Scotland squad

[Jute]

Highlights if anyone is feeling masochistic enough. 
 

 

[HaarDon]

So disappointing but expected when you keep punting balls up to Dykes.

I'd get Nisbet on with Adams for the England game and get wee Gilmour in midfield.

We have no chance  of beating England I'm afraid.

[BigAl]

6 hours ago, HaarDon said:

So disappointing but expected when you keep punting balls up to Dykes.

I'd get Nisbet on with Adams for the England game and get wee Gilmour in midfield.

We have no chance  of beating England I'm afraid.

Can't disagree with your opening line and certainly some merit with your second one.

Think of the youngsters we're more likely to see Patterson replace O'Donnell than Gilmour starting. That however is not my endorsement that Patterson is a) deserving of a start or b) good enough to start. It's just a gut feeling that it'll happen.

The only chance we have of beating Engerlund is for every player to play out of their skins and Engerlunds over confidence to defeat them. Unfortunately I expect Engerlund to be nothing other than extremely professional and to get the job done.

[HaarDon]

Aye bigal

I'm positive their win will come with something extremely flukey sometime during in the game.

We could have a really good chance of qualifying still if we had a quality finisher like a lot of teams have.

Dykes isn't our answer even though he holds the play up well and has some neat short passes.

I think Clarke must let Nisbet start with Adams. Bring on Dykes later at the 70 minute mark perhaps.

Hopefully Tierney is back.

 

[Jute]

Dykes starting was always a strange one for me. Both Nisbet and Adams had scored in the friendlies games before the tournament while Dykes had missed a number of chances. Why start with the striker who is not in from. Could understand if Dykes had started with Adams or Nisbet as a front two but on his own meant he was always going to struggle to make an impact. 

[HaarDon]

1 hour ago, Jute said:

Dykes starting was always a strange one for me. Both Nisbet and Adams had scored in the friendlies games before the tournament while Dykes had missed a number of chances. Why start with the striker who is not in from. Could understand if Dykes had started with Adams or Nisbet as a front two but on his own meant he was always going to struggle to make an impact. 

Absolutely Jute.

It's pretty baffling and McInnesesque.

I just don't think Dykes has it in him and his headers are shite.

By the way, would anyone drop Marshall?

That was pretty fucking embarrassing and extraordinarily, naive goalkeeping (even if it was a stunning strike)

[Slim]

It was a complete brainfart from Marshall but he played quite well other than that and at least you can be confident he won't do it again. The other options on the bench are not much better really.

I'd go same team again but with Adams replacing Dykes, Tierney replacing Cooper and Forrest replacing O'Donnell. Absolutely nailed on that Clarke will shoehorn McGregor into the starting 11 but he doesn't really bring much to the table. No chance Gilmour gets the nod ahead of him.

Not overly convinced Nisbet is much more than an average player enjoying a purple patch. Although admittedly I haven't watched him play that much.

And may be red tinted glasses but I think McKenna is better than both Hanley and Hendry and would have won the header for their first goal.

[RicoS321]

22 minutes ago, HaarDon said:

Absolutely Jute.

It's pretty baffling and McInnesesque.

I just don't think Dykes has it in him and his headers are shite.

By the way, would anyone drop Marshall?

That was pretty fucking embarrassing and extraordinarily, naive goalkeeping (even if it was a stunning strike)

Ach, I think we can forgive Marshall for that one. When you see how high up the rest of the defence was, he's actually probably only 5 yards or so from where he should have been to act as a sweeper. 99 percent out of 100 times he'd get away with it.

As for dykes, he did okay in the first half, he worked hard and put himself about the place. If Christie had offered more we probably wouldn't have been complaining as dykes was only ever there for his hassling defenders and holding it up. Even when Adams came on, I think he'd have been far less effective without Dykes. You're spot on with the McInnes shout, but that's the same with nearly every other manager over the years, from Levein to Strachan and now Clarke. Again, it's because the first goal is so important that they almost always take the cautious approach, when the answer was probably Dykes and Adams. Nisbet is a decent finisher but isn't as intelligent with hold up play as Dykes. The problem that Clarke has now is that Dykes would probably have been the preferred option against England when we'll see little of the ball and we need a target up field, but he's played himself out of a start. I'l don't think Adams has what it takes either unfortunately. I just wish managers would learn that they only ever get one chance at this and a risk is nearly always the way to go. As you say, very like McInnes, we saw this so often in our European ties where we had a good chance but failed gloriously due to caution.

[HaarDon]

I've looked at that Schick goal a few times and think Marshall could've saved it.

It dipped just over his head and he didn't even stick his hand up.

