Next Scotland Manager Mk II

[Peppino Impastato]

Look at a guy like Kevin Gallagher, what a fkn player, what a fantastic career.  We don't have anybody anywhere near that now, also durie, burley, Collins, Lambert, hendry, calderwood,. even dailly and Leighton just from that team as well as mccpost, goram and McAllister, we were fkn brilliant.

[Peppino Impastato]

5 minutes ago, nsr said:

I'm not disagreeing, I'm suggesting the reason is that other countries have got better while we've stood still and our players can't compete at the same level as they used to.

Yeah I'm not disagreeing or agreeing I think that's partly true but also we have maybe regressed a bit too.  It's a whole other debate.

[velo army]

Leighton was dodgy as f**k, and Dailly was a very fit carthorse, but I'll concede to most of the others. Hendry was marvellous.

 

[Rodhull]

Behave, Leighton pretty much got us to France 98 with some of his performances in the qualifiers and is well above any of the keepers we have now.

Agree that we don't have players in midfield the standard of Collins, Lambert or even McAllister who admittedly wasn't always at his best for Scotland but I don't think think a lot of the guys mentioned in the squad then are better than what we have now. With the changes in the Premier League now compared to then a lot of guys that played for teams like Blackburn, Spurs etc then would likely be playing for the likes of Stoke, Palace, Brighton etc now. Which isn't that much different to the average standard we have now.

[Peppino Impastato]

10 minutes ago, velo army said:

Leighton was dodgy as f**k, and Dailly was a very fit carthorse, but I'll concede to most of the others. Hendry was marvellous.

 

We'll be waiting a long time to see a Scottish keeper a man utd.  Leighton was.fkn brilliant and had a tremendous career.  Though personally I have always been a huge Gordon fan and think he would have got to that level if not for injury.

As for Leighton I can only assume you only saw him briefly at the end of his career and all you know about him was he got dropped for a cup final replay.  He was a great keeper who had a very distinguished career, though Goram was a wee bit better.

 

Dailly a carthorse lol.  He would be easily our best defender just now.

[Peppino Impastato]

Just now, Rodhull said:

Behave, Leighton pretty much got us to France 98 with some of his performances in the qualifiers and is well above any of the keepers we have now.

Agree that we don't have players in midfield the standard of Collins, Lambert or even McAllister who admittedly wasn't always at his best for Scotland but I don't think think a lot of the guys mentioned in the squad then are better than what we have now. With the changes in the Premier League now compared to then a lot of guys that played for teams like Blackburn, Spurs etc then would likely be playing for the likes of Stoke, Palace, Brighton etc now. Which isn't that much different to the average standard we have now.

That last bit is actually a good point

[Rodhull]

Aye as much as I wish we had a Colin Hendry type now it irks me when Craig Brown et al talks about how Hendry was challenging for the Premier League title and uses that as an example of how we don't have anyone near that level now when the truth is Hendry at his peak wouldn't get close to the Man City, Man U, Spurs of the world now. He would have Stoke or West Brom centre half written all over him.

[Peppino Impastato]

1 hour ago, Rodhull said:

Aye as much as I wish we had a Colin Hendry type now it irks me when Craig Brown et al talks about how Hendry was challenging for the Premier League title and uses that as an example of how we don't have anyone near that level now when the truth is Hendry at his peak wouldn't get close to the Man City, Man U, Spurs of the world now. He would have Stoke or West Brom centre half written all over him.

That's very true.  And Craig brown is an utter weapon.

[pandarilla]

Aye as much as I wish we had a Colin Hendry type now it irks me when Craig Brown et al talks about how Hendry was challenging for the Premier League title and uses that as an example of how we don't have anyone near that level now when the truth is Hendry at his peak wouldn't get close to the Man City, Man U, Spurs of the world now. He would have Stoke or West Brom centre half written all over him.

He might get into the Leicester team that won the league though?

And basically a similar player to John Terry.

[pandarilla]

I honestly don't think he took the Germany games as a free hit. During the game in Berlin he made a tactical change which completely baffled Germany, put them on the back foot and got us a goal (Fletcher coming on and playing a deep-lying centre forward role. The German CB's were utterly at sea for about 15 mins). Naismith hit the post and the German winner came about because of a huge error by McCarthy and the ball just careened off Muller. They were jammy as f**k to win that. It could easily have been 2-1 to us.
Again, I think people are confusing Strachan's pronouncements to the media with his actual approach to the game. He always just fed the media shite. Always. His job with the media was to take the pressure off the players. He appeared to do that and the players loved him for it. He will talk the talk of "we're not expected to get anything from them, so we're just going to go out and play", but in the dressing room you know he's firing them up and focusing on the weaknesses of these big teams.
I know it's all done now, but reckon a lot of the misunderstanding of Strachan is that too many people read too much into what he said to the media. I reckon he made mistakes in team selection and was far too late in calling up Griff and the other Celtic lads, but having gone unbeaten in 2017 it seems insane that he would get sacked now. The SFA are making a huge arse of getting someone better too, on that we can all agree.

