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Enjoy your discussion.

No chance he's getting sacked. Enjoy your discussion. Especially @Bing.McCrosby, you've waited a long time for this.

Not aimed at anyone specifically mate. Just general fan culture from Scotland to Arsenal to Man United. No matter how much information fans have there will still we a knowledge and information gap. Fans don't look in depth at the opponents either.

What's wilder is there will be people out there hoping Scotland lose tonight so they can say I told you so.

My bro said these are the permutations that would see us qualify on 2pts

100% I laugh in the face of fans that think they know better than the manager. If it's a lower level, say Dougie Imrie then fine - but thinking you know better than Clarke is laughable and delusional. I've had many a laugh on here, thats for sure.

Couldn't agree more. Superb.

He's pragmatic Peter. The tools taken are correct for the job in hand. He's taken them with him to Germany and has been getting to work and is expected to complete the task today around 10pm. Subsequent to that we can take it from there. Happy?

Steve Clarke held himself with a great poise, dignity and grace at todays press conference. Incredible man.

He does. He takes most of our corners* from that side and they are mostly all in-swingers. John Souttars goal against Denmark is another example of that from a while ago.

Cheers. I dont buy too much into form, age or the leagues they come from. Not a great gauge for a one-off game. Besides all of the above could apply to us. It always just comes back to which team plays better on the day. who make the least mistakes and who gets the breaks. Looking forward to it though. They're probably a fairly well rounded team.

he was using 'they' after Germany.

He's just pragmatic. He'll use the tools for the job.

I've told you why, I don't care if you believe it.

Short termism is one of the issues with fans at the moment.

Seriously.

If the keeper moves forward. McGinn isn't offside, I dont think I need to fill in the blanks from there. I am assuming where the ball is played from isn't important. I haven't seen any thing that states that.

a player is in an offside position when he is standing between the opposition's goalkeeper (last defender) and last field-player (2nd last defender)

It pins the goalkeeper on his line. A player cannot be offside if behind the player nearest the goal line.

It's about becoming a consistent team at this sort of level. That's not restricted to major tournaments. A 3-game group doesn't tell you that much if we qualify or if we don't. The Nations League will be a better gauge with 6 games added to this. It's not told us anything we don't already know regardless of the outcome.

I haven't had time to look at it in depth or have anything to present to you. We haven't scored from one for a while and that's probably affecting your view of that, outcome bias. We've been creative and could/should have so I'm not so worried about attacking set plays. McGinn's penalty against Norway came from a Kenny McLean header from a corner. We create presentable chances from our set plays is how I'd sum that up. Defensively the last one we conceded was against The Netherlands. We're far worse defensively from open play and defending the counter. Think Northern Ireland, Georgia, Germany etc. We've only conceded set play goals to Holland and France since we qualified for the Euros. I thought our defending corners against Switzerland was quite good. I accept that's superficial as it's just looking at goals scored and not beneath the surface. In short it's not a big concern for me. We are also absolutely immense at winning the ball back when the opposition has a throw in. Something to watch out for and obviously why we kick it out of play from kick-off.

When we have the ball we're not playing a flat back-5. That's what I'm trying to say, it just depends on the situation - totally dependent on that. Rigid formations mean next to nothing when actually watching a game. It's literally just a number. Don't football teams use game models now to describe their system of play? I think fans and football teams are getting further apart. We see that with fans being 'baffled' and 'confused' as they don't understand why managers are doing what they're doing. The England midfield situation is a great example. Fans are hanging onto concepts from the 90's and earlier while managers are probably seeing a totally different and tech/AI/data aided game. There's a knowledge gap that's fir true. It's amazing to see unfold.

My point has been it's not boxing yourself into viewing the team in terms of rigid formations. It depends on what opposition analysis turns up. Then create a strategy for the game. The pick a team of players that best fit that strategy. I don't think rigid formations come into it much. I think McKenna is a decent player and if he is one of the eleven players who best fits into the plan for the Hungary game then that's fine with me. No-one in the squad can replace Tierney, we all know that.

It will make a difference in that we don't have Tierney, he's a great player for us. Going to a back-4 or a back-3 is what I'm saying makes no difference. Formations are a shorthand, we'll play in various shapes throughout the game as it develops. Well if you look at it as we'll always have at least three players taking up defensive positions when we attack then it doesn't matter whether it's a back-3 or a back-4. What matters is we have at least 3 players defending the counter-attack. That can be McKenna, Hanley and Hendry. It can be Ralston, Hanley and Hendry or it could be McGregor, Christie and Ralston if it's a set play. It's not going to make a significant difference.

We've been quite lucky so far not to concede a goal via this defensive tactic and inevitably will at some point (hopefully not tomorrow). Sometimes we do it well and sometimes we get lucky. I think we all remember the first Ukraine goal at Hampden though. I think it's done more good than bad. Even if we concede the odd goal I'd still probably argue it's benefits have outweighed the negatives. I saw a particularly bad example of our attempt at playing offside against The Netherlands (a goal kick was given), but there are others. Jack Hendry decided to play the everyone in the Dutch team on in the box while the entire team goes the other way before rightfully getting pelters from his team mates. I feel this hasn't been a big question yet, purely because we haven't conceded from it recently. It will be in the future because we will concede from it sooner or later and as I said before for me it's just about risk and reward.