Scotland v Israel

[Marshmallo]

1 minute ago, ali_91 said:

Dykes could have scored a perfect hat trick and revealed a top saying ‘McBurnie is a c**t,’ after his third and you’d still have said he didn’t play that well. 
 

You’ve watched that game in a way that suited your preconceived agenda.
 

Football is subjective, but saying Dykes had a poor game is verging on objectively wrong. 

Dykes was fine but he is being pumped up to be the second coming of Gerd Muller by St Johnstone, Livi and Kilmarnock fans who want to believe the dug meat they're paying 25 quid to watch every Saturday is of a good standard. 

He's probably good enough to be our second choice if he kicks on at QPR but that says more about the lack of options rather than him being anything approaching international class.

[Guest DAVIDB69]

Dykes was ok and his flick ons etc he did look where they were going and follow on them unlike mcburnie.

However if we are staying with the traditional non scoring forward situation we are not getting anywhere .
The midfield does not support the loan front man only Christie seemed to be making an effort to.

[DA Baracus]

1 minute ago, Todd_is_God said:

The way they are talking up Israel you would think they were a force.

They were well set up yes, as they were last time out, and as they will be next month. The way to beat that is to play with pace and / or play short sharp passes in front and in behind yet we tried neither.

Really infuriating, however I shall now go have a beer and enjoy a free pie that the SFA sent me.

Wait, what?

[Marshmallo]

Just now, DAVIDB69 said:

Dykes was ok and his flick ons etc he did look where they were going and follow on them unlike mcburnie.

However if we are staying with the traditional non scoring forward situation we are not getting anywhere .
The midfield does not support the loan front man only Christie seemed to be making an effort to.

Agree with this and that is down to a manager playing scared.

[kingjoey]

2 minutes ago, Binos said:

Robertson absolutely anonymous 

Robertson is consistently shit for Scotland, every game. I take it that he is pissed off with playing with third rate players and not the Rolls Royce like guys that he plays with at Liverpool. We had too many players that had dreadful performances tonight, Robertson, Forrest, McGregor, McTominay and Jack.

[BucksburnDandy]

Safe to say Clarke made an absolute rip roaring arse of it tonight. And we got a McLeish in Israel type performance.

We are not capable of playing 3-5-2 or the variation of it we played tonight:

1) We barely have any competent centre backs
2) None of our players are capable of playing wing back effectively
3) It stunts our attacking players and stops their effectiveness

No one needed to see tonight's game to know that, we learned it two years back. So why did our management team think that it was a sensible plan?

Gordon Strachan and Malky MacKay (yes Malky, you read it right) both came up with effective answers for Robertson and Tierney - Robertson is left back and Tierney either plays right back or left centre back in a back 4. It doesn't need to be overcomplicated if you want both to play.

Not that it excuses the players who once again gave the "we don't give a toss" performance that we have been served up so often since the start of 2018.

Callum McGregor is hopeless for Scotland, Strachan was correct not to play him. He contributes very little positive to our play. Forrest is another who is an imposter. Both are grand for thumping Hamilton Accies but they are very limited.

McGinn wasn't match fit, McTominay is not a centre back as shown quite often tonight, Jack was OK but nothing more.

Andy Robertson is very limited positionally, unable to play anywhere else but left back. It has to be said his performances for Scotland since the start of 2018 have been nothing short of shite, consistently shite. Greg Taylor has been better, quite comfortably so.

Fair play to Lyndon Dykes who worked hard for no return, Ryan Christie who tried a lot but didn't get much payout, Scott McKenna and Kieran Tierney who both played fine.

Ultimately Clarke really does need to look at himself tonight, question why he moved away from 4-2-3-1 and also question his faith in certain players who more often than not fail to perform. Perhaps also reflect on what Strachan or MacKay did with Robertson and Tierney. Our fans are drifting away into disinterest generally and stuff like tonight cannot be tolerated.

[mishtergrolsch]

Same old Scotlol.

Bunch of over hyped (by the media) plodders passing sideways or backwards for 90 mins. Totally uninspiring and totally bereft of ideas.

Nothing will change.

[Guest DAVIDB69]

Anyone slating Robertson needs to take a good look at themselves. Imagine going from Klopp giving you every opportunity to succeed to Clarke shiting the bed and your best option being a 4 yards sideways pass to Ryan Jack.

