craigkillie

Lyons was a massive part of the team in the first half of the season and I was really worried things would fall apart a bit without him, especially if we didn't replace him (which we didn't). Therefore I'd say the other midfielders, especially Polworth and Donnelly, deserve a lot of credit for stepping up and taking on that responsibility.

This is a wild and reactionary take, but of course not surprising given the source. I'm not really even sure what national team performances are being discussed here - his last six starts have been Northern Ireland, Georgia x2, Spain x2 and Norway and he played well in four of those, including both of the games against elite opposition (ie the nearest team to Germany). The last two were the poorest of the lot, but we know what he can do and we also know he can score regularly against decent opposition, which is more than you can say for any of the other strikers in the squad. Adams started against England and France and made essentially no impact in either game. I'm not really holding against it since they were both friendlies, but we don't have much in the way of evidence that he's suddely going to step it up against Germany. Of his 5 international goals, only one of them has come against a non-minnow (Denmark at Hampden). In contrast, Dykes has scored against Czech Republic, Israel, Norway, Slovakia and Ukraine (2), all of whom are not miles off the quality we'll be playing in the other two games at the competition (I've excluded the goal against Austria since it was a penalty). A poor couple of performances in a dead rubber qualifier and a friendly clearly shouldn't be enough to cancel all of that out, and it won't be.

Adams is undoubtedly a better all-round player than Dykes, we can't surely still be having that debate. What Dykes has offered, and in my view will continue to offer, is a bit of chaos and an incredible attitude which is more important than people think. I think he is being written off far too early - he's clearly not having his best season, but he has still started 25 league games for QPR, and today was the first game he's not appeared in since he moved there nearly 4 years ago - it's not as though he's rotting away on the bench. I still think he'll start against Germany.

People can complain about whatever they want, it will only be upheld if what is said is actually slanderous or offensive, which is what has happened here. It has been a long time coming for Cowan's output across social media, I don't know enough about Gough's background to know whether Cosgrove's comment is reasonable.

I think the way this is set up you don't actually need to have a signal to use it, as long as you've opened up the app at some point earlier in the day (week?).

A perfect example of someone trying to sound smarter than they are.

Glad you enjoyed this, was brilliant fun to be involved in.

While what they did with Clydebank was reprehensible, it is worth remembering that there wasn't an option to "work through the leagues" at that point. The new Airdrie did first of all try to apply to the SFL to fill the vacancy left by the original club going bust, but Gretna were elected instead. Had they not bought Clydebank at that point, they could have set a club up in the Juniors, but there was no pyramid system in 2002 and wouldn't be for another 12 years.

I think it is incredibly unlikely that Clarke isn't actively speaking to these types of players to see whether they want to be involved. He successfully "recruited" Dykes and Adams before Euro 2020 and similarly was able to convince Gunn to join up with us for this campaign, and none of those players seemed to have any issues integrating into the squad - indeed Dykes seems to be one of the most influential members of it. If the players aren't interested then it's better and easier for him to publicly say "they know where we are" rather than sounding desperate. The likes of Barnes, Gordon and even Anderson (who he obviously did at least initially successfully convince to be involved) are high level players and it's always going to be harder to convince players who have genuine belief that they might eventually play for England. We are only going to want to bring in players who are going to actually improve us - Wales are calling up Championship junk, and I'm sure we'd have much more success if that was the type of guy we were after.

Still reeling from putting himself forward as Glasgow Uni rector and getting about 43 votes.

The other clubs admitted their guilt, City didn't and therefore they have to go through the whole process. This is City's MO in general, to obfuscate as much as possible, which is what got them off with the UEFA charges they were clearly guilty of. Therefore the Premier League are having to make sure everything is watertight before they proceed.

(They play at the Cardiff City Stadium now, btw)

Shankland is also excellent at linking play at Premiership level, and like Griffiths he has broadly not proven that at any higher level.

I had actually forgotten that Zander Clark played for Queen of the South.

We did well in 3 of the 5 unless you're going to twist logic to suggest the performance in Spain was anything other than very good. And it completely changes your point, since your original point was "It's a year since we beat Spain and there's a good argument that we've been in decline ever since". This implied that we hadn't played well for a year, but you excluded games played in June and September to make it. Therefore you've immediately brought it down to 6 months, with the three competitive games in that period being a good performance in Spain in October and then two admittedly sloppy ones in November after we'd already qualified.

So people saying we played well for 70 minutes against Holland is going to convince the players, who probably already know that they played well for 70 minutes against Holland, that it would be OK to turn in another performance like that? And that's a bad thing?

They're surely just using it as basically a stock photo of football.

Yes, I am seeing the players swimming in plaudits right now, hopefully all this cheerfulness doesn't make them 2% worse at the Euros.

He's fundamentally not better than Fraser, who would be in the squad if it wasn't for his attitude. Conway and Doak are being talked about because they are youngsters who people think have a long-term future with Scotland. Hardie is 27 and is in the midst of his first ever season in the Championship. His only other spell at any sort of half-decent level was with Livingston in the Premiership where he also did fine. It's hardly as though he was battering the goals in during the run-up to these games either, which is not the only thing that matters for our forwards but is at least going to give Clarke something to think about in terms of being different from the other guys he already knows and trusts.

I understood what you were saying, I just don't think it holds any water. We struggled to break down a defensive team in a single low energy, low stakes game, and I doubt Switzerland or Hungary are going to be basing their plans for the Euros around that single performance. We have won every single competitive game under Clarke against teams at that level who have tried to do that to us, including twice against Cyprus within the last year or so. We are definitely a bit one-dimensional in how we create chances, but we will create them with volume and will eventually score most of the time. There definitely wasn't an issue with creating chances throughout qualifying.

I don't think they'll be basing their plans for the Euros around "let's hope their defender makes a calamitous error and that we can just shove everyone behind the ball and defend".

I find this focus on shots on target a bit weird. I'd rather create better quality chances that are put wide or hit the post than have someone trickle a 40 yarder straight at the keeper. Last night was a perfect example of this obsession, just after half-time McGinn had a shot from a wide angle on the right that trundled into their goalie's hands and a guy next to me said "that's better, at least a shot on target". Why was that better though? It was never going to be a goal anyway, and was a much worse opportunity than, say the two opportunities we had from Christie and I want to say McTominay inside the first 5 minutes, one of which was blocked and the other went wide.

Assuming you mean "not a worrying trend" at the end, I agree with this. It was a terrible performance aside from 10 good minutes at the start of each half, and nobody really played that well - I include Tierney in that who some people seemed to be singling out for praise. Ultimately it was a friendly, which we consistently have an awful record in, and I don't think it will have any long-term impact. It did show that we need Hickey and McGregor back in the team though.

The clue is in the word "team". There's also barely anyone alive who actually watched these players, they might have been rubbish but everyone around them was much worse.

In what world did we "make heavy weather" of the wins over Georgia and Cyprus, apart from the literal heavy weather in the former?