Scotland v Belgium (07/09/18)

[JamesM82]

2 hours ago, Pampered Adolescent said:

I wouldn't class myself as having 'unreasonable hatred' towards Strachan, however due to some of his bampot past quotes (e.g. velocity, sell by date, etc.), he didn't have a completely full tank of goodwill with myself.

Regarding Georgia, I partly blame the suits for agreeing to play there in September, where the ambient temperature would have been mid twenties, something Scots aren't acclimatised for, and nothing to do with genetics.

Back to McLeish, I was at his last ever game managing Motherwell where we promptly went 2-0 down to Hibs, who were utterly pish at the time. We did end up winning 6-2, that night; Jim Duffy's last game. McLeish inherited a solid Tommy McLean team, and through time, made them progressively inferior.

The world of football has changed immesurably since then. I am not seeing anything to suggest that McLeish has in any way moved with the times. And whilst all of us like to maximise our revenues for our families, many will not forgive him for his move to Birmingham, when by all accounts, compared to 95% of us here, he would have been a very wealthy man.

Finally, in my view, McLeish is the symptom, not the cause. Sadly I cannot see the necessary change at the SFA for our international fortunes to improve.

Cheers

PA

The "suits" don't determine the qualifying fixture list nowadays and haven't since the 2014 qualifiers (when Levein asked for two home games to start with).

[Savage Henry]

4 minutes ago, JamesM82 said:

The "suits" don't determine the qualifying fixture list nowadays and haven't since the 2014 qualifiers (when Levein asked for two home games to start with).

That harks back to Craig Brown's neat socks nonsense.  Irrespective of who and when they played, the SFA always managed to out-negotiate the pesky foreigners in his eyes.  Very glad that bollocks has been done away with.

[Estragon]

21 hours ago, kenny131 said:

In no point was i refering to belgium learn to read. I was stating wales took them to task in the group stage.

This is you referring to Belgium.

This is you referring to Belgium right now.

[Miss Tea Spoon]

23 hours ago, kenny131 said:

In no point was i refering to belgium learn to read. I was stating wales took them to task in the group stage and we are a million miles away from even putting a glove on them.  Its allowed were shite and havd been for decades unless yoh think otherwise i have no idea what the f**k your on about ya mutant

Took them to task is a very kind way to describe a 1-0 away defeat in which Nainggolan gifted Bale a goal and a 0-0 home draw in which we had the best of the chances.

Also, our manager at the time was still Marc Wilmots and we have progressed significantly from a tactical point of view under Roberto Martinez.

[Monkey Tennis]

9 hours ago, skippy2015 said:

The Germany Poland Ireland group was a hard group. On a result by result basis the Georgia result was the reason we didn’t qualify. I also though we were a little unlucky that campaign in both Poland games we could have had 6/6 instead of 2/6 if things go our way.

Another problem with sacking Strachan is you know their is a massive chance based on our recruitment strategy of the past ie Vogts Levein Burley that we will end up with a poorer manager.

Also please read posts on here around Strachan appointment it was 50 / 50 at best. Majority Celtic fans had same issue with him never accepted him even though brought them to last 16 of Champions league. Twice

Last point - Strachan made mistakes obviously but why sack him when he’s performing well the last year. If your going to sack him sack him prior to 2018 World Cup qualifiers. There is no sense sacking him when he’s got the team correct and team playing well.

We could easily have got fewer points against Poland too.  They hit the post late in our game there.

The 50/50 claim around Strachan's appointment is just unadulterated nonsense I'm afraid.

[D.A.F.C]

Bertie Vogts still the most successful manager since Brown.

 

[Richey Edwards]

3 minutes ago, D.A.F.C said:

Bertie Vogts still the most successful manager since Brown.

 

Aye, and he achieved that by qualifying for the playoffs from a group featuring Iceland, Lithuania and the Faroe Islands. I'd wager that even Levein, Burley etc would have struggled to make an arse of that group.

[D.A.F.C]

Two draws with a Germany and Holland and brought through the players that made McLeish and Smith look good.

[Guest DAVIDB69]

As tomorrow draws near it’s a unique situation in that the first game of a campaign could effectively end it.

If we don’t win tomorrow I don’t think we can win the mini section.

