Strikers coming through

[Gordopolis]

10 hours ago, troopio said:

Fully Agree.

I do not normally agree with likes of Bill Leckie but in The S** today he made some good points on this situation.

I think the issue is we have become blinded by what the Elite Level of the game has created, small, technically gifted players with a low centre of gravity etc etc. Do not get me wrong these players are great but half the reason Haaland stands out so much, apart from being an Alien, is that he is a throwback to a type of Striker that was Ten a penny back in the day. in the 70s, 80s, early 90s, big tall, physical strikers who could stick the ball in the net. Now it is all false 9s, Wingers who cut inside and the like. 

We need to take what is unique about our game and use it to our advantage instead of trying to be like other nations. 

Aye, that Doak is too wee

[Satoshi]

12 hours ago, troopio said:

It is a huge concern isnt it? I fear we are going backwards again, barely any good players coming through in Key positions and if they do they sign for CLubs that they sit on the bench for 9 times out of 10.

Our first choice striker scored a crucial goal in the league last week and comes into the international break full of confidence.

Two of our most exciting young players are attackers in Doak and Wilson.

Haaland would have thrived in Scottish football as he did in Norway (they are a similar sized nation and we have a far better record in international football than they do).

You can search for negatives if you like but things really aren't that bad.

[Ewanandmoreagain]

14 hours ago, Gordopolis said:

Aye, that Doak is too wee

Injured Stewart is fairly tall isn't he ?

[PrestersKTID]

First time in a long time we have a squad that's capable of scoring goals. The midfielders chipping in makes such a difference. Dykes and adams don't need to be 20 goal players, they offer plenty to the team. This just from the current and recent crop of players:

Mcginn 16

Dykes 8

Adams 5

Christie 5

Mcsauce 5

Armstrong 4

Fraser 4

Robertson 3

Hendry 3

Mcgregor 2

Hanley 2

Patterson, Tierney, Mclean, Shankland, Ralston, Mckenna, Souttar 1

[BB_Bino]

17 year old Striker Eseosa Sule has just signed his first pro contract at West Brom. There’s been a lot written about him in the academy section of the programmes over the past 6 months, having had a good season with the Under 18’s and Carlos Corberan and the academy staff have high hopes for him so have to the Premier League 2 Development Squad.
 

I didn’t realise he was Scottish until the news of his new contract broke on Friday.

[TheScarf]

That Evan Ferguson absolutely banging in the goals for a Brighton team on the up.  There’s talk of United bidding for him this summer.
 

How the fuck do these smaller nations than us do it? Where are they finding these players? 

[Barry Ferguson's Hat]

We're just too wee, too poor and too stupid.

[RobbieD]

9 hours ago, TheScarf said:

That Evan Ferguson absolutely banging in the goals for a Brighton team on the up.  There’s talk of United bidding for him this summer.
 

How the f**k do these smaller nations than us do it? Where are they finding these players? 

I refuse to accept Scotland doesn’t have them.

Other nations have clubs who actually give youngsters a game. SPFL clubs sell their young players at the first sign of a pound note. The majority are too scared to try young players from their youth teams. There is going to have to come a time when clubs are forced to play a certain amount of Scottish players. 

[Satoshi]

11 hours ago, TheScarf said:

That Evan Ferguson absolutely banging in the goals for a Brighton team on the up.  There’s talk of United bidding for him this summer.
 

How the f**k do these smaller nations than us do it? Where are they finding these players? 

Not sure if serious.

This Scotland team pisses all over Ireland from a great height.

Just like we have been doing for 95% of our respective footballing histories. 

[Theroadlesstravelled]

I truly believe Scotland can or has produced someone like Harry Kane.

But some Billy Stark, dinosaur SFA youth coach put him at centre half because he's 6ft 2in, has no pace but can launch an accurate 70 yard pass.

[TheScarf]

5 hours ago, Satoshi said:

Not sure if serious.

This Scotland team pisses all over Ireland from a great height.

Just like we have been doing for 95% of our respective footballing histories. 

We’ve obviously got a better squad than them and I’d have thought it was clear to anyone with a functioning brain that wasn’t the point I was making. Ferguson is 18 and would clearly be our starting number 9 if he was Scottish.  

[ahemps]

9 hours ago, Satoshi said:

Not sure if serious.

This Scotland team pisses all over Ireland from a great height.

Just like we have been doing for 95% of our respective footballing histories. 

Maybe before the 80's but I don't think since the mid 80's we have. They have got out of their world cup group 3 times, getting to the quarter finals in 1990 and have also got out their groups at the Euros. Since the 80's they have a far better record than us, that is going on 40yrs.

[Satoshi]

1 hour ago, ahemps said:

Maybe before the 80's but I don't think since the mid 80's we have. They have got out of their world cup group 3 times, getting to the quarter finals in 1990 and have also got out their groups at the Euros. Since the 80's they have a far better record than us, that is going on 40yrs.

It's still an anomaly given our long footballing histories.

And currently there is no doubt we are far better than them.

Our domestic game has always been far better. They don't really produce any players, it's all outsourced to England and their best sides for most of those 40 years were made up of non Irish players.

They are pretty much the last nation on earth we should be learning player development from.

[ArabFC]

12 hours ago, RobbieD said:

I refuse to accept Scotland doesn’t have them.

