Time to go Steve Clarke

[Bing.McCrosby]

39 minutes ago, forameus said:

I'd argue it'd be incredibly harsh to do so for that given the entire approach from everyone involved in that game was an absolute travesty.  

Im not sure what you mean, the circumstances outwith the match were exceptional. But the football match is still just a football match. The circumstances would have been more of a factor for ukraine than us. We lost the match due to being out played and out thought tactically. External factors dont change this.

Clarke has got the team performing well and of course deserves the euro campaign. But its a results and performance based business. People who are loyal to Clarke can bring up previous good performances, just as people can bring up previous bad performances.

The concern for Scotland fans should be whats best for the national team rather than whats best or fair for Steve Clarke.

Hes got alot of credit in the bank at the moment and goodwill from everyone. But its a results based business, if results don't go well then his future will be discussed again. Its as simple as that.

[BFTD]

Clarke getting an extension seems like a brilliant piece of business now, but the timing was terrible and just seemed like the SFA wanted to keep on a guy they liked which, in all honesty, was probably the case. They're getting no credit for Clarke being a secret warlock with magical Nations League powers.

Anyway, he still not resigned yet? Fucking brass neck on that c**t, honestly.

[forameus]

16 hours ago, 2426255 said:

I agree with you but you can bet your bottom dollar If we start crap in Euros qualifying fans will say that kind of thing. They will also say get someone else before it's too late and we screw up our pot 2 seeding. I think the SFA would back him in adversity as he's earned them some decent money through his successes in reaching the Euros, Nations League A and improving attendances.  

I agree on the normal games, was just pointing to how utterly shambolic the approach was for the Ukraine game.  People talked about forfeiting it, and were rightly laughed at, but in the end we may as fucking well have with the fawning pish we managed, and I fully believe it affected the players at the end of a long, long season.  We offered a fucking poll at half time on "lion of the match" to choose which of their players (who were easily beating us at the time) was the best.  One team turned up ready to actually play and win a game of football, and it wasn't us.  We didn't stand a chance.

Edited October 4, 2022 by forameus

[Donathan]

It’s too simplistic to say Clarke should be sacked if we fail to make euro 2024 and extended if we do make it, but that should at least be the rule of thumb we are working towards. 

[Gordopolis]

It’s too simplistic to say Clarke should be sacked if we fail to make euro 2024 and extended if we do make it, but that should at least be the rule of thumb we are working towards. 

Moreso the former than the latter. If he makes Euro 2024 then, so long as he wants to stay, he almost certainly will be extended. Exception being we lose all of our qualifiers and stumble thru our playoff before being horsed in the tournament.

[2426255]

On 28/09/2022 at 21:32, accies1874 said:

I thought our offside trap was shockingly good however I'll need to watch the game back.

I looked back over the three games just to see how well the offside trap functioned. It was used in all of the games - most frequently away in Krakow - but sometimes the defenders would instead drop off and match runs instead of trying to catch the Ukrainian forwards offside. It was a brave strategy to try and implement considering it was a new defensive pairing and I think you have to give them the benefit of the doubt as to how well it functioned, sometimes it was executed really well and a few times I think we were a little fortunate.

I have posted the video of the times when it was obvious to me that the offside trap was deliberately being used in our game away to Ukraine for anyone who is interested. The Scottish defender typically stepped up or slowed down and then after the pass was made a hand would go up in the air and that seemed to be a good way to identify when it was mostly being used.

Definitely in the risk/reward category for me. One thing I noticed is that most of the time the Ukrainian player delivering the final pass wasn't always under pressure which I understood to be one of the benefits of keeping a high line i.e. so you could keep the opposition players heads down. 

 

[Bing.McCrosby]

On 04/10/2022 at 22:42, Gordopolis said:

On 04/10/2022 at 22:13, Donathan said:

It’s too simplistic to say Clarke should be sacked if we fail to make euro 2024 and extended if we do make it, but that should at least be the rule of thumb we are working towards. 

Moreso the former than the latter. If he makes Euro 2024 then, so long as he wants to stay, he almost certainly will be extended. Exception being we lose all of our qualifiers and stumble thru our playoff before being horsed in the tournament.

I think in your second scenario their would be plenty of support for him still tbh.

Edited October 7, 2022 by BingMcCrosby

[2426255]

Quote

The issue might be more can we keep hold of Steve? instead of do we want to keep him? there is a bit of me that thinks it might be more a case of us hoping to keep him and what he wants to do but I know he’s absolutely committed to taking us to the Euros and we’ll go from there. Steve is happy being Scotland manager and we are really happy he is Scotland manager. We’ll have the contract discussions when the time is right. We have a good enough relationship to know how all that goes.

