned from these two games?

 

Strachan's the man for the job and will lead us in the qualifiers.

 

Oh, and for the posters who having given up watching Scotland? Just f**k off, you'll all be back when the serious stuff starts in Malta.

[RandomGuy.]

For me, a glory hunter is someone who only supports a team that's pretty much guaranteed to win trophies. See Old Firm fans and the various Scottish Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal fans.

The only 'glory' for Scotland is actually qualifying for a tournament. Giving up on Scotland after 18 fruitless years is not the same, even in relative terms.

 

His point is about folk stopping supporting Scotland because we're shite.

[OFFS DUNDEE!!]

His point is about folk stopping supporting Scotland because we're shite.

But they'll be back if we have a successful W/C campaign. Glory hunters!

[williemillersmoustache]

I'll go back to feeling positive about the national side when either Greer or Hanley gets put down. Not dropped, but actually turned into glue.

[LiviLion]

100% this.

I don't think this nation will ever learn. Just one wee example. In the local paper there was a feature on a local kids team tournament and the kids being taken out for a team lunch afterwards. Platefuls of chips and fast food crap in all three photos. Getting kids hooked on this shite early isn't helping our sporting performance.

If telling children they're only allowed to eat salad and berating them for eating anything else doesn't make them want a career in football, I don't know what will.

[capt_oats]

The Italy and France games were fairly daft fixtures to take on. Both elite international teams with Scotland in a position where their players are at the end of their season and very little incentive other than to turn up and fulfil the fixture. I didn't see the Italy game but that performance last night looked like a group who had been told to simply go out, get the game over and try and keep the score down. Had we put out an inexperienced side and got utterly reamed (even more than we did) then the only real takeaway from that would have been a group of young players whose international careers are scarred from the outset. The flip of that is of course, what did Strachan actually learn from putting out a team with Greer, Hanley, Maloney, Fletcher et al.

 

In the past two games he's given minutes to Kingsley, McKay, Robertson, Paterson, Burke however given how poor the performances of the team as a whole has been is it actually enough to say "OK we didn't even manage a shot on target but we played a handful of young players"?

 

I've no particularly strong feelings either way about Strachan as a manager however with his squad selections and general demeanour he's becoming increasingly less convincing that he's got a plan and he's really not helping himself with his public statements. There's much of what he's been saying just smacks of getting excuses in and basic deflection.

 

OK, he's being in honest in saying we don't have a world class player, however people are equally within their rights to point out that many (if not the majority of) international teams don't have genuinely world class players yet still manage to qualify. There's also his rhetoric about how we need our "big teams" playing in the top league, which depressingly echoes the likes of Doncaster and Regan and their completely archaic and wrong-headed interpretation of Scottish football. It's troubling that those running the game up here are still desperately clinging to the idea that everything will be fine as long as we've got Rangers and Celtic playing in the top league and that's going to be the answer to our problems.

 

Unless there's a massive sea-change with regards the mentality of those actually administering the game then we'll simply continue as is.

[kenny131]

I have been lucky enough to travel and live in many countries with my job. But the most striking thing I have witnessed is the amount of kids, youth and grassroots clubs taking part in football across the United Kingdom EXCEPT in Scotland. Wales almost every youth team my kid could have joined had 3 teams of that year group and it's the same in Northern Ireland.

They have 1st, 2nds, 3rds across the board to accommodate everyone who wants to play. Participation and the amount who do is key to having better players in the future. I stated before on here met a dinosaur who was part of the SFA when I was on a course and we got chatting about football. I raised the issue that not enough gets done. He asked for example I said about the huge participation in Wales N. IRELAND, and England. His response was it's not about how many kids play it's about finding the best 1s. My jaw was on the floor.

[Deeboy]

But they'll be back if we have a successful W/C campaign. Glory hunters!

This is it.

Glory is seen as qualifying now.

[Falcor Roar]

Same boys that will call Old Firm fans glory hunters now not supporting Scotland because they are shite without a hint of irony.

 

It's not really the same though. Most people will pick up and drop interest in international football depending on the mood. Your club side is your club side, much more personal and much more important. 

[Falcor Roar]

I have been lucky enough to travel and live in many countries with my job. But the most striking thing I have witnessed is the amount of kids, youth and grassroots clubs taking part in football across the United Kingdom EXCEPT in Scotland. Wales almost every youth team my kid could have joined had 3 teams of that year group and it's the same in Northern Ireland. They have 1st, 2nds, 3rds across the board to accommodate everyone who wants to play. Participation and the amount who do is key to having better players in the future. I stated before on here met a dinosaur who was part of the SFA when I was on a course and we got chatting about football. I raised the issue that not enough gets done. He asked for example I said about the huge participation in Wales N. IRELAND, and England. His response was it's not about how many kids play it's about finding the best 1s. My jaw was on the floor.

 

That seems to tally with Brian MClair's findings that there are far too many kids in the academy setup, comparable to other countries who perform well.

