How did we do?

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

Almost all the pass marks went to players in defence.....Marshall (despite the obvious), Hanley, O'Donnell (given his obvious limitations), Robertson and Tierney. Gilmour was outstanding in his one game. 

Everyone else was a mixture of disappointing to utterly woeful. 

The 'big name, big money' couple of McGinn and McTominay looked overwhelmed by it all, and the 3 games basically passed them by. Adams looked busy, but couldn't do what he's paid to do. McGregor, despite being mostly ordinary, was the best midfielder over the piece. 

Armstrong was a disgrace...get him tae f**k...and the less said about Dykes the better. 

Clarke ? 3/10. And he only gets that much because of Wembley. 

[2426255]

I thought overall the team was quite inconsistent which is to be expected at this level with Scotland. I think McGinn, Marshall,  McTominay and Adams found their level and did good and bad things. McGregor, Hanley, Gilmour, Tierney and Robertson excelled for the most part and It seemed a bit too much for Armstrong, O'Donnell and Dykes. Didn't see enough from the subs, Christie, Cooper or Hendry to really comment on them.

I think Steve Clarke did okay, got some things right, got some things wrong and the performance overall met my expectations. I always thought this tournament came a bit early for us! 

[DC92]

The first game was too frantic, the balance of the midfield was wrong and not starting our best striker was a mistake. Arguably we were slightly unfortunate to lose by a couple of goals, but tactical errors and a lack of quality at both ends cost us.

The second game was a composed, mature performance, largely due to the fact we had two footballers in the middle in McGregor and Gilmour, and two players in the back three who could step out and play. It looked like we'd learned our lessons, settled into the tournament and were a team worthy of being there.

With Gilmour unavailable against Croatia, we went back to looking like a team that qualified through the backdoor. Not having Jack or even Kenny McLean to replace him was also a blow, but a midfield three featuring McGinn and Armstrong really doesn't work, something which we already knew. We were given a brilliant opportunity to change things at half-time when we fortunately went in level and Clarke failed to do so. Not doing so when we were getting dominated even more in the second half was bizarre to me - it was as if we were just waiting for them to score.

I think Hampden actually ended up being a hindrance rather than a help overall. In hindsight, that shouldn't really be surprising because we've had (at best) one or two good performances there under Clarke. Our best performances - Serbia and England - were both away games where we had McTominay and Tierney in defence and a double-pivot of players who can build up attacks through midfield. Effectively being the home team encouraged us to take a more frantic, direct approach which doesn't suit the system we use. If we've got any chance in the WCQs then that's something Clarke really needs to address.

In the end, we got a memorable performance and result at Wembley and finally scored a goal, so it could have been worse, but failing to win either home game when just winning one of them would have taken us through makes this a huge missed opportunity and a big disappointment. Of course this is a step up from qualification football and we were definitely the fourth strongest team in the group, but if we played Croatia or the Czech Republic at home in a qualifying group I would see them as winnable games. That can be justified by the fact that Croatia have failed to beat us at all in five previous attempts and the Czechs (and Czechoslovakians) had never previously won at Hampden, despite these teams being better than us for pretty much the entirety of their existences. Losing both games by comfortable margins is a poor effort and a real sore point for me. 

Overall, a 4 or 5 out of 10 seems about right.

[LiviLion]

20 hours ago, Caley Shaun said:

Is McCrorie international quality, I don't watch much under 21 matches? He is good at Livi though, pretty sure he keeps them in games with vital saves. 

He wasn't really good at Livi tbh, didn't seem very confident at all. Only really got in the team when Stryjek picked up an injury, won't find a single Livi fan wanting him back next season.

[Scumjob]

We did alright.

We've not been humiliated which is a relief but I don't think we did ourselves justice either which is a shame.

[ATLIS]

22 hours ago, Caley Shaun said:

Unless Angus Gunn grows increasingly frustrated at being snubbed by England which is unlikely. 

Jon McLaughlin needs game time. 

Is McCrorie international quality, I don't watch much under 21 matches? He is good at Livi though, pretty sure he keeps them in games with vital saves. 

