Scotland v Ukraine

[pub car king]

Clarke needs to go away and come up with an alternative way to play. The 5 at the back works when we have the key players to make it work, ie Tierney at the back and you can't play 2 strikers with it. Now that's Croatia and Ukraine worked it out so others will too. There needs to be another system to switch to and last night it should have been switched well before half time. 

If he plays McTominey in the back 3 it's a luxury when you have other players to cover for him as he isn't a natural defender and never will be so you have to compensate for that. The jumble sale of players in defence last night was a disaster.

Hickey was exposed on the right he wasn't supported Hanley and Cooper didn't have a fucking clue and McTominey had nobody steering him. For what it's worth I would have gone with SOD, Hendry and McKenna. 

That's not to say the midfield were blameless Gilmour and McGinn had the worst games they will ever have for Scotland, it's unfortunate but it happens. As for the 2 up front it does not work against good teams. I think Dykes got hooked because of the yellow card which he would have inevitably got a second with how he plays. 

It was a perfect storm of fucking it up when it matters yet again.

[eez-eh]

For all we give England grief for being arrogant or getting carried away, we don’t half engage in it ourselves.

Some amount of bravado before last night and before the Czech game at the Euros. Both times we were swept aside.

[sparky88]

20 minutes ago, DA Baracus said:

 

Then we have guys who are so ridiculously one footed. Robertson is a prime example. He had a chance second half to shoot just inside the box, but it was on his right so he actually tried to execute a massive turn to get it on to his left.

Oh my. Robertson would walk into nearly every international side in the world, including Ukraine and England's. 

Folk are massively overreacting to the performance last night. 

[DA Baracus]

1 minute ago, sparky88 said:

Oh my. Robertson would walk into nearly every international side in the world, including Ukraine and England's. 

Folk are massively overreacting to the performance last night. 

How does that make what I said untrue? Guy has no right foot.

[Coooombe]

35 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

I don't think we did press.  You reckon that's what they exploited.

They made us "press" by having a centre back sat on the ball until we moved forward. He'd still be standing there now if we didn't push up on him. As soon as our midfield took a few steps up, they triggered their attack and were away. Maybe if we'd committed to a press then it wouldn't have been so easy, but as we seen in the last 20 minutes they could have scored at will when we did press them. 

The solution IMO would have been to go 4-3-3, sit McTominay like an anchor in front of the defence and use the front 3 to bother their back line instead of the 2 we were using. I can't believe Clarke waited until 2-0 to change it. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Coooombe

[Marshmallo]

44 minutes ago, Neilly said:

Yarmo - 45 international goals. 15 more than Dennis Law/Kenny Dalglish and I would imagine more than our current squad put together.

Zinchenko - A midfielder converted to a left back by Pep. Plays every game for Ukraine in midfield.

Malinovsky - Yes, the Atalanta lad. A pair of eyes would be be enough to see how much more ability he has than McGinn, McGregor, Gilmour and so on. 

Yeremchuk - Operating at the latter stages of the Champions League. Our strikers play for Southampton and Queen's Park Rangers.

We can all spin it how we want ultimately you only needed to watch the game last night to see a huge difference in technical ability.

The wee attacking midfielder for Dynamo Kiev was top class as well. Hickey was poor but having to face that winger one on one with little support from a wide midfielder didn't help him.

[craigkillie]

I don't think we need to move away from the back three necessarily, I think it gets the best out of a lot of players when it works, and gives us a lot more flexibility in how we play. I've never been a big back three fan in general, maybe because my club has hardly ever played one in my 25 years watching us, but it's fairly obviously worked a treat for Scotland in the last couple of years, even in games when we haven't had both Robertson and Tierney available.

I think we do need to have a rethink about the attacking shape though, a front two has basically never functioned well, with the exception of Wembley where the set-up was all about being compact. As soon as we want to open up on a team, we just lack options when we set up that way (Israel play-off, Czechs, Croatia, Moldova at home, last night). We are miles better with a single striker and two players (McGinn and one other) running off them, plus the wing-backs pushing on. You lose so much of that with the front two.

[Gordopolis]

A Denmark team with no Hojbjerg, Delaney, Poulsen or Damsgaard (not including Eriksen who wasn't back to fitness by then) in a dead rubber game. You seen what Denmark done with us when the game mattered and with those names included. They were also a country mile in front of us.
This constant clamber for excuses by some is just utterly embarrassing. It's fine to admit when you are beaten by a better team as was proven last night. 

Haven't you just listed excuses to dismiss the result and performance against Denmark?

We were well beaten by the better team last night, I'm certainly not claiming otherwise. But I also think it's fair to say we brought hardly anything like our best performance.

