RicoS321

Aye, but he's not an inexperienced Hun. The double standard here is staggering. I think I'd have had Rooney ahead of McGinn to be honest. Although maybe he could get a lift fae his brither.

Gilmour is playing for Norwich every week and I'd clearly ready for the first team. He's already better than the other options. I get the impression that there was a little more to it with Marshall, but not sure. Also, a young player coming through would offer more continuity than an older player not playing, so I sort of understand it. I think you're right about Ramsay though, I don't think he's international standard yet either, just that he's better than Patterson. That said, we're really poorly covered in that role. I think Shaun Rooney can probably feel a little disappointed not to be brought along after the season he had last year. Again, he's not "international class" as such, but simply better than the alternatives in the same way that Considine was previously.

Yep, agreed, Patterson's defending isn't good enough for international football yet and Scotland shouldn't be a platform for basic player development. When I said diminishes his potential, I was referring specifically to his composure and confidence, which doesn't have much room for improvement at all. The best part about Ramsay is that you can see an obvious pathway for him to really get better and better, as well as his physical attributes improving. I'm genuinely unsure if Patterson will address the weaker elements of his game. He reminds me of Hutton, who certainly went on to have a great career despite some obvious limitations. It's frustrating that Ramsay isn't even in the discussion when talking about right backs. It shows a pathetic lack of understanding and the obvious bias of the media.

I don't know if Ramsay is the better prospect, I'd have to see more of Patterson, but I'd say that currently he looks the better player of the two. Patterson looks to be a bit quicker, which will really work in his favour and could take him further, Ramsay has a composure and confidence miles beyond his years, but then that means less potential (he's already got it). What irks me a little is the media are putting him in that Scotland team, and they're also making it difficult for Clarke to make the correct decision (in my opinion) to leave him out for the Austria game. If O'Donnell had performed like Patterson yesterday, we'd have been playing down his part in the goal and highlighting the basic errors, poor positioning and poor use of the ball. Patterson looked like a player not playing every week. I don't think it's the job of the national team to develop a young player for a club, thus Ramsay should be in the squad ahead of him, until the point that the Huns actually develop him. I'd raise a slight double standard for Gilmour, who is an exceptional talent - however that is being rewarded with regular fitba.

I don't think we'd have won the game without Gilmour. Fraser isn't playing at the moment, so I can see why he wasn't playing after a fairly average performance against Denmark too. I think the intention would have been to be 3 up and make the changes to rest the the team, but obviously we couldn't hit the ball accurately towards the goal. Hopefully Clarke is scouring the internet for Scottish grannies as we speak to see if they have any strikers hidden abroad. With Israel winning, we've got a fantastic opportunity now, we just need a couple of performances like the one against England (in terms of effort and tempo) and we'll get second place. We need Dykes to have the game of his life as unfortunately he's the best we've got.

Aye, that was brutal stuff. Good to see Gilmour in the flesh, he's going to be phenomenal for Scotland. The rest for fairly gash. Haar Don was right to suggest playing Nisbet tonight. Hopefully we'll never see him in a Scotland top again. The defence was solid because Moldova were gash. I don't get the hype over Patterson - he was just okay. Ramsay looks more ready, but I fully expect the weegie press to hype is performance to the moon when O'Donnell would be far more deserving of a place against Austria. Need more from Christie, or we should shunt him for Turnbull. I think we'll lose on Tuesday. There is very little drive in the team.

I agree with the last couple of paragraphs, but the chopping and changing has been entirely outwith his control. I think we roughly know his preferred team but international football just isn't a priority and as such we have folk missing regularly. You're then into the dregs where you end up trying out players. Because we don't have players in two or three positions that you can rely on to be first picks, you then do have to look at form. Dykes as an example has been poor for his club, so it becomes difficult to justify playing him even though it has obvious tactical merit. Guys like Armstrong are good players who play at the top level but they don't bring the same balance as Jack, McGregor, Gilmour or McGinn, one of whom is nearly always missing.

