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Time to go Steve Clarke


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22 minutes ago, BingMcCrosby said:

Without even really thinking about it, Wales, Republic or Ireland, Iceland

Plenty of others

Wales is the only one of those I'd suggest could qualify. We don't regularly finish behind the other two, and certain won't be for the foreseeable now that we've improved and they've slipped back.

Edit: With the barrier of time to salve raw nerves, it's deeply amusing that Wales did the double over us in 2014 and we still finished above them in the group. And then we did the same with Croatia...what a weird campaign that was.

Edited by BFTD
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3 hours ago, BingMcCrosby said:

Without even really thinking about it

I'd say that's my issue mostly with your posts on these forums mate. Not enough thought before posting.

Edited by 2426255
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2 hours ago, BingMcCrosby said:

Without even really thinking about it, Wales, Republic or Ireland, Iceland

Plenty of others

Iceland's world ranking is far lower than their European ranking.  That's because they won their group for Euro 2016, just before the UNL was put in place.

They were therefore a top seed.  They then lost 6 games, but were 'rescued' by UNL adding a 4th team to the top group (this also saved Germany from relegation).  They were then promptly relegated again, and now find themselves struggling in a group with Israel and Albania.

In short, Iceland are in no possible way a better side, more likely to qualify than us, or finish above us.  They absolutely are not.

The same very obvious observation would be made of ROI, or did their 2 wins from 8 in World Cup qualifiers go by you?

I'll grant you Wales, but that's neither particularly illuminating nor surprising as they have a World Class forward, who would have been capped by literally every country on earth.

 

Edited by HuttonDressedAsLahm
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3 hours ago, BFTD said:

Wales is the only one of those I'd suggest could qualify. We don't regularly finish behind the other two, and certain won't be for the foreseeable now that we've improved and they've slipped back.

So by regularly finish behind you mean exactly in the same group? Of playoffs, pretty small group.

1 hour ago, HuttonDressedAsLahm said:

Iceland's world ranking is far lower than their European ranking.  That's because they won their group for Euro 2016, just before the UNL was put in place.

They were therefore a top seed.  They then lost 6 games, but were 'rescued' by UNL adding a 4th team to the top group (this also saved Germany from relegation).  They were then promptly relegated again, and now find themselves struggling in a group with Israel and Albania.

In short, Iceland are in no possible way a better side, more likely to qualify than us, or finish above us.  They absolutely are not.

The same very obvious observation would be made of ROI, or did their 2 wins from 8 in World Cup qualifiers go by you?

I'll grant you Wales, but that's neither particularly illuminating nor surprising as they have a World Class forward, who would have been capped by literally every country on earth.

 

No I also didn't miss Ireland getting out their world cup finals group every time they have played in it (3 times) once as far as the quarter finals.

But if your wanting to narrow this comparison to only recent games, the best most obvious comparison would be them completely pumping us a couple of wks ago.

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1 minute ago, BingMcCrosby said:

So by regularly finish behind you mean exactly in the same group? Of playoffs, pretty small group.

No, just that they bob about the same kind of position in the pots and rankings as us, and don't usually have a particularly worse squad until recently. It's surely fair to say that we've got a better selection of players now, despite just being humped, which made it all the more distressing.

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Just now, BFTD said:

No, just that they bob about the same kind of position in the pots and rankings as us, and don't usually have a particularly worse squad until recently. It's surely fair to say that we've got a better selection of players now, despite just being humped, which made it all the more distressing.

Can you define the parameters of this comparison, cos this is just confusing. I was taking it as are there similar sized nations who outperform us historically and recently, yes the answer is clearly yes.

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2 hours ago, HuttonDressedAsLahm said:

Iceland's world ranking is far lower than their European ranking.  That's because they won their group for Euro 2016, just before the UNL was put in place.

They were therefore a top seed.  They then lost 6 games, but were 'rescued' by UNL adding a 4th team to the top group (this also saved Germany from relegation).  They were then promptly relegated again, and now find themselves struggling in a group with Israel and Albania.

In short, Iceland are in no possible way a better side, more likely to qualify than us, or finish above us.  They absolutely are not.

The same very obvious observation would be made of ROI, or did their 2 wins from 8 in World Cup qualifiers go by you?

I'll grant you Wales, but that's neither particularly illuminating nor surprising as they have a World Class forward, who would have been capped by literally every country on earth.

 

I'd swap everything we've done in the last 22 years for Iceland's Euro 2016 run tbf. Qualifying from a tough group and finishing above Portugal in the process then papping England out in the knock out stages. Glorious. Why can we never get a run like that in a major tournament...

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6 minutes ago, BingMcCrosby said:

Can you define the parameters of this comparison, cos this is just confusing. I was taking it as are there similar sized nations who outperform us historically and recently, yes the answer is clearly yes.

I was referring to the nations above us in the pots and rankings; it's hard to look at many of them and say that our squad is significantly better, and we should be beating them regularly, which we'll need to do to make it to tournaments (World Cups, certainly).

