RicoS321

Fuck knows about this one like. No idea what our best team is. I'm guessing Bates will partner Gallagher at the back. Be interesting to see if Samuels turns out to be not shite. Will jet get a start? Oot 0-10, every outfield player scoring a single goal, with Lewis walking off in the 87th minute because Ferguson won't let him take a pen (which he subsequently misses).

Aye, Moldova away is set up nicely for the perfect Scotland.

Difficult to say, looks like one of those that is a slow developer, he seems very slight. If he's good enough at fitba then he'll benefit from the loan move.

Some victory, fantastic performance. Really determined and good all over the park. Can't fault a single player.

Could have just not given the pen. VAR is gash like. He probably felt sorry for Adams for booking him for nothing. Great half though, fantastic energy from Scotland, the front two working so well together.

To be fair, they're only responding to the pathetic questions of the media who spout the same old pish "is this a must win game Calum/Steve?". It's such an inane, idiot, question, I wish they would just tell them to ask something less childish. Or just say "mathematically not" or "every game we play is must win as we don't know what future matches hold in terms of injury or covid aids". But generally, just tell them to ram that type of shite up their bumcracks. The notion that what you day in the media surrounding an approach to a game has any bearing on what is said in the dressing room is ridiculous. Why in the world would anyone announce that? As supporters, we just have to wait and see the evidence on the park when the game kicks off. I don't expect a free flowing attacking performance with midfielders sacrificed for forwards, but I do expect a battle and a lot of pressure put onto them on the ball and a really high work rate.

Annoyingly, we've got the option of a draw tonight. The old Alex Smith conundrum. We've got to setup to win the game, getting the first goal. A draw just sets us up for glorious failure, a win gives us the confidence to do the same against Israel and keep everything in our own hands. There's a point in every single qualification where you need to stretch yourselves and get the difficult points and we've failed every time in the last two decades (discounting the nation's league...). This is the game for us. Clarke needs to be sure the players know that. I don't have faith in that unfortunately.

Again, late notice, McGinn has been with a squad before so knows the drill, so perhaps just a case of pragmatism over ability. It's not a horrendous pick and assuming O'Donnell is fine then we won't see McGinn anyway.

I didn't realise the u21s were away. The logistics of getting Ramsay from Turkey to Austria during covid probably aren't worth it.

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).