SpoonTon

Just to add to what Dunning says about him being an athlete rather than a player. I have no idea what position is meant to be his strongest. He came as a forward, maybe a winger, who can also play full back or wing back, and he's played in all those roles for us. He has the strength and running to play in all of those roles, but he doesn't have the footballing ability to play in any of them.

Headless chicken, tries hard, abject lack of ability. With Orsi in the squad, we had already more than filled our quota of that. I'm not sure of the answer, though, I think he's out of favour but he's maybe just got lost somewhere.

I mostly agree with this, but I'm not sure where we find a sensible attacking lineup. We've whittled down our number of strikers to 2, and they're both a bit rubbish (to put it mildly). Oliver is our best forward, but he's never been any good as a lone striker. We could play a front 3 of Nesbitt, McGuffie, and Oliver, but the argument could be made that they're all best as a number 10 - none of them want to be focused on getting into the box. Do we give Lyon a chance in a much more forward role, tell him to get on the end of as much as he can? Colville is another one who will want to drift and look to do things outside the box - Arbroath might like us playing the ball about in circles while they wait to pick holes in our defence. Or, given that we don't concede many away from home (especially not early in the game), do we just keep it tight and then look to score if we need to later on? If our best chance is Ayr losing, then we're maybe best not taking too many risks. I think playing Jacobs and McGinn deeper in midfield to allow Lyon to get forward so that we don't need to play Muirhead or Orsi is probably where my thinking is at the moment.

I agree as well (maybe with McGinn instead of Colville or Lyon). However, it's no wonder we're getting relegated if that's our best starting lineup. It looks solid enough in a certain way, but there still aren't many goals in there whatsoever. Our best hope on Friday looks like hoping to keep it tight and trying to get a goal from a set piece.

Most entertaining match involving Aberdeen that I've watched in a long time. They've abandoned all defensive shape and sanity. Stephen Glass looks like he's bringing entertaining football back to Pittodrie, just not in the way Aberdeen fans wanted.

We'll probably get something like Hynes in at right mid and Nesbitt moved up alongside Orsi, with Muirhead being the only one to drop out.

I thought Orsi was actually really good off the ball yesterday. On the ball, however, he just didn't look like a football player. He was Alloa's best defender. He works hard but the ability to play at this level just isn't there. He's not even close to being the type of player that you'd maybe think would be decent enough a level down.

We trained on the pitch most of the season, especially earlier on, and have pretty much destroyed it. We used to have one of the best playing surfaces in the country. It's been overused in recent years, though, and we moved training to Cappielow last year. It's starting to recover a little bit, actually, but it wasn't left with much grass at all.

Just emailed them, I'm missing 5 points as well. Thanks! Edit: Only took them 20 minutes to rectify it and respond to let me know.

I reckon that should make it anyone on 11 points or more. Which means I might get to Wembley if not Hampden (I should be on 12 points).

I'm a member of the SSC and I saw no reason to enter the ballot as I'm in the top 3500 odd members in terms of points. I don't expect that to be enough now, but at the time I would have been guaranteed an opportunity to purchase a ticket if we qualified. So why enter the ballot for the general sale? The tickets will all probably have to be cancelled and redistributed, because the seating arrangement will be radically changed. If the general sale was for specific blocks, then there will only be 25% of that block available. So you'd need to give them a ticket for a seat that was already designated for another group, primarily the seats for fans distributed through the football associations. So in that case you would be taking a ticket away from someone in a group that it was designated for, and giving it to someone in a group that it wasn't designated for (just because they already had a chance to buy a ticket for another party of the ground). Again, the basic point is that only around 25% of the seats for the tickets sold for general sale are now available (unless you are reallocating them a ticket for a seat which is designated for another group).

Would the fairest thing to do not be to roughly stick with the original allocation percentages, then? The ticket isn't being cancelled to give it to someone else - the allocation for general sale was 50% of the stadium, therefore only 25% of those 25,000 odd with tickets will be able to attend. That's the scope that there should be to deal with general sale tickets - 25% of the allocated 50%, not 25% of 100% of the stadium just because those were the tickets that happened to be on sale first.

I switched off after seeing our draw. I wonder if we can organise conceding the tie in advance so we can avoid the embarrassment of the hammering.

Do we ...do we actually have a decent striker?

I've not been convinced by the way we're playing, but of it works for no-one else it absolutely does for Tierney and McGinn. The most positive thing about Scotland at the moment is that we actually have some very good players.

Asking players to play in a system and roles that most aren't playing regularly for their clubs isn't simple. McTominay isn't a centre half, Fraser is certainly not a wing back. That's going to be a tough one. When McTominay has played there for Scotland, that's more often than not been the weak point in defence. Those two are going to have to figure things out very quickly. Tierney and Robertson aren't so far removed from those roles on the left for their clubs, but it hasn't always been simple for them in those roles either. We're fitting two left backs, a centre half, four centre mids, a forward/winger who cuts inside, and two strikers into a system that most don't play at club level. It can be justified in the basis that we've been playing that system since last year and that those players have all played those roles in the past, but it's far more complicated than slotting players into roles and a system that they're used to playing (and training for) on a weekly basis. I'm not saying it won't pay off, but I do think we're asking the players to do something that's far more complicated for them than it otherwise might be.

I think I can see what he's trying to do, but I can't help but question why we don't just keep it a bit more simple.

While I agree in general, it's a simple way of getting at the bigger problems. It was more 5-2-3 against Austria, and 5-3-2 against Israel, but it is the details that are more important. The main issue with the 5 at the back is that it has left us playing like we're a man down in many areas of the pitch. For the Austria match and half the Israel match we played like we were playing with a back 4 with an additional centre half, which left so much space just outside the box and left us a man down trying to press further up the pitch. And when you've got Stephen O'Donnell at wing back, you're not going to be a massive attacking force down the right, and particularly against Austria Robertson was pinned in at left back. It's the classic add a third centre half because you don't trust any 2, but it didn't work. The worst thing about it is that this group has been an absolute gift. Winning the group would be like finishing second in 9 out of 10 WC qualifying groups that we'll be in. We should have been taking the risk and going for it, but we've been far too passive. I could understand defending the system as being not too defensive if McTominay was still in the back three and there was an attacking right wing back, but that's not what we did and it left very little of the flexibility in the system to become something different - O'Donnell isn't suddenly going to become a winger, Hendry or Hanley aren't suddenly going to step out and dictate play from the back, etc. It hasn't worked and it has left us with no margin for error in the group whatsoever.

Two poor results so far. The positive is that hopefully we've seen the end of the back 5, but 4 points dropped in order for Clarke to realise it wasn't working is in all probability too costly.

See what happens when you actually fucking play like you're not inferior to Israel. Win this and being behind at half time is the best thing that could've happened tonight.

Glad Clarke has obviously been reading this thread at half time and made the sensible sub.

Problem was that McTominay followed a player back that became Hanley's when he got to the defence. McTominay was playing like it was a back 4, and Hanley didn't tell him that he had the runner and point him back out like he should have (I don't actually think he did have the runner, he was just ball watching). It was poor communication, poor decision making, but stems from a system which isn't working.

I hate the back 5. So many negatives with it. It's like being a man down in most areas of the pitch. Both tonight and against Austria we've given away loads of space just outside the box. It's so negative, it's giving us no chance, and it needs to go right now. Christie on for Hendry at half time, please.

Drawing at home against the second seeds isn't a good result if you want to qualify.

Painful viewing so far. They can play as high as they want cause they know we have no pace to get in behind. We've got some good players in there, but we're getting very little out of that.