[Ludo*1]

1 hour ago, craigkillie said:

 

 

 

Your "non-football pals" would probably have a better grasp of how this whole thing worked than you do. We could have won all our Nations League games 1000-0 and we'd still have been playing Ukraine at Hampden last night.

 

 

We'd have had the back route opportunity in addition though would we not like we did for the Euros? 

Apologies if I've got it wrong. Thanks for the snide reply though.

ETA: Worked it out now!

Edited June 2, 2022 by Ludo*1

[Ludo*1]

6 hours ago, Lurkst said:

That would only have guaranteed us an away play-off, we ended up in a better position. 

 

Ah right, thanks! So it's only one or the other then? I get it now!

[G51]

3 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I don't think we need to move away from the back three necessarily, I think it gets the best out of a lot of players when it works, and gives us a lot more flexibility in how we play. I've never been a big back three fan in general, maybe because my club has hardly ever played one in my 25 years watching us, but it's fairly obviously worked a treat for Scotland in the last couple of years, even in games when we haven't had both Robertson and Tierney available.

I think we do need to have a rethink about the attacking shape though, a front two has basically never functioned well, with the exception of Wembley where the set-up was all about being compact. As soon as we want to open up on a team, we just lack options when we set up that way (Israel play-off, Czechs, Croatia, Moldova at home, last night). We are miles better with a single striker and two players (McGinn and one other) running off them, plus the wing-backs pushing on. You lose so much of that with the front two.

The back three when we don't have Tierney available to over/underlap down the left tends to leave three centre backs marking one attacker when we have the ball in the opposition half. It just leaves us a man down and makes it so much more difficult for us.

Ditching 3CB whenever we don't have Tierney makes a lot of sense, but it also leaves us trying to coach two different shapes in a limited time period. There aren't a lot of easy answers.

[J_Stewart]

The Ukrainian team are staying in my hotel. Every one of the rude c***s just walked past me without apologising for ruining my night. Selfish arseholes.

Scotland were also very bad at the football. Very, very bad.

Saw them again at reception just now. Told them all would be forgiven if they beat the Welsh. “We’ll f**k those rugger loving, leak munching, sheep shagging weirdos” I was told.

Apology accepted

[Monkey Tennis]

1 minute ago, Ludo*1 said:

Ah right, thanks! So it's only one or the other then? I get it now!

Christ almighty.

Willie Miller has a better grasp of the competition than you.

[Neilly]

Just now, Gordopolis said:

Haven't you just listed excuses to dismiss the result and performance against Denmark?
 

I'm not dismissing the result and performance. It was a fine performance and result. See how I can do that? Just call something for what it is. Would you be able to just say the better team won last night without any caveat? 

You are comparing apples with oranges in your line of thinking comparing that Denmark dead rubber and their mentality compared to what we faced last night in a winner takes all tie. Surely you can see that? I just don't get the unwillingness for Scottish people to admit we were beaten by far the better team last night, it's just bizarre behaviour. 

 

 

[Ludo*1]

Just now, Monkey Tennis said:

Christ almighty.

Willie Miller has a better grasp of the competition than you.

Fair enough, maybe he does. Seem to have figured it out now due to other replies though.

[Jacksgranda]

9 hours ago, Menzel said:

Started playing after going two down. Thoroughly depressing

The Aberdeen of international football.

Also "good squad on paper".

[TheScarf]

Ukraine are better than us as they have better players than us, and that's all there is to it.

[GordonD]

At least I won't have to spend Saturday chewing my fingernails.

[Gordopolis]

4 minutes ago, Neilly said:

I'm not dismissing the result and performance. It was a fine performance and result. See how I can do that? Just call something for what it is. Would you be able to just say the better team won last night without any caveat? 

You are comparing apples with oranges in your line of thinking comparing that Denmark dead rubber and their mentality compared to what we faced last night in a winner takes all tie. Surely you can see that? I just don't get the unwillingness for Scottish people to admit we were beaten by far the better team last night, it's just bizarre behaviour. 

 

 

Last night, of the two teams who played, the better team won without a shadow of a doubt. How's that for you? 

Isn't it only natural human curiosity though to try to understand why that was? To look at prior form and performances and compare? 

If you find that "bizarre", then perhaps a discussion forum isn't for you.

[craigkillie]

Just now, Ludo*1 said:

We'd have had the back route opportunity in addition though would we not like we did for the Euros? 

Apologies if I've got it wrong. Thanks for the snide reply though.

I don't mean to be rude, but have you not been paying attention to the qualifiers at all? When did you think these other Nations League qualifiers would be taking place? The two best non-qualified Nations League group winners (Austria and Czech Republic) just took up two of the unseeded spots in these play-offs, we qualified anyway, and as a seed, so our Nations League performance was irrelevant.