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

Could not believe my lugs listening to McFadden in commentary yesterday.  He was slating Jack Hendry for the second goal and never even mentioned Marshall!  It was comedy goalkeeping at best, if Marshall was back in his box that goal would never have happened.

Despite all the preparation it amazes me that Clarke still does not know his best team.  Marshall, Robertson, O'Donnell, Tierney, McTominay and McGinn seem to be constants albeit Tierney has injury issues.  Apart from that it really could be any 5 from about another 15 names.  Don't think I saw any of the so called experts guess that Armstrong or Christie would start yesterday.

Noticed a few starting to get on the bandwagon suggesting Dykes is not good enough, the sportsound guys were questioning it yesterday.  I think him and Adams link up pretty well and hope they both get a start in the next game.  Also, a lot of the pundits seem to have harshly written off McGregor with a big clamour suddenly for Gilmour to start based on half an hour against a dismal Luxembourg team.

Next team should be:

Gordon

O'Donnell

Gallagher

Hendry

Tierney/McKenna

Robertson

McGregor

McTominay

McGinn

Forrest

Adams

Dykes

 

 

 

 

 

[HaarDon]

12?

I still havn't forgiven Gordon for his pathetic attempt at Kane's last second equaliser.

[RicoS321]

46 minutes ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

Could not believe my lugs listening to McFadden in commentary yesterday.  He was slating Jack Hendry for the second goal and never even mentioned Marshall!  It was comedy goalkeeping at best, if Marshall was back in his box that goal would never have happened.

He shouldn't have been in his box though, he is required to be up the park a bit when the defence is so high up. He should have been about the thirty yard line, giving him plenty of time to get back when the ball deflected, his positioning was poor, but not massively poor. It was really bad decision making from Henry. There were two easy passes available (O'Donnell was the ball) that would have made for a really good opportunity to score. A defender should always know if he's last man (or close to last man) when stepping up with the ball like that, he would have been very aware that there was zero cover behind, so he should have been passing and backtracking. It was fairly basic stuff. Marshall is obviously at fault too, but Henry was the main culprit for me, Marshall would have been out of position for a few seconds at most trying to communicate with his defence and would have rightly expected the ball to remain upfield for that period. It's no different to defenders getting caught out of position when another defender passes it straight to an opponent unexpectedly.

[HaarDon]

Schick apparently said in his post match interview, he saw Marshall way off his line on a few occasions and wanted to try it.

[BigAl]

1 hour ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

Could not believe my lugs listening to McFadden in commentary yesterday.  He was slating Jack Hendry for the second goal and never even mentioned Marshall!  It was comedy goalkeeping at best, if Marshall was back in his box that goal would never have happened.

Despite all the preparation it amazes me that Clarke still does not know his best team.  Marshall, Robertson, O'Donnell, Tierney, McTominay and McGinn seem to be constants albeit Tierney has injury issues.  Apart from that it really could be any 5 from about another 15 names.  Don't think I saw any of the so called experts guess that Armstrong or Christie would start yesterday.

Noticed a few starting to get on the bandwagon suggesting Dykes is not good enough, the sportsound guys were questioning it yesterday.  I think him and Adams link up pretty well and hope they both get a start in the next game.  Also, a lot of the pundits seem to have harshly written off McGregor with a big clamour suddenly for Gilmour to start based on half an hour against a dismal Luxembourg team.

Next team should be:

Gordon

O'Donnell

Gallagher

Hendry

Tierney/McKenna

Robertson

McGregor

McTominay

McGinn

Forrest

Adams

Dykes

 

 

 

 

 

 

39 minutes ago, HaarDon said:

12?

I still havn't forgiven Gordon for his pathetic attempt at Kane's last second equaliser.

Starting with twelve probably represents our best chance 

[tom_widdows]

1 hour ago, HaarDon said:

12?

I still havn't forgiven Gordon for his pathetic attempt at Kane's last second equaliser.

If blame is to be assigned for that one it should be laid at the door of Armstrong who decided to pass the ball out of defence (seemingly trying to start a counter attack), when he should have punted it as far down the pitch as was possible, ideally for a throw in by the england corner flag.
Then there is the unforgiveable marking as Armstrong, Brown & Tierney stood and watched the cross coming in, Leaving Berra, Mulgrew and Tierney to mark 5 England players however all 3 of them also decided to watch the ball. Had Kane missed it, Smalling was right behind him for a tap in.

Edited June 15, 2021 by tom_widdows

[HaarDon]

Aye but Gordon stood and watched too.

Why the fuck did Marshall not jump up for their 2nd goal.

