Gordon Strachan

[craigkillie]

18 minutes ago, Dunning1874 said:

While you can point to the initial improvement post-Levein and the positivity of his first 2 years in charge, his time as Scotland manager will ultimately be remembered for two for overseeing two failed campaigns when qualification was an entirely realistic goal with the players at his disposal. No one will remember him as the worst Scotland manager ever - comparisons with Levein, Burley and Vogts will always remind us how much worse it could get - but he won't be remembered fondly either.

This is a really fair appraisal.  Given a bit of time for reflection, folk will realise that while Strachan was a failure in the role, he definitely wasn't as bad as some of the guys who have gone before him.

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, Jason King said:

Vogts inherited a shambles of a squad so had to cast the net far and wide and considering he was our first foreign manager he actually managed to put together a semi-decent squad that his successors seriously benefited from, he was far better in the role than Strachan.

This revisionism about Vogts has to stop.  We were uniformly terrible under his management, and the fact that he laboured to a 2nd place in a group involving Lithuania, Iceland and the Faroes should not mask that fact.  We were about 20 minutes away from drawing with Lithuania and coming third in that group.  The home win over the Dutch was his finest hour, but that was quickly followed by a complete and utter shambles in the away leg.

Of course he gave debuts to guys like Fletcher and McFadden who went on to have long and successful careers for Scotland, but he also gave debuts to Warren Cummings, David McNamee, Robbie Stockdale, Richard Hughes, Gareth Williams, Scott Dobie and Paul Devlin.  If you cap literally ever Scottish professional footballer playing at a semi-decent level, then obviously some of them are going to go on to form the spine of future teams.

 

[Raidernation]

Should arrange a "Strachan's 11" v "Scottish league Scots" just for a larf!

[craigkillie]

4 minutes ago, Raidernation said:

Then not pick any players from them (except, of course, sevco)

Could have sworn that I saw Christophe Berra playing centre-back in all four of those games, but maybe I was just imagining it.

[Nold]

Cliché bingo at work now discussing the reasons Strachan failed:

Too many foreigners in the domestic game
Youngsters not playing socially any more
Too much time on Playstations (see also not playing football socially any more)
Back in my day it was Jumpers for goalposts/ tennis ball and lamp posts
We had a good squad on paper

Any other pish excuses for failure being mentioned elsewhere?

[HibeeJibee]

1 minute ago, Raidernation said:

Should arrange a "Strachan's 11" v "Scottish league Scots" just for a larf!

[craigkillie]

Just now, Raidernation said:

Should arrange a "Strachan's 11" v "Scottish league Scots" just for a larf!

Who would Gordon, Tierney, Berra, Armstrong, Brown, Forrest and Griffiths play for?

[Ginaro]

21 minutes ago, Lex said:

Lowest finish under Vogts - 3rd
Lowest finish under Burley - 3rd
Lowest finish under Levein - 3rd
Lowest finish under Strachan - 4th.
 

We finished 2nd under Vogts in Euro 2004 qualifying.

[Jason King]

4 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

This revisionism about Vogts has to stop.  We were uniformly terrible under his management, and the fact that he laboured to a 2nd place in a group involving Lithuania, Iceland and the Faroes should not mask that fact.  We were about 20 minutes away from drawing with Lithuania and coming third in that group.  The home win over the Dutch was his finest hour, but that was quickly followed by a complete and utter shambles in the away leg.

Of course he gave debuts to guys like Fletcher and McFadden who went on to have long and successful careers for Scotland, but he also gave debuts to Warren Cummings, David McNamee, Robbie Stockdale, Richard Hughes, Gareth Williams, Scott Dobie and Paul Devlin.  If you cap literally ever Scottish professional footballer playing at a semi-decent level, then obviously some of them are going to go on to form the spine of future teams.

 

Who he had to cap because of the shambles left by the previous manager, I fail to understand what you fail to understand about that.

[Jason King]

3 minutes ago, Nold said:

Cliché bingo at work now discussing the reasons Strachan failed:

Too many foreigners in the domestic game
Youngsters not playing socially any more
Too much time on Playstations (see also not playing football socially any more)
Back in my day it was Jumpers for goalposts/ tennis ball and lamp posts
We had a good squad on paper

Any other pish excuses for failure being mentioned elsewhere?

#genetics

[HibeeJibee]

3 minutes ago, Nold said:

Cliché bingo at work now discussing the reasons Strachan failed:

Too many foreigners in the domestic game
Youngsters not playing socially any more
Too much time on Playstations (see also not playing football socially any more)
Back in my day it was Jumpers for goalposts/ tennis ball and lamp posts
We had a good squad on paper

Any other pish excuses for failure being mentioned elsewhere?

Which affects all of Western Europe, of course.

SPFL also has significantly fewer foreigners now, IIRC.

[Savage Henry]

5 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

This is a really fair appraisal.  Given a bit of time for reflection, folk will realise that while Strachan was a failure in the role, he definitely wasn't as bad as some of the guys who have gone before him.

 

 

 

This revisionism about Vogts has to stop.  We were uniformly terrible under his management, and the fact that he laboured to a 2nd place in a group involving Lithuania, Iceland and the Faroes should not mask that fact.  We were about 20 minutes away from drawing with Lithuania and coming third in that group.  The home win over the Dutch was his finest hour, but that was quickly followed by a complete and utter shambles in the away leg.

