Scotland Squad for Wales/Belgium

[glasgowdon]

This guy cannot get enough PR at the mo!

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19881602

 

Though he is right, the pressure is very much on Latrine.

 

 

That's the best and worst slagging ever.

[Tyrant]

Steven Fletcher starting.

[Madbadteacher]

Levein is Dead Man Walking!

[Reekie_Red]

That ref was shocking - the Welsh penalty was never a penalty, but Scotland got away with about three very obvious penalty claims before that (Berra hugging in the box!).

 

For Scotland's first goal, Steven Fletcher was an absolute mile offside when the ball got passed to him, but the ref didn't notice it. Then for the header from Morrison that was totally onside, he goes and chalks the goal off for offside (he wasn't offside when the ball was lobbed over to him and still wasn't offside when he headed the ball into the net).

 

Dunno why I am whinging, I just don't care about Scottish football at the moment, and haven't done so since the days of Berti.

[jmo]

That ref was shocking - the Welsh penalty was never a penalty, but Scotland got away with about three very obvious penalty claims before that (Berra hugging in the box!).

 

For Scotland's first goal, Steven Fletcher was an absolute mile offside when the ball got passed to him, but the ref didn't notice it. Then for the header from Morrison that was totally onside, he goes and chalks the goal off for offside (he wasn't offside when the ball was lobbed over to him and still wasn't offside when he headed the ball into the net).

 

Dunno why I am whinging, I just don't care about Scottish football at the moment, and haven't done so since the days of Berti.

 

Didn't the first goal come from a goal kick?

 

Also think the one chalked off was because the linesman thought the ball had gone out rather than anything else.

 

Some odd decisions but overall Wales were the better side and deserved it. The Berra rugby tackle thing was odd, clear penalty.

[maverick sheep]

Charlie adam is a ball sack.

 

Fletcher was good but the midfield and defence were hopeless.

 

Also not sure why mcgregor is 1st choice ahead of marshal. Didn't do anything too bad but wouldn't pick him generally.

[RDU_64]

Kevin McKenna in the Guardian.

 

The etymology of the word "jacksie" has recently become a source of dispute among Scotland's amateur linguistic community. Long held to have its origins in obscure cockney rhyming slang, recent tales have emerged placing it much closer to home. For it seems that the word may have been commonly used in the west of Scotland decades before the great 18th-century Clyde vowel shift that divides north-east Glasgow from the south-west. This is the oral faultline that sees the word "sacks" become "secks" when it reaches Newton Mearns.

 

I have my own theory, though. I think "jacksie" was beginning to fade from general use until the great Celtic and Scotland full back Tommy Gemmell, in front of a global television audience, booted Helmut Haller up the arse during a World Cup qualifier between the countries in 1969. Gemmell, incensed at a typically sly ankle tap by Haller, chased the terrified German for fully 20 yards before indeed "booting him up the jacksie". Anyone who has witnessed footage of the incident will agree that no other word for the human posterior would have done justice to it.

 

Haller was an integral part of the great West Germany team that was unjustly beaten by England in 1966 and reached the semi-finals four years later in Mexico. The match in which he encountered Gemmell's size 10 was a winner-takes-all game played in Hamburg. The Germans eventually triumphed 3-2 in a high-octane thriller that swung this way then that before the World Cup runners-up scored nine minutes from the end against the depleted Scots.

 

Who knows, though, what might have transpired if Gemmell had not been sent off. One of Scotland's two goals that night was scored by Gemmell's Celtic club-mate Jimmy Johnstone. These two, along with the Celtic midfielder Bobby Murdoch, were regarded as the only three world-class players operating in Scotland during that period.

 

Two years previously, they had helped Celtic to become the first British club to lift the European Cup. Yet only very rarely did these three ever play in the same Scotland team. This was due to a selection policy by successive Scotland bosses that regularly put journeyman professionals ahead of three of the best players the nation had ever produced. Consequently, Scotland never qualified for the latter stages of any tournament in this period, despite having the most richly endowed squad ever available to a Scotland manager. One can only guess at the reasons why Celtic's Lisbon Lions earned so few caps between them.

