RicoS321

Another great win that we made hard work of in the end. We're going to need to be a bit more careful with the subs if we're going to continue on our run. Sokler and Ambrose both dogshit when they came on, and they weren't subs we needed to be making. Similarly, Clarkson for Palaversa was a poor sub. With Clarkson just returning to fitness, don't take him on as one of the holding players, that's not his strength. We'll lose points attempting that in future, one of the three subs would have been fine. Anyway, we dominated completely, with everyone playing a part. Palaversa was good, eased his way through it without being spectacular (probably should have been booked). Keskinen okay, but his lack of pace is going to hold him back, it's his one issue. A really intelligent player, but can't beat his man in a foot race. Unlike Morris, who came on with one instruction and executed it perfectly. Nisbet wasn't up to much, movement wasn't especially good. I think we should send all our shite players to Norway, as Gueye was excellent today. His all round play and movement was top notch. He'd have been my MOTM, if it wasn't for Nilsen. His best game for the Dons (among some good ones), he completely bossed midfield put in some lovely passes, whilst not putting a foot wrong. He also did some of the work Shinnie usually does, as Palaversa was quite reserved in terms of movement. We're definitely winning the league.

Nord VPN is what the pornography connoisseurs swear by, I believe.

If you take a day trip to Paris, then you will be able to pick up a stream from there. Or just use a VPN, whichever is cheapest.

Kids these days and their filters.

Ralston is only 25! He's a placeholder for Hickey I guess, and probably about the level of Stephen O'Donnell before him. I assume that Barhun might be the replacement for McLean, but Clarke obviously felt that he wasn't ready currently. In my opinion, Ferguson should be used further forward (slowly replacing McGinn), but I have a feeling that Clarke might shoehorn him into McLean's role when fit. Porteous should be ahead of Hanley in my view, but I don't think there's much difference, with Porteous being slightly better on the ball. I don't think that there's another good replacement for that area. Otherwise, it's good to finally see players like Conway being given opportunities, although it's probably not enough. It was noticeable how much poorer we were in both games after Dykes went off. He's a good focal point, and offers respite against those better teams in Group A. Overall though, we've been okay and playing to our level. The hope is that this experience works in our favour when the next qualifying campaign comes round. It'd be nice to get some points on the board, perhaps against Poland away or one of the home games. I'd say that in the Poland game we were unlucky, whereas against Portugal we rode our luck. I'm not sure that the multitude of subs we have these days helps managers like Clarke. He never seems to get the balance right between making the right changes and making the correct number of changes. It's almost like we feel obliged to be making double and sometimes triple subs every game these days, and it often affects the balance of the side. He's always had players that he doesn't want to take off during games, and doesn't seem to analyse whether moving players to a different role is better than taking on a sub. For example, Barron should have come on to replace McGinn against Poland. Barron is not a better player than McGinn, but he's better at holding midfield than a McGinn who's just played 80 minutes. Clarke's success at Killie was down to him having players playing simple roles, and just swapping them out for guys who were similar when the original player tired. That's not to say that you can't change tactic during games, just that there is often no need to.

Difficult to describe it as unlucky, got what we deserved. We don't have the depth of squad required to play that like for ninety. The subs made things worse, as they often do under Clarke. It's easy to point to the individual errors, but when you're on the ropes all game, it is difficult not to make them. Not the worst performance though, again, we're just not at the level of Portugal.

Poor half. Should be tanking this pish. In all seriousness though, we're not keeping this up for ninety minutes and getting a clean sheet. I'd take McGinn off, he's not been great. Christie on a yellow is an accident waiting to happen too. Some good solid defending though, McKenna having a great game.

He did hard work, but all on his own terms. Never as part of the team. He'd go tanking back to put in a dodgy sliding tackle, then the next three times he'd let his man go. He doesn't fit into Thelin's system unless he changes that, because fuck having a winger with his approach. It's why Robson played a 3-5-2.

Pretty certain JG Ross has a Cape Verde branch.

"He has owned the situation, returned and convinced us all that he not only recognises those things, but he is hungry...." Seems unlikely

It's probably somewhere in the middle. Time is on his side, so he'll probably give it a few months to make sure we're not going to become an overnight disaster before thinking about signing. Above that, it'll be down to family decisions and what he wants to do in life. If his family are settled here, then that'll probably take priority. If he's a player that wants to see a bit of the world, then there'll be plenty options there too. In terms of ability, we are as good as any other places to be for his level. I don't see him making a big step up from here. He'll be difficult to replace like for like if he does go, but you could slot a speedy winger into his position for something different.

It's interesting, but reeks of someone coming to a conclusion and then trying to back it up, rather than disprove it - bad science, in other words. All his clips are from the first ten minutes, when a guy who hasn't been playing much has likely been told to feel his way into the game, get time on the ball and don't do anything silly. When we were chasing the game, Hanley did step forward more and more and was more progressive with his passing. If he'd not done his brainfart in the final minute, we'd have been describing a solid performance from the back two. The clip he shows of their goal doesn't highlight any issues with Hanley at all. In fact, it does the exact opposite, because had McLean completed his very simple pass in front of Gilmour, our depth had drawn 4-5 of their players too far up and we'd have had a good break on our hands. That may highlight a tactical reason for Hanley not progressing with the ball, but there's not enough evidence to go on because things will have changed as soon as they scored. For me the issue is, and always has been, a not match fit Hanley versus a match fit one. In the prior European campaign and part of qualifying for the most recent, Hanley was playing regularly and performing well for Scotland. He was confident on the ball (despite being limited, of course) and moved it on well. When not playing every week, he's always struggled with concentration and confidence as you'd expect. I'd have Porteous in every week to be honest. He's always confident (sometimes negligently!) and is fine going forward with the ball. Hanley has carved out a very decent international career for a limited player, through hard work and giving his all on the pitch, but it's time for him to step aside.