Let's not get into nations of similar size - there are obviously many who've produced far better players and teams, for a variety of reasons (not least because the SFA have been almost wilfully hopeless for a large part of their existence). We'll end up with Supras banging on about India and Uruguay for pages on end again.

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3 hours ago, BFTD said:

I was referring to the nations above us in the pots and rankings; it's hard to look at many of them and say that our squad is significantly better, and we should be beating them regularly, which we'll need to do to make it to tournaments (World Cups, certainly).

Your talking about teams like say ukraine. And I think this is where the argument is misunderstood by alot of people.

I dont think I've read anyone saying that we have a divine right to be beating teams like that. But we should be competitive with teams like that, especially at home. Look at how much better Wales equipped themselves.

We were a long way from being competitive.

 

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8 hours ago, BingMcCrosby said:

So by regularly finish behind you mean exactly in the same group? Of playoffs, pretty small group.

No I also didn't miss Ireland getting out their world cup finals group every time they have played in it (3 times) once as far as the quarter finals.

But if your wanting to narrow this comparison to only recent games, the best most obvious comparison would be them completely pumping us a couple of wks ago.

Scotland have made it to the last 16 of the world cup 5 times and the last 8 of the euros.

And we are currently a clearly better side than Ireland or Iceland (just as we have been for 95-99% of our history).

8 hours ago, BingMcCrosby said:

Can you define the parameters of this comparison, cos this is just confusing. I was taking it as are there similar sized nations who outperform us historically and recently, yes the answer is clearly yes.

Why not have a look at the Ireland Scotland head to head record? Combining our results vs unified Ireland, ROI and northern ireland our record is 69 wins and 20 defeats. Excluding draws this is a stonking 71% win ratio. Imagine thinking they are better than us historically 😅 the best Ireland teams contain a bunch of players not good enough for Scotland.

As for Scotland going on an Iceland like run, first of all I'm not so sure that team is held in the highest regard in Iceland these days given that wide ranging sexual assault scandal that led to the entire football association resigning, they have become a national embarrassment. And secondly in a 24 team Euros Scotland will regularly qualify and it's inevitable we go on a similar run at some point. Will you be genuinely happy or annoyed you can't say we are worse than Ireland or Iceland anymore? I think we both know the answer to that.

Our record Vs Iceland is a bit less complex, we have won all 6 matches we have played against them with an aggregate score of 12-3.

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34 minutes ago, Satoshi said:

Scotland have made it to the last 16 of the world cup 5 times and the last 8 of the euros.

And we are currently a clearly better side than Ireland or Iceland (just as we have been for 95-99% of our history).

Why not have a look at the Ireland Scotland head to head record? Combining our results vs unified Ireland, ROI and northern ireland our record is 69 wins and 20 defeats. Excluding draws this is a stonking 71% win ratio. Imagine thinking they are better than us historically 😅 the best Ireland teams contain a bunch of players not good enough for Scotland.

As for Scotland going on an Iceland like run, first of all I'm not so sure that team is held in the highest regard in Iceland these days given that wide ranging sexual assault scandal that led to the entire football association resigning, they have become a national embarrassment. And secondly in a 24 team Euros Scotland will regularly qualify and it's inevitable we go on a similar run at some point. Will you be genuinely happy or annoyed you can't say we are worse than Ireland or Iceland anymore? I think we both know the answer to that.

Our record Vs Iceland is a bit less complex, we have won all 6 matches we have played against them with an aggregate score of 12-3.

there is nothing inevitable about that at all and that relates to qualifying regularly for an expanded Euros never mind going on a run to the QFs or whatever.....

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14 minutes ago, KingRocketman II said:

there is nothing inevitable about that at all and that relates to qualifying regularly for an expanded Euros never mind going on a run to the QFs or whatever.....

Of course it's inevitable.

If crap like Iceland and Wales can do it then Scotland certainly can.

The only unknown is the time period. 

We have had 150 years of a Scottish national team and in that time achieved a lot, I'm sure we will also achieve a lot in the next 150 years.

And I'm equally sure we will have fans complaining and self hating every step of the way.

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, Satoshi said:

Of course it's inevitable.

If crap like Iceland and Wales can do it then Scotland certainly can.

The only unknown is the time period. 

We have had 150 years of a Scottish national team and in that time achieved a lot. 

In that 150 years we have never once gone on a run deep into a major tournament like the aforementioned Wales run in 2016 etc. You can make the argument about qualifying for 8 team euros and 16 team World cups but I don't think its the same. Getting papped out in the first round doesn't generate the same excitement. 

This is remarkable for a country of our footballing history in terms of it being our national sport, our overall qualification record and some of the notable players we have produced over the years. 

Of course you could say based on the fact we've not done it yet, that it's just around the corner. Maybe we will uncover a world class striking talent who will score at will for the national team and take us to the semis of the next World Cup. But maybe not. 

