Israel v Scotland

[Aufc]

Liam cooper is eligible for scotland eh? Surely worth a shot as well. I genuinely think the only position where we could have a half decent player is right back

[Comrie]

I honestly don't see why we don't give Jason Naismith a chance- was the third best full  back last season in Scotland behind Tierney and Tavernier in an absolutely honking Ross County defence.

[TheScarf]

That's plenty.

[RobbieD]

6 hours ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

9 hours ago, Blootoon87 said:

I'd take Strachan over Mcleish any day of the week.

I'd take Csaba Lazslo or Neil McCann over McLeish.

That sounds utterly ridiculous but so would I mate.

McLeish hasn’t got a fucking clue what he’s doing out there with that team.  Too many players out of position and too many call ups for players who clearly aren’t good enough for this level.

Honestly, this was the worst Scotland performance I’ve seen in my 37 years.  To be absolutely played off the park and show zero heart and desire to even want to try to do something is unacceptable.  At least when we’ve been tanned before, it’s been by decent teams. Israel are shite and we’ve just made them look like Spain in their heyday. 

[RobbieD]

50 minutes ago, Aufc said:

Liam cooper is eligible for scotland eh? Surely worth a shot as well. I genuinely think the only position where we could have a half decent player is right back

I’ve seen him play plenty. He’s no better than what we have but at least he can organise players around him. 

Until McLeish starts playing the team in a formation that actually suits the players we have (4-2-3-1 or 4-5-1) and stops picking players based on social media hype,  it’s all for nothing anyway

[forameus]

23 hours ago, forameus said:

An awkward performance but ultimately a positive result.

2-0 to the good guys

 

22 hours ago, forameus said:

To be fair, we haven't seen McLeish during this spell take in an away game that actually matters.  I'd completely forgotten he was in charge for any games prior to the Autumn, but we've beaten Hungary away before getting chased by Mexico and Peru in those ill-timed Summer games.  

I don't expect we'll see much of a departure, but I'm hoping these games actually mattering and being against a fellow diddy, that we'll be able to rise above the shite we usually see. 

Hope.

f**k.

Well, I got that one wrong, didn't I?

@DA Baracus you were absolutely right.  The most Scotland of all the Scotland away performances, in one of the most important games.  

 

[FullTimePint]

Tough night of football to watch tbh, silver lining is it puts to bed a number of issues for me

1) Scotland cannot play three at the back, it was evident last night no-one really understand where they should be off the ball. In the second half i watched their keeper hoof a ball into CM, and the first time we had anyone near was when Isreal were attacking around our box. 442 / 451 or nothing. We play so many pointless friendlies, work on shape in the build up! Smaller countries do well and overachieve because they are well drilled and understand their roles, no reason we shouldn't be the same

2) We need a holding midfield player, our defense gets so exposed its ridiculous. McGinn & Mcgregor are good players, but they do not compliment each others styles, and Mcdonald has proved to be a wasted jersey

3) Tierney is a LB, as is Robertson. Decide and play one, playing either out of position takes away their effectiveness (both suffered last night)

4) Mcgergor in goal over Gordon every day of the week. Have to feel if he had a shocker last night we would have been looking at a cricket score

[DA Baracus]

2 minutes ago, forameus said:

 

Well, I got that one wrong, didn't I?

@DA Baracus you were absolutely right.  The most Scotland of all the Scotland away performances, in one of the most important games.  

 

Sadly so. Obviously I would have loved for us to get the win last night but we've seen this pish from McLeish before which is why I had the fear about the game. It's also one of the (many) reasons why he should never have been appointed

[Guest bernardblack]

Tough night of football to watch tbh, silver lining is it puts to bed a number of issues for me
1) Scotland cannot play three at the back, it was evident last night no-one really understand where they should be off the ball. In the second half i watched their keeper hoof a ball into CM, and the first time we had anyone near was when Isreal were attacking around our box. 442 / 451 or nothing. We play so many pointless friendlies, work on shape in the build up! Smaller countries do well and overachieve because they are well drilled and understand their roles, no reason we shouldn't be the same
2) We need a holding midfield player, our defense gets so exposed its ridiculous. McGinn & Mcgregor are good players, but they do not compliment each others styles, and Mcdonald has proved to be a wasted jersey
3) Tierney is a LB, as is Robertson. Decide and play one, playing either out of position takes away their effectiveness (both suffered last night)
4) Mcgergor in goal over Gordon every day of the week. Have to feel if he had a shocker last night we would have been looking at a cricket score

