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Malta v Scotland


tartanspark

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14 hours ago, Mastermind said:

 


Yep, their Englishers definitely not done as well as ours tonight.

 

Definitely not.

I am guessing Matt Ritchie having a Weedgie Da is slightly different from Effiong etc playing for Malta, right enough.

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27 minutes ago, forameus said:

 

I've cut down a lot of what you post, as I don't inherently disagree, but would take an issue with the above.  How long have we been playing this current system for?  As far as I know it was purely under Strachan.  So it's "failed" once.  Not that a particular system can inherently fail, but I guess that means every system we've played since 1998 has failed.  I imagine at least one of those would be similar to whatever you suggest.  4-4-1-1 was popular, that failed too going by your metrics.

There is no dependencies on ending up in different pots.  It's an absolute fact that if we are in a lower pot, we are going to be playing better teams.  I don't need to think about how highly I rate the opposition for it to be relevant.  I'd rather be in pot 3 and facing Lithuania this year than be in pot 5 and potentially facing Poland again.  Can you not see how that is the very definition of things getting worse?

For a long time we've had a "questionable" defence. OK,  we all know that

Various managers have tried various systems to cover that. In Smith's time he also knew they were slow,  so couldn't play a high line

It also depends what creative options we've had in front of that. So to be fair, for quite a while they were few and far between meaning all we could do was try and be as compact as possible and hard to beat...then hope for the best

I would say our attacking options in midfield or up front are far better than previously, and is our strength. From what I've seen, with the exception of a handful of teams, England not being one of them, we have the capability of causing serious problems for any side if we're willing to be brave enough

The point about pots again. Yes, understand let's say Poland being better than Lithuania - doesn't mean we should automatically regard either as better than us though. 

But we can resort to a more cautious approach, and as before narrowly avoid qualification, but be in a better seeded pot so next time we can narrowly avoid qualification, but be in a better seeded pot so next time.......

 

 

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4 minutes ago, DublinMagyar said:

Off topic here but does anyone know if Skrtel gets a 1 or 2 game ban?

2 yellows is usually a 1 match ban but when UEFA see his stamp on Kane I imagine it'll be extended 

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Just now, C. Muir said:

2 yellows is usually a 1 match ban but when UEFA see his stamp on Kane I imagine it'll be extended 

 

I'm guessing it depends on the referees match report and what the second yellow was for.  If it was for the stamp then I'm assuming the ref will have been seen to have seen it and dealt with it at the time therefore they can't change it?

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In the end a good result and a pretty decent performance.

I think the same strengths and weaknesses were on show from the last campaign. On the plus side, the midfield looks good. Snodgrass and Richie were big threats and Burke looked raw but a promising player. The centre of defence still looks very soft. Malta exposed that and we'll need to tighten up when we face better sides.

Not convinced by Martin either. We clearly don't have a forward who's going to be threatening the scoring charts so maybe we need more of a centre forward who's just going to bully, knock down balls and create space for the 3 behind him. I'd probably prefer Fletcher for that.

England will win the group so I'm happy for them to have won in Slovakia. At least we didn't have the fucking infuriating situation of our closest rivals picking up wins against the big team so far. We should have enough to finish ahead of Lithuania and Slovenia so it's a shootout with Slovakia as I see it.

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15 hours ago, 1320Lichtie said:

If we left on Friday instead of yesterday we would've won by a couple more IMO

Hah... Good point. 

A four goal swing in international football is not to be sniffed at, right enough. Unless it's Gibraltar of course. Did I mention they beat Malta?

http://us.soccerway.com/matches/2014/06/04/world/friendlies/gibraltar/malta/1662384/

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4 minutes ago, Aufc said:

I think we should continue to play Burke. Yes he will make mistakes but he can only improve and giving him game time will accelerate this.

IMO I don't think international football is the place to be affording game time solely so players can improve.

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Yep, in qualifiers against better sides, I want the only factor in team selection to be the best side to win the game. That was the first I've seen of Burke so I can't say he does or doesn't deserve a spot in the starting 11 on merit. But games like Malta and sub appearances are fine for breaking him in if there are better player atm available.

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38 minutes ago, NewHope said:

it-s-an-extender-o.gif

 'You know what this room says to me? Aqua. Which is French for water. It's like being inside an enormous Fox's Glacier Mint, which again, to me, is a bonus.'

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Was seething listening to Talksport earlier. The coral PR guy giving it big licks, England are 5/4 or something like that to go through the group unbeaten. We have been totally written off.

Just need to keep within touching distance of them till the Wembley game then I hope we f'ck them rotten.


Talk sport is a load of shite, especially that Orange haired imbecile in after 4. 00. Talk sport just employ twats who would say anything for a reaction
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