 

At least, in 1969, Scotland's World Cup dream evaporated against the best country in Europe. They had been in contention for a place in Mexico until the final game. Forty three years later, almost to the day, the current Scotland team's hopes of qualifying for Brazil in 2014 ended at the hands of a Welsh side that might not even be the best team in Wales. The 2-1 defeat in Cardiff on Friday night was an abject performance from a team who were outplayed by the Welsh for almost the entire 90 minutes.

 

Craig Levein, our saturnine manager, seems destined to be removed from his post very soon after winning just three out of his 11 competitive games. The former Dundee United manager deserves no sympathy for he has had a stronger squad available to him than any of his recent predecessors. Eight of the players who featured in Cardiff have played regularly in the English Premier League, the most competitive league in the world. The Scotland displays under Levein seem always to reflect the manager's outlook: permanently gloomy with outbreaks of rain. If a football match had featured in the film Blade Runner Craig Levein's Scotland would have got the gig.

 

In truth, he never recovered after putting a team on the park against an average Czech Republic side that contained no forwards whatsoever. That was an act of folly. Yet he refused to put on a lifejacket that appeared in the form of Steven Fletcher, the only Scottish footballer of the modern generation who can score goals in the Premier League. Levein, though, banished him until it was too late.

 

Miscreants from other countries can get caught racially abusing colleagues; shagging their team-mate's wife; shagging their brother's wife and calling their own governing body twats and still they will be selected for their country. Steven Fletcher sent a text to one of Levein's assistants stating that he didn't want to be selected for the next game. It was not a sin that cried out to the Lord for vengeance. Rather, it required a swift boot up the, well, jacksie followed by a robust verbal rebuke and then an arm round the shoulder. Everyone knows the psyche of a professional footballer is as fragile as a prepubescent schoolgirl's and that they must be treated as such until they retire and can then be readmitted into normal society.

 

But such mismanagement is a motif that constantly occurs in the depressing narrative of Scotland's international football team. In the 60s and 70s, the selectors largely overlooked Celtic's mighty Lions and in the 90s we denied ourselves the services of Duncan Ferguson, the last Scot who knew how to score goals regularly in England's top division. For the last 40 years, with one or two exceptions, we have chosen second- and third-tier managers to manage Scotland while paying them a salary of an English Championship manager. And that's why we get an international team that resembles Huddersfield Town.

 

By the time Scotland's next chance of competing at a World Cup occurs 20 years will have elapsed since our last appearance. This matters because it casts a shadow over our nation. Yes of course I am as jocund and elated as the next chiel at the success of Andy Murray and Chris Hoy and all those nice rowers and sailors. Being good at football, though, matters so much more than these boutique pastimes of the bourgeoisie

[Tyrant]

For FFS sake! I wish folk would stop whinging about their penalty! It was a stone-waller all day long and why so many folk can't see it is beyond me. What annoyed me more what the blatant dive earlier in the second half which went unpunished and not to mention the perfectly good goal we had chalked off. I also wish folk would quit saying it was for offside because it clearly wasn't. That spastic linesman thought it went out of play when it wasn't even close. Hence he made a bolt straight down the tunnel at the end. Bale was the different between the teams. We couldn't cope with him. He's some player. I thought Adam was brought on to bin him but he was just an embarrassment. Firstly his mindgames fail at Bale's penalty and then Bale owned him and jogged past him before smashing in the winner. For once I don't blame Levein for this one although I still think we should get him to fuck post haste.

 

So now we've effectively got no chance of qualifying/ Do we want a result that would push Levein closer to the exit? A lot of folk reckon he'll get his jotters after the Belgium game but I fear he'll be kept on. He's certainly not going to walk. 

[tlg1903]

For FFS sake! I wish folk would stop whinging about their penalty! It was a stone-waller all day long and why so many folk can't see it is beyond me. What annoyed me more what the blatant dive earlier in the second half which went unpunished and not to mention the perfectly good goal we had chalked off. I also wish folk would quit saying it was for offside because it clearly wasn't. That spastic linesman thought it went out of play when it wasn't even close. Hence he made a bolt straight down the tunnel at the end. Bale was the different between the teams. We couldn't cope with him. He's some player. I thought Adam was brought on to bin him but he was just an embarrassment. Firstly his mindgames fail at Bale's penalty and then Bale owned him and jogged past him before smashing in the winner. For once I don't blame Levein for this one although I still think we should get him to fuck post haste.

