Scotlands last genuine world class player?

[1320Lichtie]

Robertson is a left back, if you watch all his best runs he comes from deep in them all. All the good crosses he puts in are usually after an overlap. Leave him there.

Tierney looks capable at centre half too, get him in as a left sided centre half and don’t ruin Robertson by playing him out of position.

[Lex]

No you don’t move Robertson. He is Scotland’s left back and he will be for the next 10 years or so, I expect he will get the armband soon too. Tierney will be moved to accommodate him.

It’s an oft made misconception that if an attacking full back is good going forward he must be good as a winger.

It’s a completely different position. Robertson - and other attacking full backs - are effective because they time their forward runs from deep in their own half. This allows them to build up a bit of speed, arrive late to an attack and get in behind the opponent and get to the opposing by line.

Wingers start much further up the pitch and are more reliant on dribbling skills, cutting inside and scoring. See Salah, Sterling, Sane etc. That simply isn’t Robertson’s game and if we move him all we will do is weaken our best player.

[woof!]

44 minutes ago, Lex said:

No you don’t move Robertson. He is Scotland’s left back and he will be for the next 10 years or so, I expect he will get the armband soon too. Tierney will be moved to accommodate him.

It’s an oft made misconception that if an attacking full back is good going forward he must be good as a winger.

It’s a completely different position. Robertson - and other attacking full backs - are effective because they time their forward runs from deep in their own half. This allows them to build up a bit of speed, arrive late to an attack and get in behind the opponent and get to the opposing by line.

Wingers start much further up the pitch and are more reliant on dribbling skills, cutting inside and scoring. See Salah, Sterling, Sane etc. That simply isn’t Robertson’s game and if we move him all we will do is weaken our best player.
 

Robertson can beat a man from a standing start and can drop his shoulder like a winger. He does it often. There are no guarantees against top opposition that he’ll get the chance to bomb forward on the overlap. Tierney is our second best player and needs to be accommodated too. He could play as one of three centre halves but not two. We need to try each at LB and LM and see what works out best. I still think Tierney is a more natural defender than Robertson - an attribute that is quite important.

[Gordopolis]

Back 3 of McKenna, Hendry and Tierney with Robertson as full back is the way forward

[Peppino Impastato]

Just now, Gordopolis said:

Back 3 of McKenna, Hendry and Tierney with Robertson as full back is the way forward

That's correct.  I already listed our best team there's a thread for it.

[woof!]

1 hour ago, Peppino Impastato said:

That's correct.  I already listed our best team there's a thread for it.

It’s good on paper and could be good in reality, but we all have a gnawing doubt it will implode and we’ll be back to a four.

[kenny131]

1 hour ago, woof! said:

It’s good on paper and could be good in reality, but we all have a gnawing doubt it will implode and we’ll be back to a four.

No need to change from a back four to shoe horn in a player who is 2nd best in his position we just need to accept we are well covered in the left back area.

[Bing.McCrosby]

5 minutes ago, kenny131 said:

No need to change from a back four to shoe horn in a player who is 2nd best in his position we just need to accept we are well covered in the left back area.

He's second best in the position yes, but probably second best in the whole team also. So yes I think he does need accommodated.

I don't like him at centre back, maybe on the left of a 3 but he's too small for a 2 man defence.

Robertson would be excellent at left mid

[Ya Bezzer!]

On 9/10/2015 at 19:39, Lex said:

Alan Hansen, Graeme Souness and Kenny Dalglish.

The spine of the Liverpool side in the 80's when they were the best team in Europe, and they were all Scottish.

How our national team was still so shite at major tournaments is beyond me.

Now don't get me wrong they were all great players but....

Was Kenny Dalglish better than Safet Susic, Jan Ceulemans or Karl Heinz Rummenigge?

Was Graeme Souness better than Falcao or Jean Tigana or Lothar Matthaus?

Was Alan Hansen better than...well McLeish, Narey or Miller?

To me a world class player is one that goes straight into a world XI.  It's a Messi or Ronaldo or in previous years a Zindane or Platini or Gerd Muller or Di Stefano or a Schmeichel or even a Thuram.

The truth is I don't think Scotland have ever had genuinely world class players, at least in the post war era.  Even in the 50's and 60's knowledge of the world game was massively ignorant in Britain.....even when teams like Uruguay and Hungary turned top British international teams over there was still a sense of misguided superiority.