I have already accepted there is next to no chance of us finishing in the top 2 of a main qualifying section

[forameus]

19 minutes ago, DAVIDB69 said:

As tomorrow draws near it’s a unique situation in that the first game of a campaign could effectively end it.

If we don’t win tomorrow I don’t think we can win the mini section.

I have already accepted there is next to no chance of us finishing in the top 2 of a main qualifying section

Not too unique, remember that draw with Serbia when Levein was in charge?  May as well have been over after that

[Richey Edwards]

12 minutes ago, forameus said:

Not too unique, remember that draw with Serbia when Levein was in charge?  May as well have been over after that

Were we not the first team mathematically eliminated?

[forameus]

2 minutes ago, Edmond Dantès said:

Were we not the first team mathematically eliminated?

Think so.  If not the first, we were very close to it.  

What wonderful hope we had for a 3pm kick-off at Hampden that year...

[TheScarf]

5 minutes ago, forameus said:

Think so.  If not the first, we were very close to it.  

What wonderful hope we had for a 3pm kick-off at Hampden that year...

Don’t think we were quite the first, but I think we were out before Andorra or Liechtenstein or some jobber nation. 

San Marino would’ve been eliminated first as usual.

[forameus]

5 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Don’t think we were quite the first, but I think we were out before Andorra or Liechtenstein or some jobber nation. 

San Marino would’ve been eliminated first as usual.

Since I hate myself I've just gone back and checked that campaign.  Holy f**k it's depressing.  Those two opening draws, and I seem to remember Levein kept saying how a draw was a good result.  Then after Wales got absolutely pummeled 6-1 in Serbia, we lost 2-1 in Cardiff and Glasgow either side of defeat in Brussels.  Then another pumping in Serbia.  

That was just unrelenting misery that campaign.

[Dunning1874]

2 hours ago, D.A.F.C said:

Bertie Vogts still the most successful manager since Brown.

 

 

1 hour ago, D.A.F.C said:

Two draws with a Germany and Holland and brought through the players that made McLeish and Smith look good.

The first million times you said this then ignored the rebuttals which pointed out why it's not the case only to repeat it again a couple of months later you could get away with pleading ignorance, but at this point we have to conclude that you know fine well you can't support this and are just dishonestly repeating it and hoping no one picks you up on it.

If you have a supporting argument feel free to make it and we can agree to disagree, but I'll just leave some previous replies to you on this in a spoiler below. You've haven't offered a rebuttal to a single one of these points before. Please do so if you're going to carry on trotting out the line that Berti Vogts was actually a good manager who was powerless due to inheriting nothing from Craig Brown but did a brilliant job of laying foundations for Smith and McLeish.

On 17/10/2017 at 11:48, Dunning1874 said:

I decided to look more closely at the claim that McLeish was handed a batch of good players due to Berti Vogts blooding them, and the obvious implication from D.A.F.C that he only achieved good results because he was in the right place at the right time to benefit from Vogts giving players experience in the first place a few years earlier.

McLeish was Scotland manager for 10 games, including two friendlies. The number of caps players won under him is as follows, with the manager who gave them their debuts in brackets:

Craig Gordon - 10 (Vogts)
Stephen McManus - 10 (Smith)
David Weir - 9 (Brown)
Barry Ferguson - 8 (Brown)
Kris Boyd - 8 (Smith)
Scott Brown - 7 (Smith)
Lee McCulloch - 7 (Vogts)
Shaun Maloney - 7 (Smith)
Darren Fletcher - 7 (Vogts)
Graham Alexander - 6 (Vogts)
Alan Hutton - 6 (McLeish)
Gary Naysmith - 6 (Brown)
Paul Hartley - 6 (Smith)
Kenny Miller - 6 (Brown)
James McFadden - 6 (Vogts)
Garry O'Connor - 6 (Vogts)
Gary Teale - 5 (Smith)
Craig Beattie - 5 (Smith)
Stephen Pearson - 4 (Vogts)
Gary Caldwell - 2 (Vogts)
Jay McEveley - 2 (McLeish)
Christian Dailly - 2 (Brown)
Charlie Adam - 2 (McLeish)
Allan McGregor - 1 (McLeish)
Graeme Murty - 1 (Vogts)
Russell Anderson - 1 (Vogts)
Barry Robson - 1 (McLeish)
Steven Naismith - 1 (McLeish)