Fucking wit?! He was so bad for us, and could barely get a game. He threw in a few goals this season and was bombed out the squad. He has the heart of a mouse and should be nowhere near a Premiership team let alone a Scotland set up at any level

[Northboy]

Maybe I was unrealistic but I was looking forward to this tournament. We'd finally qualified again, looked like we had a few good players and had home advantage for 2 games. Even though we lost to the Czechs I could see that we had scope for improvement and did in fact improve dramatically against England. However, against Croatia we were completely outclassed in every aspect which made  for a tough watch. 

[HalfCutNinja]

18 hours ago, Bob Mahelp said:

Almost all the pass marks went to players in defence.....Marshall (despite the obvious), Hanley, O'Donnell (given his obvious limitations), Robertson and Tierney. Gilmour was outstanding in his one game. 

Everyone else was a mixture of disappointing to utterly woeful. 

The 'big name, big money' couple of McGinn and McTominay looked overwhelmed by it all, and the 3 games basically passed them by. Adams looked busy, but couldn't do what he's paid to do. McGregor, despite being mostly ordinary, was the best midfielder over the piece. 

Armstrong was a disgrace...get him tae f**k...and the less said about Dykes the better. 

Clarke ? 3/10. And he only gets that much because of Wembley. 

Shut up mate

[Anfield 1977]

Two of the three games played at `home.'

Four of the six third places sides progress to the second phase - we couldn't even manage one of the worst third placed.

One point, one goal and finished bottom of our section.

Enough said.

[Ken Deans]

11 minutes ago, HalfCutNinja said:

Shut up mate

He's bang on with that assessment

[HalfCutNinja]

1 minute ago, Ken Deans said:

He's bang on with that assessment

No he isn't he's a miserable c**t talking shite

[Ken Deans]

2 minutes ago, HalfCutNinja said:

No he isn't he's a miserable c**t talking shite

Well I cant comment on that opinion but the players he's singled out for extra criticism were indeed shite.

[Mr Tourette]

I think the main reason (apart from Gilmour) we did well at Wembley is that we were not expected to win and were set up to frustrate England, which we did well.

The other 2 games we were expected to try and win and that doesn’t suit the way Clarke sets the team up. The 3-5-2 seems designed to make us hard to beat with the chance of nicking a goal

Until we start setting the team up to try and dominate possession, we are not going to be able to dictate games the way we need to to go for wins. Apart from Gilmour, we don’t have players capable of doing that and Clarke seems to have sussed as much, hence the 3-5-2

We need to bring in players who are used to playing European style tactics, like Gauld, Hickey etc. Only then can we start to compete with teams like Croatia. There’s no point in saying we should get in their faces etc, that will just encourage us to continue with the current style of aimless punts to some donkey like Dykes. We would have been better playing without a recognised striker in the Croatia/Czech games and trying to play our way through them

[craigkillie]

We did dominate possession against the Czechs - I think it was 58-42 to us.

[Aufc]

Need more st Johnstone players imo

[GTG_03]

Disappointing overall but with some hope for the future. A midfield 3 out of Jack, McGregor, gilmour, McLean, mctominay is strong with all comfortable on the ball. I do hope Clarke sees that and has us playing football instead of the long ball to dykes which hasn't worked. Croatias midfield 3 absolutely bossed the game and were technically better than us. If we want to compete at this level we need to be matching that. Oh, and a striker who can score goals would be handy aswell. 

[RobbieD]

It’s almost like we didn’t sneak into the championships through the back door and were seeded 4th for a reason.

Lack of experience across the park and the bench cost us. Learning curve. The problem comes if we don’t learn from the mistakes. 

[Monkey Tennis]

21 hours ago, RobbieD said:

It’s almost like we didn’t sneak into the championships through the back door and were seeded 4th for a reason.

Isn't there a contradiction there?

We did sneak in by a back door and we were 4th seeds for a reason.

 

So why do you say it's almost like one wasn't the case but the other was?

[RobbieD]

1 hour ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Isn't there a contradiction there?

We did sneak in by a back door and we were 4th seeds for a reason.

 

So why do you say it's almost like one wasn't the case but the other was?

Who gives a toss? 

point stands. We snuck in and people expected miracles. We probably did a little less than we should have but we had 3 quality teams in our group and didn’t have the experience/breaks to go further. 

[Monkey Tennis]

6 hours ago, RobbieD said:

Who gives a toss? 

point stands. We snuck in and people expected miracles. We probably did a little less than we should have but we had 3 quality teams in our group and didn’t have the experience/breaks to go further. 

Who are these people who expected miracles?  I keep missing them.