Absolutely this.

[Peppino Impastato]

3 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

He might get into the Leicester team that won the league though?

And basically a similar player to John Terry.

 Yeah, better than huth for example.  

[John Lambies Doos]

Maybe, that's a different debate, my point is we had a team and squad full of guys playing at a cracking level who had really really good careers.  We don't have that now in comparison.

These guys were the end of the pre souness development era. They were ageing but good; after them there was no talent due to the influx of foreigners into game mid to late 80s

[John Lambies Doos]

I honestly don't think he took the Germany games as a free hit. During the game in Berlin he made a tactical change which completely baffled Germany, put them on the back foot and got us a goal (Fletcher coming on and playing a deep-lying centre forward role. The German CB's were utterly at sea for about 15 mins). Naismith hit the post and the German winner came about because of a huge error by McCarthy and the ball just careened off Muller. They were jammy as f**k to win that. It could easily have been 2-1 to us.
Again, I think people are confusing Strachan's pronouncements to the media with his actual approach to the game. He always just fed the media shite. Always. His job with the media was to take the pressure off the players. He appeared to do that and the players loved him for it. He will talk the talk of "we're not expected to get anything from them, so we're just going to go out and play", but in the dressing room you know he's firing them up and focusing on the weaknesses of these big teams.
I know it's all done now, but reckon a lot of the misunderstanding of Strachan is that too many people read too much into what he said to the media. I reckon he made mistakes in team selection and was far too late in calling up Griff and the other Celtic lads, but having gone unbeaten in 2017 it seems insane that he would get sacked now. The SFA are making a huge arse of getting someone better too, on that we can all agree.

Good post but game was in Dortmund

[velo army]

I was thinking I should have checked. Thanks pal.

[The Moonster]

13 hours ago, John Lambies Doos said:

These guys were the end of the pre souness development era. They were ageing but good; after them there was no talent due to the influx of foreigners into game mid to late 80s

Bloody foreigners, coming over here and stopping us from producing footballing talent.

[Peppino Impastato]

13 hours ago, John Lambies Doos said:

18 hours ago, Peppino Impastato said:

Maybe, that's a different debate, my point is we had a team and squad full of guys playing at a cracking level who had really really good careers.  We don't have that now in comparison.

These guys were the end of the pre souness development era. They were ageing but good; after them there was no talent due to the influx of foreigners into game mid to late 80s

Also some of the last ones who came through when we still had school football

[sjc]

33 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Bloody foreigners, coming over here and stopping us from producing footballing talent.

The benefits of restricted numbers of foreign players was that there was greater emphasis due to necessity on developing homegrown talent rather than buying a ready made finished article from abroad. Transfer fees also tended to stay within the Country which helped further down the food chain with the development conveyor belt. Scotland further benefited under the "one passport" rule where English Clubs could play Scots unrestricted (until the early90s).

This rule also keep a semblance of balance in European Club competitions which now sees the elite Clubs building a 25+ squad of World selects.

You're right though, we don't have enough high quality coaches and the current coaching provided isn't good enough. In short Scotland needs to raise its game in terms of youth development.

[The Moonster]

18 minutes ago, sjc said:

The benefits of restricted numbers of foreign players was that there was greater emphasis due to necessity on developing homegrown talent rather than buying a ready made finished article from abroad. Transfer fees also tended to stay within the Country which helped further down the food chain with the development conveyor belt. Scotland further benefited under the "one passport" rule where English Clubs could play Scots unrestricted (until the early90s).

This rule also keep a semblance of balance in European Club competitions which now sees the elite Clubs building a 25+ squad of World selects.

You're right though, we don't have enough high quality coaches and the current coaching provided isn't good enough. In short Scotland needs to raise its game in terms of youth development.

I just don't buy that foreigners coming here stopped us producing talent. Plenty other European countries seem to have had no problem continuing to produce young players whilst integrating foreigners in their leagues. Seems that here we like to blame the easy target rather than actually looking at where we're going wrong.

[sjc]

1 minute ago, The Moonster said:

I just don't buy that foreigners coming here stopped us producing talent. Plenty other European countries seem to have had no problem continuing to produce young players whilst integrating foreigners in their leagues. Seems that here we like to blame the easy target rather than actually looking at where we're going wrong.

I don't disagree. We need to raise our game no doubt. Smaller Nations with less established league systems have stolen the march on us by producing youngsters of a higher quality that are picked up by Clubs in the top leagues and further developed to reach their potential like we once did (particularly in England).

[Peppino Impastato]

We also need a bigger league, our small league is too cut throat and therefore not conducive to youth development.