The Algebraist

It is for computers which have an internet connection hosted abroad.

Agree with this. I think the perception of his stats is skewed by the fact he broke through so young. If you were looking for a player with similar numbers - 21, 56 senior games, age group cap - you would have to get your wallet out. I am not going to say he is necessarily the future of our first team, but he still could be and he does a good job now. I agree there are some Dundee born and bred types we've maybe looked after a little too long, but there are also plenty of young players fans have had no patience with that have turned into very good pros at this level.

Then you're in the right place! "Football" and "tactics" are outdated concepts. This thread is all about Steve Clarke's rear limb sphere contact oversight abilities.

Could be worse. We could just have given Craig Bellamy a four year deal.

And turns out that Gran's name was Albert Einstein....

As were we until the turn of the year. I am struggling to find the study, but there was a big research piece done about football teams' long term performance, the results of which basically showed that teams have good and bad patches but return to an average unless some other factor changes. This will happen regardless of whether they change manager or short term tactical approach, which may occasionally affect the speed of a change but not the change itself. You can't ultimately maintain a peak, long term improvement requires structural change to improve the average. I think Clarke likely benefitted from a huge peak in qualifying and is now struggling in a trough. How deep is hard to say though, it wasn't so long ago that slogging to beat Gibraltar and failing to beat other "Pot 2" teams was the norm. Our average has definitely improved, probably partly because we have some better players but also because Clarke and others have made structural changes. The most obvious of these are a clear culture and playing philosophy but that's just the surface level stuff, there is hopefully lots we aren't seeing. That said it's concerning that we haven't brought our best game to a tournament. I actually think our philosophy got in the way these last few weeks simply because we didn't have the bodies we needed to play it well. I can also see why it must have been very tempting to maintain it though and as crap as it was to watch it almost, almost worked. Edit: This article is based on the first study that others jumped off of to look at other factors https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23724517

Scotland's youth football is improving a lot and I think some results are already being seen. There is one lad who plays with my daughter (who is four - so the 2019 age group) and if I could put money on him playing for Scotland now I definitely would. We have 40 four and five year olds playing in just one small town and literally hundreds across the age groups. Rangers took two of our seven year olds a year back and there are scouts hanging around all the time. The idea that top down initiatives will do much to help or hinder the national team in the long term is a bit of a red herring imo. Some of our kids play indoors, some on 4G and grass at the weekends but it doesn't really matter. Like honestly who cares what the premier league are playing on? We have a loose affiliation with a Premier League club but they aren't all that involved. Elite academies etc are part of the puzzle sure, but if you empower communities to grow youth football by providing facilities and funding thousands more kids will take part, hundreds of more people will take coaching badges, and that is what will make the biggest difference.

Good that you're ok. It's possible I might have cared a great deal about this game.

My comments wasn't really about society or censorship tbh. I just didn't think it was necessary, we don't normally do weird zoom ins on injured players.

I was well pissed off with the camera last night. No-one needed to see close ups of the lad in tears being stretchered off. Glad to hear he walked down the tunnel. The actual incident didn't look like much to me, one that would hurt a lot but not necessarily cause a tear.

Lol at Rodri.

I think in many ways Scotland's greatest achievement as a national team is the amount of fear we inspire. I've been scared shitless every time I've watched us play since I was too young to know better. It's been incredibly strange recently playing minnows and average sides in qualifying and feeling that it was inevitable that we score. Spain at Hampden was the surrealist thing, cannot think of any other occasion I've been sitting comfortably during the last 20 while we played a "big" team.

Please do not bump the Kieran Tierney thread. Every time somebody does I get the fear someone has dropped him.

I remember near the death in Paris what should have bee a dangerous header go straight to his gloves and thinking "that's it done". He looked like cool personified.

Just noticing Maddison cut from the England squad. Crazy to think that if he had stuck it Elliot Anderson would almost certainly be on the plane with us. Seems a bit of an irrelevance now although I hope he wins the world cup for us at some point.