But Dykes was a proven goalscorer for Livingston in the spfl, as Adams would be too. It's a poor argument. Boyd was a proven spfl goalscorer, as was Griffiths and neither replicated at international level. If he doesn't score against likes of Austria then he's no better than Dykes or Adams. The question was about why Wales etc can perform better than us and the answer is simply that in the key areas such as striker, we're not good enough. We have to basically play the form player, whether that's Shankland, Nisbet or Brophy (or whoever) in the hope that they may improve to a level that offers something against the teams that we need to pick up points in. Nisbet is definitely our best option, but currently he's understandably behind the other two. There are two approaches to today's game. The first is to play Dykes and Adams and hope that they score some goals and develop a partnership in time for Austria, or to play Nisbet with a view to him starting the Austria game alongside Dykes or Adams (I can't see him alongside Adams, he'll need the flick ons and hold up play). It'll be interesting to see what Clarke chooses, it's not an enviable choice. Having McGinn back will make a big difference to the shape of the midfield though which should help.

Because Nisbet being good enough against Moldova doesn't make him good enough against Austria. Just as he's good against the bottom six but less so against the top six. That's the whole point about the striker position at the moment. It's like the dons a few years back when Rooney was up front. He was great against 80% of the opposition but wasn't good enough to get something in the vital games that would have won us a cup or taken us into the group stages in Europe. Nisbet, Shankland, Griffiths etc are all lacking in key areas that means that they get out-muscled and offer little against more dominant teams. Nisbet isn't strong enough to be a target man against Austria and nor is he quick enough to take it in the channels, lay it off and get into the box and still have the guile to nip in at the front or back post. There is no defining feature in Nisbet's game - yet - that will make him good enough for international football. Dykes has the attributes of work rate and strength that at least performed a function. Adams might be fast and skillful enough to make it but I'm not convinced. Nisbet isn't good enough in one single area of his game that wouldn't be easily nullified by a strong opponent, just like Rooney was nearly always anonymous against the Tims. Kenny Miller is a good example of a player suited to international football. His finishing wasn't amazing, but even against the best teams his extremely high work rate and pace allowed us to get the ball up the pitch and get others up in support and eventually create chances. Steven Fletcher would cause problems with his hold up play, but wasn't a great finisher (dykes similar). They both allowed us to get into the game into the opponent's half and allow our players in positions where we are strong to get involved. It was obvious against Denmark that neither Adams or Fraser had any attributes that trouble the Danes, thus the ball consistently came back at us in short order. I like Nisbet, he's good and has potential. He might play the game of his life in the same way the others might. If we're playing him though, it has to be alongside Dykes as Nisbet isn't capable of doing the ugly stuff on his own and Adams not quite there either. If I'd have to categorise Nisbet, I'd say he's like a young Kris Boyd. Hopefully he proves me wrong.

It's fine, I just wasn't trying! Basically, on Android (and perhaps others) the page is cached rather than the link in your recent page visits (when you click on the address bar, your presented with 5-6 recent pages). If you click on that it takes you to the cached page rather than following a link to the site. I've never actually thought about it before and just assumed that that it would be the latter as default. When I click on it today, I can still see the site being down, but all I have to do is refresh the page and it clears the cached page. I've been a bit busy so I'd only tried it a couple of times over the last few days and obviously didn't refresh. Although it is good to know that's how my recent pages works on the phone.

Clarke didn't change his mind on those players, injuries and covid happened. McKenna was replaced by Tierney, with Gallagher in for Souttar and Hendry (and Bates). There is very little between those players, hence trying them out. Similarly in the striker role, there has been zero stand out candidate, hence why mcburnie got so many minutes before dykes came in. Nisbet isn't good enough yet and might never be. He was tactically poor against Denmark with a poor starting lineup. That said, our squad is thin in too many important areas (Wales have good players in the right areas, Bale especially). Gilmour is fantastic, but we also need a fit McGinn to get close to the front two. When you fall back on guys like Armstrong and McLean the cracks begin to appear as they don't offer anything different. Beyond our best starting eleven we're not good enough to make up for the areas we're deficient in (right back and striker). Like McInnes, Clarke has a complete aversion to useful subs and takes too long to change a game. Like McInnes, he won't take a risk. Scotland can't afford to make glaring errors like the Denmark game, and it happens too often under Clarke. The problem is that he's also probably about (I mean about, the options are all similar) the best manager we can expect at that price and job prestige. He's very good with the players and they all know what they're supposed to be doing, it's just too often that the tactics are simply incorrect. We'll beat Moldova tomorrow though, looking forward to it, been a while since I've been to Hampden.