 

So now we've effectively got no chance of qualifying/ Do we want a result that would push Levein closer to the exit? A lot of folk reckon he'll get his jotters after the Belgium game but I fear he'll be kept on. He's certainly not going to walk. 

 

 

I have to disagree tyrant, it really wasn't anywhere near stonewall.  I text an English friend of mine asking for an unbiased opinion on the decision, one word answer

"Cheat"

It was as soft a penalty as you will ever see.  Its the perfectly good goal that hurts the most though, heads went down after that

[manc_don]

 

I have to disagree tyrant, it really wasn't anywhere near stonewall.  I text an English friend of mine asking for an unbiased opinion on the decision, one word answer

"Cheat"

It was as soft a penalty as you will ever see.  Its the perfectly good goal that hurts the most though, heads went down after that

 

I was watching it with a load of english mates and they were outraged on my behalf! I'll have a look again, but i definitely thought it was a dive all day long.

[Tyrant]

Maloney ran across the back of him and clearly (allbeit accidentally) tripped him up. It's crystal clear to me. He threw himself to the ground Suarez style but it was still a penalty.

[Reekie_Red]

Grab a look here. Maloney does nudge him - made obvious by Maloney raising his hands immediately. But Bale takes two steps, then trips over his OWN foot and then goes down. That is NOT a stonewaller, Tyrant!

 

Wales definitely had a raft of other penalty claims that they would've been perfectly entitled to ... but this is not one of them.

[Tyrant]

The video doesn't work but it wasn't a nudge that sent him down. Maloney knocked Bale's trailing leg into the back of his standing one sending him doon.  I've seen it umpteen times and a slose up slo mo replay and I'm convinced it's crystal clear. I'm far more pissed off aboot the goal that we didn't get. That would have won us the game.

[bloo_toon_red]

Maloney ran across the back of him and clearly (allbeit accidentally) tripped him up.

 

There was no doubting that Maloney caught Bale, but I would say it was moreso a case of Bale running across Maloney rather than the other way around.  There was an ever-so-slight change of direction from Bale to draw the contact.  There was no way Maloney could avoid making contact with Bale there.  Running at that sort of pace it is inevitable that even the merest of touches will put a player off balance.  It was clever gamesmanship from Bale's perspective, he knew he would draw a foul by catching Maloney out, it's something many footballers do, and is precisely the kind of situation that Michael Owen was speaking about last week.

 

But it doesn't matter, we lost the game on the balance of play, this despite putting out just about as strong a side as we've been able to for a couple of years.  Charlie Billy Big Baws needs dropped for the next couple of squads cos he's been pish for about a year.

[bilbobaggins]

I thought it was a blatant dive, the old trick of clipping your own heel whilst you fall.

 

Goodness only knows the reasoning behind the disallowed goal, did the linesman call the ball out of play?

 

If you add it to the Czech diver / Dutch referee costing us during last campaign I think we've been a bit unlucky. Levien is a massive fud though.

[Tyrant]

Goodness only knows the reasoning behind the disallowed goal, did the linesman call the ball out of play?

 

Yes.

 

 

If you add it to the Czech diver / Dutch referee costing us during last campaign I think we've been a bit unlucky. Levien is a massive fud though.

 

Yes.

[tlg1903]

I was watching it with a load of english mates and they were outraged on my behalf! I'll have a look again, but i definitely thought it was a dive all day long.

 

Bar tyrant (who i can't help but think is just trying to give his Suarez arguments credibility  ) the only people i know that reckon its a penalty are Welsh nationals.  Spoke to an old German pal this very afternoon and "how much of cheating cunt is Bale" was one of the first things he said.

[Tyrant]

Bar tyrant (who i can't help but think is just trying to give his Suarez arguments credibility  ) the only people i know that reckon its a penalty are Welsh nationals.  Spoke to an old German pal this very afternoon and "how much of cheating cunt is Bale" was one of the first things he said.

 

 

Absolute nonsense.  I, for some reason, am the only one who could see the clear clip on Bale. Why that is I don't know. I remain convinced it was the correct decision. I'm nae changing nationality over Luis fucking Suarez. 

[tlg1903]

 

Absolute nonsense.  I, for some reason, am the only one who could see the clear clip on Bale. Why that is I don't know. I remain convinced it was the correct decision. I'm nae changing nationality over Luis fucking Suarez. 