Scotland produced a lot of very good players in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's but so did other nations some of whom have almost been forgotten.  Think of the great Denmark team of the 80's  for instance, the Belgians of the same period, or the Austrians and Russians in the 50's and 60's.  Poland and Czechoslavakia in the 70's etc, etc. the list could go on and on and that's ignoring the major nations.

When we think of the football of the past we tend to be a little Britain-centric and it's also a sort of balm to our current woes to hold the belief "once we were great". 

[Peppino Impastato]

4 hours ago, Ya Bezzer! said:

Now don't get me wrong they were all great players but....

Was Kenny Dalglish better than Safet Susic, Jan Ceulemans or Karl Heinz Rummenigge?

Was Graeme Souness better than Falcao or Jean Tigana or Lothar Matthaus?

Was Alan Hansen better than...well McLeish, Narey or Miller?

To me a world class player is one that goes straight into a world XI.  It's a Messi or Ronaldo or in previous years a Zindane or Platini or Gerd Muller or Di Stefano or a Schmeichel or even a Thuram.

The truth is I don't think Scotland have ever had genuinely world class players, at least in the post war era.  Even in the 50's and 60's knowledge of the world game was massively ignorant in Britain.....even when teams like Uruguay and Hungary turned top British international teams over there was still a sense of misguided superiority.

Scotland produced a lot of very good players in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's but so did other nations some of whom have almost been forgotten.  Think of the great Denmark team of the 80's  for instance, the Belgians of the same period, or the Austrians and Russians in the 50's and 60's.  Poland and Czechoslavakia in the 70's etc, etc. the list could go on and on and that's ignoring the major nations.

When we think of the football of the past we tend to be a little Britain-centric and it's also a sort of balm to our current woes to hold the belief "once we were great". 

Aye, except the small matter of dalglish being the best player for the best team in the world at the time.

If you don't think dalglish was world class you simply know nothing about football.  Law, Baxter, jinky and others too.

[The_Kincardine]

3 minutes ago, Peppino Impastato said:

Aye, except the small matter of dalglish being the best player for the best team in the world at the time.

If you don't think dalglish was world class you simply know nothing about football.  Law, Baxter, jinky and others too.

Dalglsh, Law, Baxter for sure.  'jinky', though, wasn't even the best winger in Glasgow.

[Peppino Impastato]

Just now, The_Kincardine said:

Dalglsh, Law, Baxter for sure.  'jinky', though, wasn't even the best winger in Glasgow.

Shut up

[The_Kincardine]

26 minutes ago, Peppino Impastato said:

Shut up

Eh?  Talk me through how often you watched Scottish wingers in the late 60s/ early 70s then tell me why you put 'jinky' on the list.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

Aye, except the small matter of dalglish being the best player for the best team in the world at the time.

If you don't think dalglish was world class you simply know nothing about football.  Law, Baxter, jinky and others too.

 

This whole thread had been full of people advocating different interpretations of “world class” some quite broad and some very narrow and that’s generally fair enough but any version that doesn’t include Dalglish has clearly gone past “very narrow” into “a bit silly”

[imposs1904]

I won't wade through a thread with 43 pages, so I hope I'm not the first person to mention Notts Forest's John Robertson on the thread. He was nailed on world class.

[The_Kincardine]

9 minutes ago, imposs1904 said:

I won't wade through a thread with 43 pages, so I hope I'm not the first person to mention Notts Forest's John Robertson on the thread. He was nailed on world class.

You don't have to, bud, when there's an easy to use search function.  .  It tends to screen the imbeciles from the normal posters and it has worked in your case.  You are the first to mention John Robertson as a world class player and, hopefully, the last.  Decent enough but hardly WC.  Any sane person knows this.

Edited May 6, 2018 by The_Kincardine

[Peppino Impastato]

1 hour ago, The_Kincardine said:

You don't have to, bud, when there's an easy to use search function.  .  It tends to screen the imbeciles from the normal posters and it has worked in your case.  You are the first to mention John Robertson as a world class player and, hopefully, the last.  Decent enough but hardly WC.  Any sane person knows this.

Won two European cups champ

[banana]

Ted McMinn.

[King Kebab]

Won two European cups champ

So did Kenny Burns, John McGovern and John O'Hare, does that make them World Class???

[imposs1904]

7 hours ago, The_Kincardine said:

You don't have to, bud, when there's an easy to use search function.  .  It tends to screen the imbeciles from the normal posters and it has worked in your case.  You are the first to mention John Robertson as a world class player and, hopefully, the last.  Decent enough but hardly WC.  Any sane person knows this.

Cheers for the laugh. (Not enough for an upvote, mind.)