Of course he gave debuts to guys like Fletcher and McFadden who went on to have long and successful careers for Scotland, but he also gave debuts to Warren Cummings, David McNamee, Robbie Stockdale, Richard Hughes, Gareth Williams, Scott Dobie and Paul Devlin.  If you cap literally ever Scottish professional footballer playing at a semi-decent level, then obviously some of them are going to go on to form the spine of future teams.

 

Richard Hughes was an excellent midfielder who ought to have been capped far more often.  Devlin was a decent player, too.  The others in that list, yeah.  But he was forced into it by Craig Brown.  That's not revisionism.  

[Big Fifer]

Christ. That really is grim.

[The Minertaur]

Just had to Google Warren Cummings as I've never heard of him

 

Now we need a fresh face in - somebody not associated with Scottish football who can come in with a clean slate and try and change how we do things. So no doubt it'll go to Malky.

 

Of the list from the bookie above - Michael O'Neill and Lars Lagerback are the only 2 I'd be satisfied with. Ally McCoist  

[DanMc99]

really don't think i want mad malky as manager, he'll be out the door quicker than big sam

[DanMc99]

is there anyone on the SFA board with footballing experience?

[Jason King]

8 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

Richard Hughes was an excellent midfielder who ought to have been capped far more often.  Devlin was a decent player, too.  The others in that list, yeah.  But he was forced into it by Craig Brown.  That's not revisionism.  

It is if you are CraigKillie, Scotland would kill for 2nd place in qualifying over the last 20 years or so and I don't care how its achieved - Bertie did it and that's not revisionism its historical fact. Strachan would still be in a job if Scotland had made the play-offs but they didn't as he made a complete mess of the start of the qualifying programme.

Some people have to mention Robbie Stockdale and then claim that Bertie capped any old tart with a Scottish granny and yet Strachan capped the modern day equivalents with the likes Johnny Russell and Craig Forsyth.

[Dunning1874]

1 minute ago, Jason King said:

Who he had to cap because of the shambles left by the previous manager, I fail to understand what you fail to understand about that.

No, this isn't true at all. Yes, the players who had formed the spine of the team under Brown were mostly gone, which meant he had to bring in new players who had little experience. Having to do that doesn't stop a manager from simply calling up the players he feels are the best available and persisting with them rather than throwing call ups around like confetti and capping more than 60 players, including players who'd played less than 10 first team games at the time they were winning caps.

It simply doesn't follow any kind of logic to say that 'experienced players retired and we needed to blood youngsters, so calling up Warren Cummings and Kevin Kyle when there were clearly better players available was the right thing to do'. It'd be like calling up Jordan McGhee and Jack Baird and giving them both a few games if Berra, Mulgrew and Martin all retired now, rather than going straight to the obviously superior options of Liam Lindsay and Liam Cooper.

[HibeeJibee]

That's harsh from Craigkillie. Cummings only played v Hong Kong League XI. McNamee got used more by Walter Smith than Vogts. Dobie, Devlin, Hughes were playing in EPL and don't recall them as controversial picks at the time. Dobie was only involved for first few months of Vogts reign anyway, ditto Stockdale - and similarly Williams who came up via U21s (pre-Vogts/Bonhof) then B team. EDIT: Indeed he played 9 games for U21s ending as captain, clearly he'd be tried.

[craigkillie]

19 minutes ago, Jason King said:

Who he had to cap because of the shambles left by the previous manager, I fail to understand what you fail to understand about that.

He didn't "have to cap" any of those mediocre players.  He could have done what most normal managers would have done and stuck with the core of the existing team whilst gradually introducing others.  The idea that Vogts was forced to play a game of international cap tombola is nonsense.

It has become a bit of a myth that Craig Brown had somehow left behind a decrepit squad of 35 year olds.  His last game was a 2-1 win over Latvia in 2001, and there were only 5 players aged 30 or over.  The line-up was Neil Sullivan (31), David Weir (31), Callum Davidson (24), Christian Dailly (27), Matt Elliott (32), Colin Cameron (27), Barry Nicholson (23), Craig Burley (30), Dougie Freedman (27), Don Hutchison (30), Neil McCann (26).    The subs used were Scott Booth (29), Gavin Rae (23) and Scott Severin (22), and the unused subs were Rab Douglas (29), Gary Naysmith (22), Gary Holt (28) and Stevie Crawford (27).  The likes of Barry Ferguson, Jackie McNamara, Dominic Matteo and Kenny Miller amongst others had already been capped and were still well under 30 at the time too, and he still had 31 year old Paul Lambert who was one of Celtic's best players at the time.

With the exception of Elliott, all of those could reasonably be expected to still be around for the following campaign, but by the next competitive match 10 months later Vogts made 9 changes to that starting line-up, and we drew in the Faroe Islands.

 

[Jason King]

Just now, Dunning1874 said:

It simply doesn't follow any kind of logic to say that 'experienced players retired and we needed to blood youngsters, so calling up Warren Cummings and Kevin Kyle when there were clearly better players available was the right thing to do'.

Warren Cummings "cap" was against a Hong Kong XI, that people bang on about him says far more about them than it does about Vogts, that cap coming for the second 45 minutes but for some odd reason he's become a whipping boy of the Vogts era.

Odd, odd, very very odd that you and others hark on about him.