 

Only taking the piss dude.  you think it was a pen fair dues man but I have to disagree. 

 

 

[Kowalski]

It was never a penalty in a million years.  Fact.  I'm surprised Bale wasn't 23 miles above the Nevada desert yesterday, such are his diving skills.

 

Cheating sheep shagging prick. 

[maverick sheep]

whether it was a pen or a dive gareth bale's a smug monkey looking cunt anyway. i'd never get tired of kneeing him in the face. shit happens, and cunts are cunts.

 

 

we were the better of two very bad teams and wouldn't have lost if the second goal had been given, but that is no excuse. other than fletcher and 1 or 2 others the side were very poor. there was no real fight or ambition. all we had was an occasional long ball up to a quality striker.

 

 

a lot of people who pull on the scotland jersey are clearly lazy wankers who are happy to earn a lot of money by sitting on the bench or being an insignificant squad player for club sides that have no interest in the health of scotland's football. can't blame them really, it's the culture. it's what we've allowed football to turn into through its hyper-capitalism. it's why anyone with a brain becomes less interested in football as time passes (whether or not that includes the club they feel a social/lifelong connection to).

 

 

the best thing to come out of this summer was discovering how unbelievably strong the will is for change among the punters in scottish football. away from the club scene it's no less in need of major shaking up, even though we'll heroically draw with belgium and that'll ensure the status quo continues even after levein.

[Tyrant]

whether it was a pen or a dive gareth bale's a smug monkey looking cunt anyway. i'd never get tired of kneeing him in the face. shit happens, and cunts are cunts.

 

 

we were the better of two very bad teams and wouldn't have lost if the second goal had been given, but that is no excuse. other than fletcher and 1 or 2 others the side were very poor. there was no real fight or ambition. all we had was an occasional long ball up to a quality striker.

 

 

a lot of people who pull on the scotland jersey are clearly lazy wankers who are happy to earn a lot of money by sitting on the bench or being an insignificant squad player for club sides that have no interest in the health of scotland's football. can't blame them really, it's the culture. it's what we've allowed football to turn into through its hyper-capitalism. it's why anyone with a brain becomes less interested in football as time passes (whether or not that includes the club they feel a social/lifelong connection to).

 

 

the best thing to come out of this summer was discovering how unbelievably strong the will is for change among the punters in scottish football. away from the club scene it's no less in need of major shaking up, even though we'll heroically draw with belgium and that'll ensure the status quo continues even after levein.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kowalski]

Team for tonight: McGregor, Hutton, Caldwell, Berra, Fox, D Fletcher, McArthur, Morrison, Commons, Maloney, S Fletcher.

[jmo]

For FFS sake! I wish folk would stop whinging about their penalty! It was a stone-waller all day long and why so many folk can't see it is beyond me. What annoyed me more what the blatant dive earlier in the second half which went unpunished and not to mention the perfectly good goal we had chalked off. I also wish folk would quit saying it was for offside because it clearly wasn't. That spastic linesman thought it went out of play when it wasn't even close. Hence he made a bolt straight down the tunnel at the end. Bale was the different between the teams. We couldn't cope with him. He's some player. I thought Adam was brought on to bin him but he was just an embarrassment. Firstly his mindgames fail at Bale's penalty and then Bale owned him and jogged past him before smashing in the winner. For once I don't blame Levein for this one although I still think we should get him to fuck post haste.

 

So now we've effectively got no chance of qualifying/ Do we want a result that would push Levein closer to the exit? A lot of folk reckon he'll get his jotters after the Belgium game but I fear he'll be kept on. He's certainly not going to walk. 

 

Maloney's pass to Adam was offside, it was close but it was offside. It was a bit bizarre but the correct decision was made in the end.

 

As for the penalty I've watched it a few times and I'm still unsure, but they should have had a penalty after Berra's bizarre hug/rugby tackle in the box a few minutes earlier.

 

Hard to be angry at decisions, Scotland didn't deserve anything better than a loss. We were awful.

[dave_min]

Team for tonight: McGregor, Hutton, Caldwell, Berra, Fox, D Fletcher, McArthur, Morrison, Commons, Maloney, S Fletcher.

 

I'd swap Maloney for Mackie as I don't rate Maloney out wide (where he'll be playing).

 

Other than that though, happy enough.

 

Nae up for this game at all.