Other nations have clubs who actually give youngsters a game. SPFL clubs sell their young players at the first sign of a pound note. The majority are too scared to try young players from their youth teams. There is going to have to come a time when clubs are forced to play a certain amount of Scottish players. 

You're talking about an Irish kid sold by his club to Brighton after 4 games.

Kids get a game if they're good enough. This kid is. Ours, not so much.

[Donathan]

I’m at the age now where most processional footballers are my age plus or minus a few years and I remember when I was growing up in Glasgow in the early 2000s, there was a big emphasis at the youth level on developing good technical players. We tended to focus mainly on smaller sided games using small footballs that didn’t bounce, heavy emphasis on getting the ball on the ground and passing football.

 

I think that’s manifested into a generation of Scotland talent that is completely inundated with full backs and central midfielders and short on goal scoring centre forwards.

 

As much as I’d love us to have a Mitrovic or a Schick let alone a Haaland, I do think the “technical players first” approach has paid dividends for us. There’s plenty of examples of teams who have had a lot of success by spreading the goals around the team with a lot of input from their attacking midfielders rather than having a central figure responsible for putting the ball in the net. Look at Spain in 2012 or France in 2018 or this year’s Arsenal side, all of them really spread the goals around.

 

I would love us to find a true all out CF but I think Adams and Dykes are good enough for now. 

[ahemps]

 

12 hours ago, RobbieD said:

I refuse to accept Scotland doesn’t have them.

Other nations have clubs who actually give youngsters a game. SPFL clubs sell their young players at the first sign of a pound note. The majority are too scared to try young players from their youth teams. There is going to have to come a time when clubs are forced to play a certain amount of Scottish players. 

What do you suggest we do about that? Celtic and Rangers are losing players at 15 and 16 to Aston Villa, Liverpool, Chelsea etc. 

When these types of clubs are looking at players from Aberdeen, Killie and Dundee Utd how can these youngsters be kept up here? 

The clubs often don't have much choice depending on the contracts the players are on.

I know in an ideal world you can look at Robertson or Hickey to suggest they go and play and develop and these big opportunities will come again but they are the exception. If a an opportunity comes along to join a bigger club very few will ever turn that down as they may not get another chance.

[albagubrath]

The reality is we did absolutely nothing in terms of real structural player development as a nation until around 2010-2012, largely relying on luck to lead to developing both a baseload of talent as well as generational talents. That is to take nothing away from individuals all across the game in this country who have done wonderful things, this is about the lack of concerted and organised structural effort from the governing body to assist those hard-working people.

That all changed, as I say around 2010-2012, following off the back of the McLeish report. Whilst the SFA ignored much of the suggestions in that report, they did completely rebuild the youth football landscape off the back of it. That project was always supposed to have a long gestation with a true impact forecast for 2020 and beyond. That has proved accurate with the first players from the Performance Schools for instance breaking into the national team at that point. We have yet to see much in the way of forward players breaking through, but I expect we will over the next few years with the likes of Wilson and Doak (not a PS player tbf) at the Vanguard of that movement. It is exceptionally difficult to be patient, but I think if we are and we trust in the processes that have been put in place, we will start to see consistent development of the standard of player we want/need rather than the odd lucky outlier like Ireland seem to have stumbled on with Evan Ferguson.

[accies1874]

32 minutes ago, Donathan said:

I’m at the age now where most processional footballers are my age plus or minus a few years and I remember when I was growing up in Glasgow in the early 2000s, there was a big emphasis at the youth level on developing good technical players. We tended to focus mainly on smaller sided games using small footballs that didn’t bounce, heavy emphasis on getting the ball on the ground and passing football.

 

I think that’s manifested into a generation of Scotland talent that is completely inundated with full backs and central midfielders and short on goal scoring centre forwards.

 

As much as I’d love us to have a Mitrovic or a Schick let alone a Haaland, I do think the “technical players first” approach has paid dividends for us. There’s plenty of examples of teams who have had a lot of success by spreading the goals around the team with a lot of input from their attacking midfielders rather than having a central figure responsible for putting the ball in the net. Look at Spain in 2012 or France in 2018 or this year’s Arsenal side, all of them really spread the goals around.

 

I would love us to find a true all out CF but I think Adams and Dykes are good enough for now. 

Yeah it was interesting reading about then watching the u17s v France the other day, where the consensus was that we were completely mismatched physically (not that that was the only reason we lost, of course). Folk slag off the "too wee" mindset but we have reached a stage where players like Ryan Oné have become the exception for a Scotland youth side. 

[Satoshi]

6 hours ago, TheScarf said:

We’ve obviously got a better squad than them and I’d have thought it was clear to anyone with a functioning brain that wasn’t the point I was making. Ferguson is 18 and would clearly be our starting number 9 if he was Scottish.  

Your point is that a nation with a far worse team managed to produce one good player who left immediately and was trained in England?

Er, great point there.

Maybe there is something in Scotland produces more of a certain player, e.g. world class full backs, and less centre forwards. Maybe it's partly our system, but it will still be predominantly random.

Ireland will remain a nation we can learn virtually nothing from.

Hoping Rory Wilson can buck the trend. But all this chat about how bad our youth development is and how we arent getting players a chance seems anathema to how our national team are currently performing, and the amount of exciting young players we have. Your complaints are coming decades too late.

Edited May 22, 2023 by Satoshi

[bobbydazzler]

even if we had a striker coming through with raw talent, there's a 75% that would be coached out of them.