Me too. Still does when I follow the default link in my browser. Came here via twitter to check if it was still working.

Maybe they think we're desperate now that he's injured.

At the moment, I think McKenzie is our best option for left centre back (in a 2 or 3). I don't think that McRorie or Gallagher are good enough on their weak side. Campbell can cover left back.

Pretty certain he's right sided. Also, Gallagher had a couple of excellent cross field passes yesterday, although overall he was poor (McRorie was worse). It was telling that McRorie and Gallagher were swapped at half time.

Just back. Dire performance. Honking defensively and if Lewis wasn't so good at one in ones we'd have been down earlier. Ramsay was great, but we completely lacked shape and any sort of recognisable tactics. Samuels looked like a head down and charge fast player who'll hopefully get better, longstaff looked decent but similar to what we have. Watkins was fine when he came on but I really don't see how he fits into our side. He's clearly not a winger. Jet was the only player who created anything good, with a lovely pass to Hayes (Hayes actually did the correct thing with his shot and the keeper was really well positioned before making a cunt of it). Otherwise we were gash and completely one dimensional. I don't know where we go from here. No idea what our best eleven is. Our squad is as lopsided as it was under McInnes. Hopefully the new signings just need a few weeks to gel and Glass adopts a system they can work in (I'm thinking 3-5-2 would maybe get the best out of our squad, but not sure).

Christ, we've been complaining about Short-staff all window then when we finally address that.... I think the loan system is good, I'm just not sure of our strategy, or if there is one at all. Longstaff is probably exactly the type of player we should be considering. Someone that we can't afford but can improve our first eleven. Jenks is a squad filler, like Edmondson and the various others before him. They only serve to compete with our young players for game time, devaluing them (Campbell versus Jenks). It should be the same when we loan our players too. They should be going for 90 regular 70-90 minutes of football. Accordingly we should be sending them to places where they're good enough to get those minutes.

Don't remember bates being any better than McRorie, although he is more physical I think. It was clear last night that McRorie struggled on his wrong side, and I've no reason to assume that bates would be any better in that regard. It's a little bit like the McInnes style of signing players because they're good and available rather than trying to fit into our team. We needed a left sided centre half.

At least we've heard of this one. I agree though, it's not ideal and not what we were expecting, or told, under Glass/Cormack. Weirdly, he's in his last year too. Didn't play at all last season. Straight in the team ahead of Jenks? Fuck knows to be honest, I'm struggling to see what we're doing with the team, including Watkins who doesn't quite fit either. It's like when we signed McGeouch because Ojo wasn't good enough. I feel sorry for Campbell who played well against hearts and had a bit of urgency about him last night again. I was hoping Glass would try and get the best out of him.

Just back, that was pish. Very reminiscent of the last Rijeka game, with it being over before a ball was kicked. Ramsay the only positive again tonight. Ojo and Ramirez worked hard. Jet improved us, Jenks not good enough. McRorie had a poor game, really struggled under pressure on his wrong foot, felt a bit sorry for him. Not sure about Gallagher. As many have mentioned, we lack that link between midfield and forward, with Jet the only real option there. I'm not convinced that Watkins really offers that either, and don't know how he'll do alongside Ramirez. I still don't know what our best eleven is. I'm interested to see where we go from here. There's a gap between us and the group stages and it's going to take money to get us there. We've spent seven years under McInnes relying on the luck of the draw to get us there and it doesn't work. In many ways it's good to know that it doesn't work under Glass either. He's not some genius who's going to get us miles further through small tactical wins. Hopefully we can be a bit more realistic about that.

Watkins returns? Strange one if true. He was good for us last season, but why wouldn't we have moved for him last week? He'd have been extremely useful tonight. Happy if he signs, but strikes me as the type of business that should be done ahead of European fixtures. Edit: I don't mean ahead of all the fixtures as he's not long been released, but just one we should have been ready to snap up if we were interested.

2012 I think. Broke his leg during the Brown era. We should never had another Brown as part of our management team.

Out until Christmas. Could ruin his chances of top 3 dons of all time. Shame, was playing well, fit and solid. Hopefully he'll be back.

Riddled with covaids. Conspiracy. Everyone's against us etc.

Nice one. Very short up front, so it'll be good to have someone to take off the bench at least.