I thought McGinn was alright up until the point Clarke dropped him back. It's an error he continually makes, because he doesn't want to sub one of his better players who scores goals. The problem is that you significantly reduce the likelihood of him scoring by dropping him deep, and the way he plays the game means he regularly loses possession of the ball (either trying to win a freekick, or play a difficult cross ball). Fine, when you're high up the park, but not in front of your own defence. We just don't need to risk McGinn in that role, the negatives vastly outweigh the positives, and it's criminal that Clarke doesn't see it. If we wanted to retain McGinn, then we should have put him out left and taken the dirty Judas on to play the holding role. I know we were chasing the game, but Morgan was largely ineffective, and doesn't look to have the pace of a good winger.

A cart horse who's there on merit though.

Christ, we didn't deserve to lose that. A lot to like about the performance, but we can maybe see tonight why Clarke has been playing the back three. Ralston, McLean and Hanley all had decent games, but they just aren't quite good enough at the top level and they can't go 90 minutes without error. Shame.

Great response, we deserve to be level. Could win this

We're all over this shite. Apart from the score of course.

Aye, I dodged a bullet there, I decided not to renew, although I'd probably have panicked tomorrow and signed up. Scotland games should always be on cooncil telly, hopefully we can get an arrangement with ITV, and even better if we can get something better than standard definition.

Haters

I assumed it was a very advanced bot.

It's not just a name though, it's a brand. One that gets put front and foremost in every discussion of our game on every network, and is used by our own administrators as the primary way to sell the game in this country. Celtic and Rangers didn't band together to trademark it for nothing. It's a symbol of everything that's wrong with our game, and anyone who cares what Sky says in a throw away line should ultimately care about the branding of two teams, because Sky's comments are the logical end point. Obviously. Exactly, I'm expanding on your point because Sky is the least of our issues, or the conclusion of them. We sell our rights to Sky on the premise that we're happy for them to only cover two teams for the majority of their output. It's fairly ridiculous to then berate them for their shite output. I only brought up the BBC as an example because they are not beholden to the market rules in the same way. When even they can't provide balanced (impartial was not the right term, biased would have been better) coverage, it's a lot to expect of Sky. Although they could still validly make the case that second in Glasgow is second in Scotland if they so choose, because the Huns currently "hold" second (I think @OrlandoDon's assertion that you're not really second until you finish second is probably quite apt). It's not the most egregious offence from Sky anyway.

But you're not addressing the points totals I'm mentioning. I don't think saying that they'll get to 80 points is overestimating them. I think that's a very poor return for a Hun team, but let's be wild and say they'll get as low as 75. Our squad doesn't look nearly good enough to get to 75, 70 would be a huge achievement in Thelin's first season, and I think we'll probably struggle to get that if we get one or two injuries. I'm completely fine with that, that's what the building process is about. I don't really give a fuck what Hun fans say either, because they - all of them - have zero ability to be objective and just go into melt down after every defeat to the Tims. They'll get their usual dodgy penalty next week on the way to a comfortable win and all will be forgotten. Just as nobody was talking about how shite they were after they pumped county 6-0. The only way I could see them slipping further into the shite is if something happened off the pitch and the financial issues started again. Which would be fantastic.

Not it isn't, it's a collective term used to describe the two teams. I doubt we'd have to traverse the BBC website too far to find a fawning article by some former player saying "when you play for the old firm, you must win games" or some other inane shite. The term transcended the fixture a long time ago, that's what makes it so insidious. Sky didn't claim that Scottish football starts and ends with them, those are your words. It's not irrelevant, because it is a fact. Or certainly sky would argue it is. It's not inaccurate, but I agree with you that it's not a way of phrasing that does us (Scottish football) any favours. Sky is a corporation, who's morals are underwritten by the market and economic system within which they operate. They are well within the boundaries of that system. Our national broadcaster is not bound by that system but does a fairly poor job of maintaining impartiality and, most importantly, Scottish football itself does not pursue any moral standard within its administration and setup. We, collectively, need to get our own house in order before we can dictate to sky. I'd love to see it.

Barron called up. McCowan must be devastated. Edit: Doig also, good to see. These transitions should have been made prior to the Euros.

Bit in bold, you never mentioned in your original post, nor has anyone stated that in response. Nevertheless, for sky TV, Celtic and Rangers (only a BBC panderer would use the term old firm, which in itself places them on a pedestal*) are Scottish football, as is their right. According to you, they said "second in Glasgow is second in Scotland", which could be true depending on your definition of what second is. Celtic are correctly still described as champions, for example, despite the fact that they haven't won the league this season. It's not incorrect, therefore, to call the other scum second, as that's the "title" they currently hold. Anyway, as we've argued, there doesn't appear to be a mechanism for the Huns to so spectacularly fuck up their budget advantage that they'd get less than 80 points this season. *Mods, can you run a script to go through my posting history and quickly delete any posts where I've used the term old firm? Much appreciated.