 

Depends on the context of what you're meaning of course. If you mean in general terms then both the amount of kids and finding the best is vital.

[Only one David Marsh]

We are running around trying to find solutions to our own problems we were told to follow the Dutch example of bringing players through then it was following the German version now we are looking at Icelands system. The fairly obvious problem is teams especially in the premiership don't give youngsters the opportunity to play first team football because they are scared of being relegated and losing out on the old firm cash cow,then we have a prehistoric sfa/SPFL that ignore the fans demand for changing the league structure. Our problems are so deep routed I personally don't see anything improving until we see a proper revolution in Scottish football we are just happy to plod along with the status quo.

[Dunning1874]

It's actually mental. I have yet to see someone give a reasonable alternative to the players that are chosen and yet it's a Largs mafia conspiracy and old firm bias that's to blame

 

I generally agree with this point - far too many people castigate Scotland managers for picking Alan Hutton while refusing to suggest an alternative and have done for years. When pressed to name the alternative to Hutton, and indeed to name the alternatives to Maloney/Morrison/Martin/Hanley, they can't name one and just make a general point about youngsters, failing to understand that chucking youngsters in randomly isn't actually a good way to introduce them to the national set up.

 

The exception with these two friendlies in mind is Barrie McKay, who should be nowhere a near a Scotland squad. Had he had the season he's just had for Rangers while playing for Falkirk or Raith Strachan probably wouldn't know he is never mind think he was worthy of a Scotland cap, because being good for Falkirk & Raith only proves you're a good Championship player. Yet that's all that being good for Rangers last season proves.

 

I'm not saying any of them are good enough for Scotland and indeed calling some of them up would get a manager hounded and mocked for calling up non-entities, but literally every winger/wide midfielder who has proven themselves to be a decent top flight player should be ahead of McKay, who has proven himself to be a great Championship player but is completely unproven in the Premiership and could easily turn out to be shite at that level, as many great Championship players have. He could go on to be a great Premiership player and if he does that he should then be looked at for Scotland, but he could flop as badly as a great Championship player like John Baird has in the top flight. So yes, players like Gary Mackay-Steven, Jamie Walker, Sam Nicholson, Ryan Fraser, none of whom should be in the Scotland squad themselves, should all be miles ahead of McKay in the pecking order.

 

What Dundee youngsters or Premiership youngsters should definitely be getting a game over him then?

Gareth Bale was a Spurs flip at one point. Your point about Morton is completely irrelevant.

 

When Gareth Bale couldn't get a game for Spurs, even when he was a youngster at Southampton, he was still the best left back Wales had. The number of wingers we have better than McKay runs into double figures.

 

I am acutely aware that we have not a great deal of promiing young players coming through, but the ones that are (Gauld, Tierney, McGinn etc) need to be bedded in rather than giving them a couple of minutes here and there.  We might take a couple of beatings along the way, but so did Belgium and the likes.

 

Thing is, Belgium didn't just pick their best youngsters and put them in for the sake of giving youngsters experience; the likes of Hazard and De Bruyne were regulars at 20 because they were already better than all the alternatives in their position at 20. You can't say the same for Gauld, McGinn and Tierney. The one player for us who was unquestionably our best in their position that young was Robertson, and it's right to criticise Strachan for picking Whittaker & Mulgrew ahead of him, but you can't say the same for the likes of Galuld and McGinn.

 

 

I don't think all is lost. New campaigns can change things pretty quickly and I'll be hoping that strachan and the boys can turn things around and prove people wrong.

 

That I do agree with. While our failure to make the playoffs last time was Strachan's fault, ultimately we failed because he made a mess of one game rather than a mess of the entire campaign. This isn't a Levein scenario where everyone with a brain can see that the next campaign is guaranteed to go horribly wrong if he's in charge. While the second half of the last campaign gives little reason for confidence going into this, it's not a case of failure being inevitable. We took 4 points from Ireland & 2 from Poland, not letting either side gain over us on head to heads: we have to believe we can do the same again with Slovakia/Slovenia and take 6 points from Lithuania.

[John Lambies Doos]

We as a country accept failure. The SFA would be booted to fuk in some other countries. They have done fuk all yet they get their big salaries, fancy travel and no doubt bonus..

[effeffsee_the2nd]

. We took 4 points from Ireland & 2 from Poland, not letting either side gain over us on head to heads: we have to believe we can do the same again with Slovakia/Slovenia and take 6 points from Lithuania.

 

in that case we'l be lucky to get 3rd place unless England or Slovakia implode like Greece & Holland did . if the best we can hope for is 4 points against Slovenia then you can forget the world cup already

[G-MAN]

So whats happened since the 1st half in Dublin onwards ?

Its the same players with the same abilities but have rapidly declined from that game in Ireland to an utter embarrassment last night (give or take a small spell in the Poland game).

Why after a bit of positivity, is Strachan now slating the squad, taking any confidence they may have had and making the players believe they are shite before a game even starts ?