So 28 players were capped by Alex McLeish. 10 were given their debuts by Berti Vogts, 7 by Walter Smith, 6 by McLeish and 5 by Craig Brown. Okay, more players did get their first cap under Vogts than any other manager, but it's hardly a wild discrepancy. If you were seriously going to argue that Vogts deserves the credit for that campaign as it was achieved with his squad, you'd expect more than half of them to have came from him, but that's not the case. Considering that McLeish had his year in charge three years after Vogts' two year spell ended, you'd expect several players to have been given their first caps by Vogts - it simply makes sense that players around the 25-28 age bracket in 2007 would have been getting their first caps from 2002-04.

If you examine it by number of appearances to differentiate the importance of players rather than giving equal weight to players with 10 caps and players with 1 (Craig Gordon appeared in every minute of every competitive game whereas Allan McGregor got 45 minutes in a friendly so obviously that's not comparing like for like) it works out as Vogts - 50; Smith - 48; Brown - 31; McLeish - 11.  There's a difference of two appearances between players given debuts by Vogts and Smith - Vogts was barely more responsible for blooding the spine of that team than Smith was. McManus, Brown, Hartley, Maloney and Boyd came from Smith, Weir, Ferguson, Miller and Naysmith came from Brown, Hutton from McLeish.

What's more, when the discussion of Brown's failure to prepare for a transition and Vogts being landed with a bad situation as a result was had on the Strachan thread the other day, there was widespread agreement that you couldn't give Brown credit for giving players like Kenny Miller, Scott Severin, Gavin Rae and Stevie Crawford who went on to feature more frequently under Vogts their first caps, because they hadn't featured enough and were still inexperienced when Vogts was forced to rely on them. It was also argued that the fact Brown had picked other players like Barry Nicholson, Gary Holt and Dougie Freedman who were still available to Vogts also shouldn't count in his favour because they weren't good enough to continue getting caps anyway. Those are both entirely reasonable arguments which I broadly agree with, but if you're going to hold them against Brown to defend Vogts, you have to judge Vogts by the same standard and look at the players he gave debuts to who were still featuring under Smith and McLeish. Lee McCulloch only got one cap under Vogts, and that was coming on as a sub in the 85th minute. Craig Gordon and Gary Caldwell each had four caps when Vogts left, Russell Anderson had five, Stephen Pearson had two, Garry O'Connor and Graeme Murty also had just one.

If you're holding Vogts to that same standard as we hold Brown to for bringing players through, then really the only players you can truly credit him for bringing through are Darren Fletcher (13 caps) and James McFadden (18 caps), as they were the only players he handed over with a decent amount of experience who were also good enough to keep their place in the squad. Bringing those two through is obviously a good thing, but at the same time it's hardly like he was plucking unknown youngsters from nowhere in a masterstroke no one saw coming: he'd have been getting howls of derision if he failed to pick McFadden or Fletcher regularly with the former tearing the SPL apart and the latter establishing himself as a first team regular at Manchester United.

Of course, you can reasonably argue that Vogts does deserve the credit for the likes of Gordon and Caldwell too, but if you do that then criticise Craig Brown for not passing enough young players over you're having your cake and eating it. The reality is that like every other argument in defence of Berti Vogts, the claim that McLeish's results were down to players Vogts brought through collapses under the slightest bit of scrutiny.

 

On 17/10/2017 at 17:39, Dunning1874 said:

 

Having had a look at old squads for a post on the McLeish/Vogts debate in another thread, I wanted to revisit these points as well. I've only looked at competitive games for the purpose of removing Warren Cummings types who only played against Hong Kong and the like, so it gives a fair reflection of what Vogts was doing when he was trying to pick our best team rather than trying things out in friendlies when he may have been more interested in blooding players than the results.

These are the players who featured across Vogts' 13 competitive games in charge, with the number of competitive caps they won under him also listed and those who had been capped already under Brown in bold.