It’s a funny old business but we are delighted he’s taken us from pot four to pot two. The last time we gave him a contract we got slaughtered for it. Some people were saying, How can you give him a contract now? I remember being asked after the AGM in June if I was having to think about the manager. A few months later everyone is saying, ‘We need to give him a new deal’. We had a bad window in June with results. It happens. You look at his work over the course. There are only three or four managers who have managed more games than him now. He’s been here a long time.

 Ian Maxwell, SFA Chief Executive

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/9593780/steve-clarke-scotland-attract-new-job-offers/

[Jambomo]

2 hours ago, 2426255 said:

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/9593780/steve-clarke-scotland-attract-new-job-offers/

That’s a good article, I like what he is saying. I don’t we should be looking at it on a window by window, or even tournament basis. Sometimes you’ll have a few poor games, like we did in June, and the impact can be big because qualifying groups are small and there is not much room for errors. 

What matters more is how well the team are performing overall, so right now like Maxwell says, we have a good squad but we are also playing some really good football. The squad seems really happy and the overall trajectory is very positive, we are seeing some successes, I feel that Clarke has the team playing as well as it can play.

For me that’s the things we are looking for and I’d be worried about keeping him as well, I would expect there to be teams looking at what he’s done and thinking he might suit them.

[ScottishZizou]

On 29/09/2022 at 15:41, craigkillie said:

Bing getting a hard time for his original nonsense thread, but he was far from the only one getting carried away after a couple of bad results, as we can see from this selection of posts after the Ireland game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First time online in months and therefore this notification. Steve Clarke has still achieved less than Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland have in the last 10 years in terms of best tournament result, the only home nation not to reach last 16 of the euros. We’ve still only qualified for one tournament where we monumentally shit the bed. We then monumentally shit the bed in the World Cup playoff at home. Which part of that do you disagree with? If the end goal is reaching and doing well in major tournaments then it’s par at best

[stuart87]

7 hours ago, ScottishZizou said:

First time online in months and therefore this notification. Steve Clarke has still achieved less than Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland have in the last 10 years in terms of best tournament result, the only home nation not to reach last 16 of the euros. We’ve still only qualified for one tournament where we monumentally shit the bed. We then monumentally shit the bed in the World Cup playoff at home. Which part of that do you disagree with? If the end goal is reaching and doing well in major tournaments then it’s par at best

It’s not really fair to compare Steve Clarke’s 3 years in charge to the last 10 years of Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 

[ScottishZizou]

57 minutes ago, stuart87 said:

It’s not really fair to compare Steve Clarke’s 3 years in charge to the last 10 years of Ireland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 

Fair point. But just view it through the lens of, as yet Steve Clarke hasn’t taken us to the heights that any other home nation has achieved in the last 6 years 

[Clown Job]

1 hour ago, ScottishZizou said:

Fair point. But just view it through the lens of, as yet Steve Clarke hasn’t taken us to the heights that any other home nation has achieved in the last 6 years 

No Scotland manager has achieved what they’ve done in recent years 

That being qualifying for the next round of a tournament 

[Bing.McCrosby]

18 minutes ago, Clown Job said:

No Scotland manager has achieved what they’ve done in recent years 

That being qualifying for the next round of a tournament 

I think he's aware of that. Historically we have underperformed. That doesn't mean we judge a current manager against previous poor performances. We judge it on the players available now.

[ScottishZizou]

On 05/11/2022 at 10:30, Clown Job said:

No Scotland manager has achieved what they’ve done in recent years 

That being qualifying for the next round of a tournament 

No other manager has been at the inflated 24 team Euros. Qualifying for the next stage (last 16) is the equivalent of the old European Championship 

[Anfield 1977]

Clarke has a habit of pulling a result out of the bag just when opinion is turning against him.

The penalty kick win in Vienna is an example followed by the recent win against Ukraine.

[Ken Deans]

I was one of the people who wanted Stevie out after the Euros. 

It's always been about performing in big games

Given the last 3 results am thinking fair play let's have another go

[No_Problemo]

Which anti Clarke poster runs the Scots Abroad account then…

[Elgin Macca]

I'm far from anti-Clarke but I did find myself thinking similar after watching some of these games. Although I do believe we are slowly getting there I couldn't see us laying a glove on Argentina/Germany etc just now but these teams somehow find a way with (on paper) a far less superior squad.  

[lubo_blaha]

Our record against higher ranked nations from 2020 onwards:

0-0 vs Ukraine (A)
3-0 vs Ukraine (H)
1-3 vs Ukraine (H)
2-0 vs Denmark (H)
1-0 vs Austria (A)
0-2 vs Denmark (A)
1-3 vs Croatia (H)
0-0 vs England (A)
0-2 vs Czech Rep (H)
2-2 vs Austria (H)
1-1 vs Serbia (A)
1-0 vs Czech Rep (H)
2-1 vs Czech Rep (A)

5W 4D 4L

Slovakia may have been higher ranked than us at the time but I can be bothered checking. Can add 1W and 1L if they were. Certainly not a bad record against higher ranked teams.