Why were we so shite for so long?

[Donathan]

2 hours ago, Gordopolis said:

11 hours ago, Donathan said:

Strachan was awful, yet somehow not even close to our worst manager of the 21st century
 
 
1. Steve Clarke
2. Walter Smith
3. Alex McLeish (v1)
4. Craig Brown - Including results from 2000 onwards only
5. Gordon Strachan
6. Alex McLeish (v2)
7. Berti Vogts
8. George Burley
9. Craig Levein

What are you ranking them on? Stats or your overall feel for how good/horrendous they were?

 

Competitive record mainly. Clarke qualified, Smith/McLeish1 got us very close in an incredibly tough group. Brown got us pretty close in a tough group. Strachan's result in Georgia let him down. McLeish2 was horrendous but at least won a UNL group to get us the playoff that we ultimately qualified from.

 

Vogts and Burley were nearly men. Vogts was drubbed in a playoff and Burley missed the playoffs on goal difference.

 

Levein was the worst of the bunch. In his campaign, we were the very first team in Europe to be eliminated from qualifying.

[craigkillie]

Being the first in Europe to be eliminated doesn't really count for much, since it was mostly down to a quirk of the fixture list. We finished 4th in that group and would have done even if he had finished the campaign.

[eez-eh]

1 hour ago, craigkillie said:

Being the first in Europe to be eliminated doesn't really count for much, since it was mostly down to a quirk of the fixture list. We finished 4th in that group and would have done even if he had finished the campaign.

That last sentence is a very bold statement.

We took 2 points from the 4 games Levein was in charge of. It’s nigh on inconceivable he would have gotten 6 points from Croatia and we were only a point clear of Wales in 5th place.

[git-intae-thum]

Any street or vacant bit of grass in Scotland up until the early 90's:

Since then:

That's the real reason.

[Gordopolis]

 
Competitive record mainly. Clarke qualified, Smith/McLeish1 got us very close in an incredibly tough group. Brown got us pretty close in a tough group. Strachan's result in Georgia let him down. McLeish2 was horrendous but at least won a UNL group to get us the playoff that we ultimately qualified from.
 
Vogts and Burley were nearly men. Vogts was drubbed in a playoff and Burley missed the playoffs on goal difference.
 
Levein was the worst of the bunch. In his campaign, we were the very first team in Europe to be eliminated from qualifying.

Fair dos.

I see it slightly differently regards the bottom placing. Burley, for me, was all over the place. Maybe it was just the sudden contrast of going from the momentum and tight ship of Smith, McLeish v1, to the chaos of Burley where we struggled to score goals and looked really open and vulnerable.
Levein brought back a sense of stability for a short period, and although he never really cut it, his overall stat record is comfortably superior.

[Donathan]

21 minutes ago, Gordopolis said:

Fair dos.

I see it slightly differently regards the bottom placing. Burley, for me, was all over the place. Maybe it was just the sudden contrast of going from the momentum and tight ship of Smith, McLeish v1, to the chaos of Burley where we struggled to score goals and looked really open and vulnerable.
Levein brought back a sense of stability for a short period, and although he never really cut it, his overall stat record is comfortably superior.

I’ve just looked again and perhaps I’m giving Burley too much credit for the fact that we only missed out on second place on goal difference. Even if we had come second in that group, we’d have been the worst second placed team and missed the playoffs anyway, and the only reason that we finished level on points with Norway is because they drew with Iceland twice and drew in Macedonia whereas we managed to take 9 points from those two teams to Norway’s 6. 
 

Euro 2012 qualifying with Levein was also very poor though. Drawing in Lithuania is a very poor result however you slice it up (say on par with the defeat in Macedonia). I’m not convinced that the 4-6-0 formation in Prague is what caused us to lose that game, but either way, only taking a single point from our main rivals isn’t acceptable. 
 

Burley’s statistical record looks worse because he took charge of six friendlies which included no wins, two draws and four defeats. 
 

Levein’s friendly record was actually pretty good at seven wins, one draw and four defeats, however his full campaign was near identical to Burley’s and the 2014 campaign was a disaster (Strachan righted the ship and got us 4th, but Levein managed to have us all but eliminated from only a few qualifiers)

 

It’s all semantics anyway. They’re clearly the worst two, IMO. Vogts was horrendous, but at least he largely managed to get us into the playoffs and set the scene for a more successful period. 

[Richey Edwards]

24 minutes ago, Donathan said:

Euro 2012 qualifying with Levein was also very poor though. Drawing in Lithuania is a very poor result however you slice it up (say on par with the defeat in Macedonia). I’m not convinced that the 4-6-0 formation in Prague is what caused us to lose that game, but either way, only taking a single point from our main rivals isn’t acceptable. 
 

Levein should have been launched straight in the fucking sea just for thinking that the 4-6-0 was worth trying. It was a fucking stupid decision.

[craigkillie]

I’ve just looked again and perhaps I’m giving Burley too much credit for the fact that we only missed out on second place on goal difference. Even if we had come second in that group, we’d have been the worst second placed team and missed the playoffs anyway, and the only reason that we finished level on points with Norway is because they drew with Iceland twice and drew in Macedonia whereas we managed to take 9 points from those two teams to Norway’s 6. 
 
Euro 2012 qualifying with Levein was also very poor though. Drawing in Lithuania is a very poor result however you slice it up (say on par with the defeat in Macedonia). I’m not convinced that the 4-6-0 formation in Prague is what caused us to lose that game, but either way, only taking a single point from our main rivals isn’t acceptable. 
 