Gary Naysmith - 12
Barry Ferguson - 11
Stevie Crawford - 10
Jackie McNamara - 10
Rab Douglas - 9
Kenny Miller - 9
Christian Dailly - 8
Stephen Pressley - 8
Steven Thompson - 7
James McFadden - 7
Lee Wilkie - 6
Paul Lambert - 6
Colin Cameron - 6
Darren Fletcher - 6
Paul Dickov - 6
Maurice Ross - 5
Andy Webster - 5
Gavin Rae - 5
Graham Alexander - 4
Paul Devlin - 4
Neil McCann - 4
Don Hutchison - 4
Craig Gordon - 3
Gary Caldwell - 3
Gary Holt - 3
Russell Anderson - 2
Stephen Pearson - 2
Paul Gallacher - 1
Stephen Crainey - 1
Callum Davidson - 1
David Weir - 1
Malkkky Mackkkay - 1
Steven Caldwell - 1
Ian Murray - 1
Scott Severin - 1
Nigel Quashie - 1
Richard Hughes - 1
Allan Johnston - 1
Andy Gray - 1
Lee McCulloch - 1
Scott Dobie - 1
Kevin Kyle - 1

He used 42 players across those 13 games, giving 23 of them their debuts. Yes, that's a lot of debuts to give and there's no question that Brown left an ageing squad behind, but he used 19 players who had already been capped. Admittedly many of them had less than 10 caps, but there were 19 players available to him who already had some degree of international experience: that's not such a gigantic rebuild as you'd think he had on his hands with the way people go on about the work Brown left him to do.

The point craigkillie made about how many changes were made for that Faroes game is one often used in defence of Vogts and to criticise Brown, to show how many changes Vogts was forced to make due to the terrible hand Brown dealt him. Look at the starting XI that day:

 

Douglas

Ross - Weir - Dailly - Crainey

Dickov - Lambert - Ferguson - Johnston

Kyle - Dobie

 

It was IIRC supposed to interchange with a 4-3-3 with Dickov or Johnston pushing up when we were in possession, but it was a bit too much of a shambles to really tell.

Jackie McNamara, Callum Davidson and Gary Naysmith all had international caps before Vogts took over, all were available for that game and all of them were better full backs than the two who Vogts chose to start. Vogts wasn't forced into picking Crainey or Ross due to Craig Brown's negligence: he chose to throw untested, inferior players in over superior alternatives because he was a bad manager.

Neil McCann was a natural winger who'd had 13 caps under Brown, playing regularly and also scoring in the previous campaign so we had an experienced option on the wing available to Vogts in general, but he was unfortunately injured for that game. Not to worry, James McFadden was getting rave reviews and had established himself in the Motherwell first team, having scored double figures the season before. Vogts chose to leave him out of the squad while he put a centre forward on the wing. Vogts wasn't forced into putting Paul Dickov on the wing, he chose to play him out of position when he had real wingers available because he was a bad manager.

Kevin Kyle had at that point played 26 first team games in his career, scoring twice, both goals coming in a loan spell for fourth tier Darlington. Vogts had Stevie Crawford, Stevie Thompson and Kenny Miller available. Crawford was well proven in the Scottish top flight, Thompson had established himself in the Dundee Utd team and started that season well, eventually getting a move to Rangers that January, while Miller had already impressed at Hibs, got a move to Rangers then moved down to Wolves. Crawford and Miller both had international caps already, but he chose to use Kevin Kyle instead. He was not forced to use Kevin Kyle due to Craig Brown leaving him no options: he chose to use Kevin Kyle because he was a bad manager.

Berit Vogts wasn't forced into that starting eleven. He didn't have to give Kyle and Dobie their competitive debuts for a lack of alternatives, he didn't have to play Dickov on the wing, he certainly didn't have to put Crainey and Ross into the team. He chose to because he was a bad manager.

The list of players who won the most competitive caps under Vogts in the end is telling - the top eight had all won caps under Brown first. Admittedly in some cases that was just one cap under Brown, but these players had been around the international set-up already. Vogts could have gone with that core to the team from the start, but rather than being forced to blood players with no experience whatsoever from the start, he chose to do it differently. He had the option to pick McNamara and Naysmith straight away, but instead he chose to piss about with Maurice Ross and Stephen Crainey. He could have gone with Thompson, Crawford or Miller right away, but instead he chose to fling Kevin Kyle into the team. He had Neil McCann available but he chose to put centre forwards on the wing, with Gareth Williams as his only midfielder on the bench while Colin Cameron wasn't included in squads. The fact he later saw the error of his ways and had McCann and Cameron in the starting XI again is just further evidence that Vogts had it badly wrong at the start rather than being left with nothing by Brown; the players Brown had given caps to were the best available.