Robertson struggles with the enormous drop in quality from his club football to international football

[Jacky1990]

Conor Washington started up front for N.Ireland tonight. They drew 1-1 away at Romania. 

Give me Dykes over Washington all day.

The issue we have isnt that the players not being good enough. Its the players not playing as an actual team.

Shouldnt matter what formation we put out tonight, we should be winning that game.

But we need to start actually building a team here. And I've not seen anything like that for years now.

[Guest Rscot]

9 minutes ago, ArabFC said:

Reminds me (a little) of the English dilemma of how could they shoehorn Scholes, Gerrard and Lampard into the same team. They wasted years trying but never succeeded in realising you can drop good players to make the team better.

Or perhaps Andy Robertson can put his big boy pants on, stand up and perform like we know he can. He had ample opportunity to try and maraud down the left hand side and chose to play the safe pass, take the safe option every time. 

[Ro Sham Bo]

9 minutes ago, Binos said:

Robertson absolutely anonymous 

Par for the course when he pulls a Scotland top on. 

[Jacky1990]

1 minute ago, mishtergrolsch said:

Same old Scotlol.

Thats up there with the "me nan coukd score in that league" levels of shite patter.

Embarrassed for you.

[Staggie_93]

Bearing in mind, Israel are ranked 93rd in the ranking and we toiled big time. 93rd behind the likes of the mighty Madagascar, Syria and Haiti. Not promising whatsoever but Monday gives us a chance to put some things right before the playoff.

Edited September 4, 2020 by Staggie_93

[Waspie]

Was a bit worrying when Clarke said pre-match that the formation doesn't really matter . My hope with his appointment was that he had been capable of getting more than the sum of their parts from that Killie team. Certainly didn't manage that tonight, actually an achievement to get such a disjointed performance when there are plenty of pretty decent footballers in the squad. 

Still, hopefully just a ruse to fool Israel for next month. 

[MarkoRaj]

Always good to come on here postmatch for a bit of perspective

Thought the formation showed signs it could work

Tierney didn't put a foot wrong and is probably our best centre back. McKenna did fine as well

Jack did the simple things well and I'd probably have him over McGregor in future. There's definitely no need to have both

Dykes linked the play very well and is a very good option to have.

Certainly seen far worse Scotland performances

[Derry Alli]

6 minutes ago, ali_91 said:

Dykes could have scored a perfect hat trick and revealed a top saying ‘McBurnie is a c**t,’ after his third and you’d still have said he didn’t play that well. 
 

You’ve watched that game in a way that suited your preconceived agenda.
 

Football is subjective, but saying Dykes had a poor game is verging on objectively wrong. 

I never said he had a poor game, he just never done anything progressive. He took a pass in and he passed it straight back, literally Derek Holmes could play that role he did tonight and he's about 45 now.

Its got nothing to do with McBurnie and I've never mentioned him once tonight so let's not go on about an 'agenda', please. 

[ArabFC]

Just now, Rscot said:

Or perhaps Andy Robertson can put his big boy pants on, stand up and perform like we know he can. He had ample opportunity to try and maraud down the left hand side and chose to play the safe pass, take the safe option every time. 

He's not that fucking player! It's really simple.

How many times do you see him try to skin boys for Liverpool?

He's good because he can defend, has a great cross on him and plays lovely one-touch football with players that move.

He never has been an Alphonso Davies type.

[Jambomo]

To be fair to Robertson he has talked himself about not playing well enough for Scotland. I don’t think it’s lack of effort or interest from him, he just doesn’t seem to have the same confidence with the Scotland team.

It’s not as though he isn’t used to playing in teams who aren’t great, Utd and Hull weren’t exactly setting the world alight.

[Jacky1990]

14 minutes ago, virginton said:

Well no because those options are not even remotely good enough to build an international level attack around in the absence of a credible striker. If Scotland think that they just need a carthorse to hold the ball up and do nothing in the opposition box then they'll score under a goal per game once you take out the bottom seed pub teams.

Your use of "they" rather than "we" tells its own story.

Are those options good enough to win the Euros? Obvisouly not. Should they be good enough to win at home to Israel? Absolutely.

[Binos]

1 minute ago, Staggie_93 said:

Bearing in mind, Israel are ranked 94th in the ranking and we toiled big time. 94th behind the likes of the mighty Madagascar, Syria and Haiti. Not promising whatsoever but Monday gives us a chance to put some things right before the playoff.

Shows what a nonsense the rankings are

However Israel are still total gash