I'm positive he could've got it.

We are still a good team and opened up the Czech defence on numerous occasions.

We 100% did not get a break and it could have been about 5-4 to us.

Typical story for us but Clark needs to pick the best team against England.

Imo that includes Forrest, Fraser, Gilmour, Nisbet, Adams who weren't on from the start for this game.

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

4 hours ago, HaarDon said:

12?

Aye, could be an issue I suppose 

4 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

He shouldn't have been in his box though, he is required to be up the park a bit when the defence is so high up. He should have been about the thirty yard line, giving him plenty of time to get back when the ball deflected, his positioning was poor, but not massively poor. It was really bad decision making from Henry. There were two easy passes available (O'Donnell was the ball) that would have made for a really good opportunity to score. A defender should always know if he's last man (or close to last man) when stepping up with the ball like that, he would have been very aware that there was zero cover behind, so he should have been passing and backtracking. It was fairly basic stuff. Marshall is obviously at fault too, but Henry was the main culprit for me, Marshall would have been out of position for a few seconds at most trying to communicate with his defence and would have rightly expected the ball to remain upfield for that period. It's no different to defenders getting caught out of position when another defender passes it straight to an opponent unexpectedly.

I blame Marshall entirely Rico.  His job is to protect the goal, we should not be in danger of conceding a goal just because we lose the ball mid way inside the opponents half.  There were two defenders goal side of the Czech player so Marshall had no need to be anywhere out there.  

This whole sweeper keeper thing is plain stupid, started by Neuer and become some kind of cool trend because of how Liverpool and Man City play.  Marshall almost came a cropper from it in the first half when he rushed from his box to clear into the stand but seemed to forget that putting it in row Z does not work when there is another ball immediately available for the opposition to take a quick throw.  

The whole playing out from the back thing is ridiculous too, players have forgotten how to defend.  Almost every Czech chance yesterday came from us dicking around at the back instead of just hoofing it clear when we needed to.  

[RicoS321]

46 minutes ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

Aye, could be an issue I suppose 

I blame Marshall entirely Rico.  His job is to protect the goal, we should not be in danger of conceding a goal just because we lose the ball mid way inside the opponents half.  There were two defenders goal side of the Czech player so Marshall had no need to be anywhere out there.  

This whole sweeper keeper thing is plain stupid, started by Neuer and become some kind of cool trend because of how Liverpool and Man City play.  Marshall almost came a cropper from it in the first half when he rushed from his box to clear into the stand but seemed to forget that putting it in row Z does not work when there is another ball immediately available for the opposition to take a quick throw.  

The whole playing out from the back thing is ridiculous too, players have forgotten how to defend.  Almost every Czech chance yesterday came from us dicking around at the back instead of just hoofing it clear when we needed to.  

I understand what you're saying, and I agree to an extent, but those were Marshall's instructions (or certainly he wasn't told not to push forward), so I don't see how it's his fault. You can see him coming further and appears to be shouting at the defence. The two players you suggest were covering were clearly not further enough across because they weren't expecting Henry to fuck up from that position either. They were as far out of position as Marshall was with obviously a slightly less risk attributable.

[Jute]

Stupidly bought a ticket for the Croatia game so you can guarantee we will be as good as out by then. 

[HaarDon]

OK I'm just going to say that Marshall was about 40 yards from his goal.

 

That is a disgrace!!!

Hendry actually was right to shoot imo but he was closed down fast.

It was 1million% Marshall's fault.

We as forum members of AFC may never discuss this again , however it's going to be cemented in historical clips of shocking Scotland national team fuck ups for us to hide from and the English to scoff at eternally.

 

 

[HaarDon]

If we get beaten by Engerlund, can we still qualify by a 3rd spot by beating Croatia?

It's very possible right?

 

[sancho_panza]

41 minutes ago, HaarDon said:

If we get beaten by Engerlund, can we still qualify by a 3rd spot by beating Croatia?

It's very possible right?

As far as I understand it, if we beat Croatia then the only way we can finish behind them is in a situation where three teams are tied on three points and it comes down to goal difference. Although we could technically finish second in that scenario, it's probably best if the Czechs get at least a point against Croatia if we lose to England.

We'd then need two third place teams to be worse than us, which is possible. For example if Italy win all their games and either Wales-Turkey or Switzerland-Turkey is a draw then third place in that group will only have two points. If Italy win all their games and Turkey beat both Wales and Switzerland then that would also work.

[HaarDon]

I just need to live in hope for our last game since that Czech defeat was hard to take.

[Jute]

[HaarDon]

Great team

 

Come onnnn