No one disputes that Craig Brown should have given more opportunities to young players. He should have had an eye on the future when our centre forwards were 32yo Billy Dodds and 30yo Don Hutchison. Tom Boyd and Matt Elliott were obviously coming to the end of their international careers and he should have had some idea of what defenders could step up to take theit places. However, the idea that this makes Craig Brown responsible for the garbage results of Berti Vogts just doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

Vogts still had the core of a squad there to work with and while he was forced to blood some youngsters, nobody forced him to pick shite ones. He corrected his errors of picking Kyle and Dobie, but persisted with Stevie Crawford over Kenny Miller. He continued to dick about with Paul Devlin while Shaun Maloney established himself in the Celtic team. He picked Maurice Ross more often than he picked Graham Alexander. Steven Caldwell. None of those decisions can be blamed on Craig Brown.

 

On 09/10/2017 at 10:56, Dunning1874 said:

That leads us nicely onto Vogts and the revisionism that he was actually good. Yes, we made the playoffs and no manager since has done so, and you can only beat what's in front of you, but it was a ridiculously easy draw. Fine, that's the luck of the draw, but all we had to do was finish above Lithuania, Iceland who were still minnows at the time, and the Faroe Islands. He presided over a draw in the Faroes and a defeat in Lithuania and got away with it because it was such a weak group; that's akin to losing to Lithuania and drawing with Malta in this campaign and if we'd had any competent challengers for second we'd have been out. It's far too simplistic to say Vogts finished second, McLeish finished third so Vogts was better; you have to look at what we were up against and where Vogts finished 1 point ahead of Iceland, McLeish finished 7 ahead of Ukraine. When we didn't get such an easy draw in the following campaign, Vogts was found out immediately.

Additionally, you'll note there that we dropped 5 points v Lithuania and the Faroes. We finished 4 points off automatic qualification, so once again we missed out because of failing against teams we should have taken maximum points from. Vogts was a failure.

[DA Baracus]

It's fine. We just need to be patient and wait for Project Brave to start producing top players.

Because that's definitely going to happen and is in no way a massive bag of shite that will be comically disastrous.

[sjc]

I see the BBC are focusing on the "Old Firm" of Celtic & Rangers to promote the women's game in spite of the fact that Glasgow City & Hibs are the shining lights within the game and have been for some time......Great idea, it's not like this obsession has damaged the men's game.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

5 minutes ago, sjc said:

I see the BBC are focusing on the "Old Firm" of Celtic & Rangers to promote the women's game in spite of the fact that Glasgow City & Hibs are the shining lights within the game and have been for some time......Great idea, it's not like this obsession has damaged the men's game.

Further “eyes of the world” pish.

[D.A.F.C]

1 hour ago, Dunning1874 said:

 

The first million times you said this then ignored the rebuttals which pointed out why it's not the case only to repeat it again a couple of months later you could get away with pleading ignorance, but at this point we have to conclude that you know fine well you can't support this and are just dishonestly repeating it and hoping no one picks you up on it.

If you have a supporting argument feel free to make it and we can agree to disagree, but I'll just leave some previous replies to you on this in a spoiler below. You've haven't offered a rebuttal to a single one of these points before. Please do so if you're going to carry on trotting out the line that Berti Vogts was actually a good manager who was powerless due to inheriting nothing from Craig Brown but did a brilliant job of laying foundations for Smith and McLeish.

 

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You really don’t like him do you. I’m sure you could pick apart every Scotland manager and their selections and tactics in the same way.

At the end of the day the history books show that he got further than all of them. That’s all that matters. With the more fashionable and media savvy guys like Smith we just went back to losing narrowly and glorious failure. You can’t draw with Germany and Holland, who were both brilliant sides at that time, and be a terrible manager. The same terrible manager that won Euro 96 ffs.

[MeadowArab]

I cant mind who the other candidates were? So far he has had shit games and shit tours. Albania and Israel is where it gets real. I would be open to change though before the euro qualifiers.

The other candidates were Cesare Prandelli and Jurgen Klinsmann. Apparently they both applied.

Supposedly Slavan Bilic applied but I'm not sure about that.