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10 hours ago, BingMcCrosby said:

Your talking about teams like say ukraine. And I think this is where the argument is misunderstood by alot of people.

I dont think I've read anyone saying that we have a divine right to be beating teams like that. But we should be competitive with teams like that, especially at home. Look at how much better Wales equipped themselves.

We were a long way from being competitive.

 

I appreciate that you want to have a go at Clarke again, but I was replying to @Loominous asking if we under/overperform, and if expectations are a problem with Scotland.

Going back further than just the current regime, I'd suggest that we do roughly as well as the players we have. Barring occasional poor results and performances, it's difficult to credibly look at many teams ahead of us in the pots/rankings and say, "we're obviously a lot better than them". It's also a bit odd to focus on the poor results while discounting positive results against sides ahead of us, like Denmark, Austria, Serbia, Ireland, Croatia, etc.

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1 hour ago, EH75 said:

In that 150 years we have never once gone on a run deep into a major tournament like the aforementioned Wales run in 2016 etc. You can make the argument about qualifying for 8 team euros and 16 team World cups but I don't think its the same. Getting papped out in the first round doesn't generate the same excitement. 

This is remarkable for a country of our footballing history in terms of it being our national sport, our overall qualification record and some of the notable players we have produced over the years. 

Of course you could say based on the fact we've not done it yet, that it's just around the corner. Maybe we will uncover a world class striking talent who will score at will for the national team and take us to the semis of the next World Cup. But maybe not. 

It's literally the only metric Wales or Iceland even come close to Scotland on, hence why those obsessed with the negative will always pivot to it. As for generating excitement most excitement is in the build up to the tournament, you really think 1 extra week can beat months of anticipation? Scotland have qualified for 9 world cups, Iceland for one and Wales for two. Would you swap 9x3 months of anticipation Vs one extra week?

It's inevitable that we will go further in a tournament, but overall it won't change the past which is far better than most people admit for some reason. If offered the chance now of qualifying for the next 9 world cups (which will never happen) Vs reaching the QF or SF of one euros then never doing anything again I (and everyone else) would surely chose the former. Qualifying for 9 world cups is far harder and less likely than getting to the knockout stages of the euros. The latter is inevitable for us, the former (unless drastic changes to European spots) is near impossible in the next 50 years.

 

 

Edited by Satoshi
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Pedantic, but I think we've only qualified for eight World Cups. "Only" seems a bit harsh, although I suppose a few of them came at a time where it'd have been harder for us not to.

Can't say I'd swap our international record for Wales or Iceland's either, despite the glorious runs they briefly achieved. For Wales especially, sixty-odd years of qualifying for hee-haw must have been brutal. Twenty-odd was bad enough.

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13 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Pedantic, but I think we've only qualified for eight World Cups. "Only" seems a bit harsh, although I suppose a few of them came at a time where it'd have been harder for us not to.

Can't say I'd swap our international record for Wales or Iceland's either, despite the glorious runs they briefly achieved. For Wales especially, sixty-odd years of qualifying for hee-haw must have been brutal. Twenty-odd was bad enough.

We have qualified for 9 but went to 8. Our SFA being a bunch of arseholes and withdrawing doesn't mean we didn't legitimately qualify.

There was no time where it was harder to not qualify (ask Wales and Ireland).

Norway is a similar sized country that hasn't qualified for anything since 2000.

And fair enough if you would chose getting to one QF in the Euros ahead of 9 world cup qualifications, same mindset of people chasing short term highs rather than long term success. And you're not bothered at all about how one sided the h2h record Scotland have with Wales and Iceland?

Out of interest do you think reaching one QF or SF in the euros is harder or easier than qualifying for 9 world cups between 1950 and 1998?

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11 minutes ago, Satoshi said:

We have qualified for 9 but went to 8. Our SFA being a bunch of arseholes and withdrawing doesn't mean we didn't legitimately qualify.

There was no time where it was harder to not qualify (ask Wales and Ireland).

Norway is a similar sized country that hasn't qualified for anything since 2000.

And fair enough if you would chose getting to one QF in the Euros ahead of 9 world cup qualifications, same mindset of people chasing short term highs rather than long term success. And you're not bothered at all about how one sided the h2h record Scotland have with Wales and Iceland?

Out of interest do you think reaching one QF or SF in the euros is harder or easier than qualifying for 9 world cups between 1950 and 1998?

Aye, I forgot about our SFA's initial arrogance towards the World Cup.

Think you need to read my second sentence again  :P

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7 hours ago, Satoshi said:

Scotland have made it to the last 16 of the world cup 5 times and the last 8 of the euros.

Were currently clearly a better side? We just got cuffed by them?

We currently clearly should be the better side, which is why this thread is here.

Also we've never been out the groups, they have got the the quarters, they win.

It doesn't matter how many times you turn up to the dancing, its about getting a ride.

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