Number 3 all day long. I really like them both but you don’t have to play both. Robertson plays left back every week for Liverpool and yet we try and play him in a midfield 5. Drop Tierney and let Robertson play in a back 4

[TheScarf]

13 minutes ago, RobbieD said:

I’ve seen him play plenty. He’s no better than what we have but at least he can organise players around him. 

Until McLeish starts playing the team in a formation that actually suits the players we have (4-2-3-1 or 4-5-1) and stops picking players based on social media hype,  it’s all for nothing anyway

It's the sign of a terrible manager.  Sticking to 'his' formation, regardless of the players at his disposal.  You need to play the formation best suited to the players you have.

[forameus]

I didn't watch the game. After only getting home at half-time, I didn't fancy paying the Now TV day pass the way the game sounded like it was going.  So I had to make do with the radio.  But as the game started to turn, coupled with the live text, it was clear the narrative they were trying to peddle, all about Israel's World Ranking.

Am I the only one that finds this kind of focus really pointless?  We're not in the 90s anymore, when diddies were proper diddies, and we could be expected to go and get a positive result in most of these games.  These are now teams who are technically able at the very least, often to a much larger degree than us.  They are also comfortable in their own skin, often knowing the way to go about trying to get a result against a team that, on paper at least, should have the beating of them.  Whereas we seem to be stuck in the mindset of just how embarassed we should be feeling.  Almost "How can we be losing to them?!"  The commentator last night was wailing about Israel being 98th, rhyming off all these nothing countries that were around them, conveniently forgetting the fact that World Rankings been fucking nothing.  This tournament is all about teams around our level, and like it or not Israel are that.  Continuing to have this attitude that we should always be beating sides like that is a waste of time.

And don't get me wrong on the above, we should have had enough to beat a side like Israel, but we don't have the divine right, particularly when it smacks of the media building up so they can smash it down.  We're shite.  Israel are shite.  But one of them raised their game to win the match.

[Alan Stubbs]

We don't have the centre backs or strikers to play three at the back and two up front. We had a very weak, partially out of position defence and nothing going on up front last night.

I don't agree with the idea of dealing with a problem position by putting more bodies in it, I'd rather see as many capable players in their natural position as possible.

For me that means 4-5-1/4-3-3/4-2-3-1 - whatever you want to call it. Basically as long as there two wingers and one proper striker. Hopefully Griffiths if McLeish can f**k off.

[RobbieD]

Where was the experience in the team too? Other than Naismith, has any outfield player got 10 caps? You can’t just throw a load of new internationals together and expect reactions when things are going badly. 

[ICTJohnboy]

21 minutes ago, FullTimePint said:

Tough night of football to watch tbh, silver lining is it puts to bed a number of issues for me

1) Scotland cannot play three at the back, it was evident last night no-one really understand where they should be off the ball. In the second half i watched their keeper hoof a ball into CM, and the first time we had anyone near was when Isreal were attacking around our box. 442 / 451 or nothing. We play so many pointless friendlies, work on shape in the build up! Smaller countries do well and overachieve because they are well drilled and understand their roles, no reason we shouldn't be the same

 

 

No reason we shouldn't be the same if we had a competent management team in place.

I haven't felt so embarrassed by a Scotland performance since Iran in the 1978 WC.

[Jaggy Snake]

I agree with most of what’s been said. It has to be a back 4 for me, with Tierney dropping to the bench. We need to give Robertson a run of games at leftback to see if he can reproduce what he does with Liverpool. It has to be said though, even acknowledging that playing as a wingback doesn’t suit him, that doesn’t excuse how poor he was both against Israel and Albania.