Burley’s statistical record looks worse because he took charge of six friendlies which included no wins, two draws and four defeats. 
 
Levein’s friendly record was actually pretty good at seven wins, one draw and four defeats, however his full campaign was near identical to Burley’s and the 2014 campaign was a disaster (Strachan righted the ship and got us 4th, but Levein managed to have us all but eliminated from only a few qualifiers)
 
It’s all semantics anyway. They’re clearly the worst two, IMO. Vogts was horrendous, but at least he largely managed to get us into the playoffs and set the scene for a more successful period. 

Vogts had our easiest group in my time watching Scotland and only narrowly scraped into the play-offs. Giving him credit for reaching the play-offs is a bit like giving Ally McCoist credit for winning League 2 and League 1 with Rangers.

[Richey Edwards]

3 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Vogts had our easiest group in my time watching Scotland and only narrowly scraped into the play-offs. Giving him credit for reaching the play-offs is a bit like giving Ally McCoist credit for winning League 2 and League 1 with Rangers.

The performance against Faroe Islands should have been a sacking offence. The first half is the second worst half of football I've seen from either team I support (Ayr United and Scotland).

 

[Londonwell]

4 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Vogts had our easiest group in my time watching Scotland and only narrowly scraped into the play-offs. Giving him credit for reaching the play-offs is a bit like giving Ally McCoist credit for winning League 2 and League 1 with Rangers.

From memory I think Germany had a few slip up themselves in the group. A half way competent Scotland side should have been closer to winning the group than we were. 

[lubo_blaha]

Burley was worse than Levein IMO. He came in after two successful managers with us seeded 2nd and he f*cked it. Losing to Macedonia and 4-0 away to Norway were unforgivable. That’s not to mention his lack of ability to control his squad.

[craigkillie]

2 hours ago, Londonwell said:

From memory I think Germany had a few slip up themselves in the group. A half way competent Scotland side should have been closer to winning the group than we were. 

That Germany team were awful and finished with 2 points from their 3 games at the Euros, including a draw with Latvia.

[eez-eh]

It’s weird looking back at how piss-easy that group was. Absolutely no chance you’d get something like that now.

[red23]

On 02/04/2022 at 19:43, lubo_blaha said:

I think attitude and professionalism amongst Scottish players has definitely improved. There are fewer players who act like they’ve made it after their first pro contract and drinking is less of a feature than 10+ years ago. I couldn’t imagine a boozegate scandal with the current crop of players.

I was going to say a prime example of this were a group of players who came through the ranks at Aberdeen with quite obvious bad attitudes and a sense of entitlement like Fraser Fyvie, Clark Robertson, Grimmer, Chris Maguire, Ryan Fraser - these players all seemed to think they were billy big balls 

Edited April 4, 2022 by red23

[Richey Edwards]

13 hours ago, lubo_blaha said:

Burley was worse than Levein IMO. He came in after two successful managers with us seeded 2nd and he f*cked it. Losing to Macedonia and 4-0 away to Norway were unforgivable. That’s not to mention his lack of ability to control his squad.

They were both terrible. I would struggle to come up with redeeming moments from either tenure.

[TheScarf]

Probably better youth coaching now than there was 10-15 years ago too.  Those performance schools or whatever they're called will be helping.  I'm from the same era as the likes of Snodgrass, Dorrans etc where as a youth it was probably all the quickest and biggest guys getting signed on pro youth contracts.  That was certainly the case when some of my mate were playing 17s and 19s for The Caley and County.  They were never going to be professional footballers but they were rapid and 6 foot.  They played against the two I mentioned above and said they were both rapid.  

Would 17/18 year old Snodgrass and Dorrans be signed as professionals now?  I'm not so sure.  Probably harsh to single out those two but they're a good example of average footballers from my era (born in 85) who my mates played against and who played for Scotland in the period where we were losing daft qualifying games to shite teams.

[gannonball]

2 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Probably better youth coaching now than there was 10-15 years ago too.  Those performance schools or whatever they're called will be helping.  I'm from the same era as the likes of Snodgrass, Dorrans etc where as a youth it was probably all the quickest and biggest guys getting signed on pro youth contracts.  That was certainly the case when some of my mate were playing 17s and 19s for The Caley and County.  They were never going to be professional footballers but they were rapid and 6 foot.  They played against the two I mentioned above and said they were both rapid.  

Would 17/18 year old Snodgrass and Dorrans be signed as professionals now?  I'm not so sure.  Probably harsh to single out those two but they're a good example of average footballers from my era (born in 85) who my mates played against and who played for Scotland in the period where we were losing daft qualifying games to shite teams.

Surprised to see Snodgrass mentioned tbh, might of just had a good agent but was he not offered a trial at Barcelona, not really known for going for big lumps.

[TheScarf]

2 minutes ago, gannonball said:

Surprised to see Snodgrass mentioned tbh, might of just had a good agent but was he not offered a trial at Barcelona, not really known for going for big lumps.

He was, and who knows how good me may have been with, you guessed it, better youth coaching at Barcelona.

[RawB93]

10 hours ago, TheScarf said:

He was, and who knows how good me may have been with, you guessed it, better youth coaching at Barcelona.

Snodgrass explains Barcelona trial snub rumours | Goal.com

Absolute waffles, it would seem.

[TheScarf]

16 minutes ago, RawB93 said:

Snodgrass explains Barcelona trial snub rumours | Goal.com

Absolute waffles, it would seem.

Yep, turns out it was horseshit.