I’d have McKenna and Mulgrew at centreback, with Souttar as the first alternative. Mulgrew can be poor at times but he’s experienced, can sweep in behind unlike the others, and is decent at set pieces. O’Donnell was really poor last night but it was essentially his first competitive game outside Scotland so I’d be inclined to give him a break. He only had one appearance for the under 21’s and hasn’t played European football, so only the two South American friendlies could be counted as similar experience. Souttar has a few more U21 games and (I think) 2 Europa League games but I wouldn’t be too harsh on him either for similar reasons. If we'd used our friendlies better over the last few years, that kind of thing wouldn't happen.

In midfield, drop McDonald and for the time-being I’d probably give Shinnie a chance. Then Armstrong with one of McGinn/McGregor. Beyond that McLeish has to sort out all the call-offs.

He’s not universally popular but James McArthur should be in the squad. I don’t think he was helped with Scotland by playing games alongside Brown or Fletcher and being asked to do things he wasn’t good at. Similar to Ryan Fraser, he’s pulled out because he claims to be managing a back problem but has started 3 of Crystal Palace’s last 4 games. Get him and Fraser back in the squad regularly, plus James Forrest and we have reasonable options on midfield.

[well fan for life]

57 minutes ago, FullTimePint said:

Tough night of football to watch tbh, silver lining is it puts to bed a number of issues for me

1) Scotland cannot play three at the back, it was evident last night no-one really understand where they should be off the ball. In the second half i watched their keeper hoof a ball into CM, and the first time we had anyone near was when Isreal were attacking around our box. 442 / 451 or nothing. We play so many pointless friendlies, work on shape in the build up! Smaller countries do well and overachieve because they are well drilled and understand their roles, no reason we shouldn't be the same

2) We need a holding midfield player, our defense gets so exposed its ridiculous. McGinn & Mcgregor are good players, but they do not compliment each others styles, and Mcdonald has proved to be a wasted jersey

3) Tierney is a LB, as is Robertson. Decide and play one, playing either out of position takes away their effectiveness (both suffered last night)

4) Mcgergor in goal over Gordon every day of the week. Have to feel if he had a shocker last night we would have been looking at a cricket score

This is the bit that riles me with Scotland. I don't think any of us are deluded enough to think we'll start playing like Barcelona and leathering teams but, at the very least, we should be well organised and hard to break down. Watching the defending last night was excruciating.

Also I think we need to sack the 3-5-2 and put Robertson in as an actual left back. Whether that means putting Tierney to right back or benching him is up for debate. Ideally would have them both but it's killing their game.

[TurbineTon]

Well, that was a fucking shit show. 

[LondonHMFC]

14 minutes ago, Jaggy Snake said:

I agree with most of what’s been said. It has to be a back 4 for me, with Tierney dropping to the bench. We need to give Robertson a run of games at leftback to see if he can reproduce what he does with Liverpool. It has to be said though, even acknowledging that playing as a wingback doesn’t suit him, that doesn’t excuse how poor he was both against Israel and Albania.

I touched on this last night when people were complaining that he doesn't take a man on. At Liverpool he has the likes of Mane tucking inside to give him the freedom to get up the wing, he also knows if he loses the ball he has the quality behind him to clear up. If he loses the ball for Scotland, we have the prospect of Souttar clogging an attacking winger. 

 

[The_Judge]

4 minutes ago, LondonHMFC said:

I touched on this last night when people were complaining that he doesn't take a man on. At Liverpool he has the likes of Mane tucking inside to give him the freedom to get up the wing, he also knows if he loses the ball he has the quality behind him to clear up. If he loses the ball for Scotland, we have the prospect of Souttar clogging an attacking winger. 

 

Is he the new Darren Fletcher?  A small cog in a brilliant club team expected to somehow transform Scotland's average players into something much better?

[Scary Bear]

I didn’t bother watching this so I’m still fairly confident of winning the group. If we can get a win in Albania then I can see us finishing the job against Israel at Hampden. Alky Eck can still lead us to the Nations League glory*.



*well, as glorious as coming top in a three horse race with fucking Israel and Albania can be.