Israel Vs Scotland 28th March

[Monkey Tennis]

14 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

He's hardly going to come and say "Aye, we've pretty much fucked our chances now and need to beat Denmark twice and hope they fall apart" is he? I get that it's frustrating but there's not really much else they can say in these scenarios without heaping pressure on themselves or the players. 

Yes, that's the obvious response, but why shouldn't pressure now be heaped upon them?  

Its apparent absence hasn't served us well.  As I said, it's an act of self preservation that involves treating us all with contempt.

[HalfCutNinja]

27 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Steve Clarke bugged me in the press conference last night, when he refused to say whether these were points dropped, or we were now relying on producing big wins, hiding instead behind rubbish about not being able to predict the future.

It's an extension of refusing to call either game 'must win' or to provide points targets.  Strahan used to play similar wee games.

I'm not pretending that it was necessarily decisive, but it annoys me because it insults the intelligence.  It also bugs me because I think it allows for an abdication of responsibility for him and the players.  It's done as an act of self preservation, should the team fail to deliver and I'm sick of hearing it.

The enormous goodwill that accompanied him into the job, and was then unleashed with qualification, will recede fast at this rate.

I have to say I heard SOD on the radio last night and he sounded like a lickspittle little b*****d.

Going on about how its good we are undefeated so far, we have a tough game on Wednesday, and the manager showed his tactical nous by changing it at half-time. Perhaps neglecting the fact if his tactical nous was so impressive he might have got it right from kick-off.

Absolute teacher's pet and you can see how Clarke keeps picking him despite him being mince.

[The Moonster]

Just now, Monkey Tennis said:

Yes, that's the obvious response, but why shouldn't pressure now be heaped upon them?  

Its apparent absence hasn't served us well.  As I said, it's an act of self preservation that involves treating us all with contempt.

We as fans are free to heap as much pressure on them as we want. Steve Clarke isn't going to willingly heap more pressure on himself or his players though. 

Have we really had an absence of pressure? Pretty sure I watched half our team in tears after winning a recent play-off with one guy barely able to speak to the press after it, such was the relief of pressure. 

[Monkey Tennis]

1 minute ago, The Moonster said:

We as fans are free to heap as much pressure on them as we want. Steve Clarke isn't going to willingly heap more pressure on himself or his players though. 

Have we really had an absence of pressure? Pretty sure I watched half our team in tears after winning a recent play-off with one guy barely able to speak to the press after it, such was the relief of pressure. 

You're contradicting your own point here.

If pretending that we're not now playing catch up, is done in the interests of relieving pressure, then you're saying it doesn't work, as the players clearly feel immense pressure.

It begs the question: why do it?

[Insert Amusing Pseudonym]

10 minutes ago, rainbowrising said:

He seems to have missed the 'luck' we had in the first half when we could easily have been down by 2 or 3

Are you Davie Provan?  He's a specialist in this type of comment.  We were poor in the first half but that's no reason to make it sound like we were under intense pressure.  They had 1 really good chance which Solomon should have done better with, and the goal.  We also had a couple of chances, McTominay arguably missing the best chance of the half.

[Savage Henry]

42 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Steve Clarke bugged me in the press conference last night, when he refused to say whether these were points dropped, or we were now relying on producing big wins, hiding instead behind rubbish about not being able to predict the future.

It's an extension of refusing to call either game 'must win' or to provide points targets.  Strahan used to play similar wee games.

I'm not pretending that it was necessarily decisive, but it annoys me because it insults the intelligence.  It also bugs me because I think it allows for an abdication of responsibility for him and the players.  It's done as an act of self preservation, should the team fail to deliver and I'm sick of hearing it.

The enormous goodwill that accompanied him into the job, and was then unleashed with qualification, will recede fast at this rate.

A couple of days after  McTominay said the squad lacked arrogance.   That comes from the manager.

 

51 minutes ago, VictorOnopko said:

Not really.  It's fairly self-evident that after a slow start, we need some other results to go our way.  If Denmark perform as expected as top seeds and Austria don't drop points to Israel or the minnows, then we can't finish 2nd unless we beat them in Vienna or do significantly better against the Danes than them (very unlikely in both cases).  Other matches matter as well as our own. Every team which isn't romping a group needs luck.

People often cite losing to Georgia in 2015 as the reason we didn't qualify.  But if Germany (the world champions) had beaten Ireland in Dublin, we would have been in the playoffs.

A competent Scotland could easily win in Austria.   Austria and Israel are not great sides at all.   Denmark, on the other hand, look excellent.  Still, it’s an eminently generous group, and Scotland have ballsed up two eminently winnable games.

[The Moonster]

1 minute ago, Monkey Tennis said:

You're contradicting your own point here.

If pretending that we're not now playing catch up, is done in the interests of relieving pressure, then you're saying it doesn't work, as the players clearly feel immense pressure.

It begs the question: why do it?

Our national team is always under pressure as we have very expectant fans, fans that routinely think we should be wiping the floor with other nations when reality is far from it. They were quite clearly under immense pressure to qualify for Euro2020 and that was evident when we qualified given the reaction of the team and management. Given that the team had broken that duck, there then became expectation to follow that qualification up with another - this World Cup campaign. We've got off to a poor start and Steve Clarke's language is very obviously trying to alleviate pressure rather than increase it, given the situation we now find ourselves in.

I haven't suggested that pressure is a good thing for the squad or a bad thing for the squad, simply that Steve Clarke clearly doesn't want to add more pressure to the situation. 

[Monkey Tennis]

4 minutes ago, Jambomo said:

What is actually to be gained by coming out and saying we are playing catch-up? or that we have points targets that we are aiming for? Nobody benefits from him saying those things.

After the Austria game the interviews were largely along the lines that they know they didn't play well and that they can play a lot better. Any team will go out there thinking they can win a game, even against difficult teams and more so if you know that you aren't yet playing at your best level. We don't have points targets because the team will always be aiming to take full points from every game, Clarke isn't saying we are playing catch-up because maybe they still have the belief that they can take enough points from the group to qualify and despite knowing its a slow start, aren't thinking like that yet. 

The thing to be gained is credibility.

It's ludicrous to claim that we can't get any kind of perspective on the start we've made and what it means in the wider context of the campaign.

Who gains from ludicrous claims?

[Monkey Tennis]

6 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Our national team is always under pressure as we have very expectant fans, fans that routinely think we should be wiping the floor with other nations when reality is far from it. They were quite clearly under immense pressure to qualify for Euro2020 and that was evident when we qualified given the reaction of the team and management. Given that the team had broken that duck, there then became expectation to follow that qualification up with another - this World Cup campaign. We've got off to a poor start and Steve Clarke's language is very obviously trying to alleviate pressure rather than increase it, given the situation we now find ourselves in.

I haven't suggested that pressure is a good thing for the squad or a bad thing for the squad, simply that Steve Clarke clearly doesn't want to add more pressure to the situation. 

I don't accept that we've got wildly expectant fans at all.  I actually think it's quite the reverse and that you're providing an illustration of that.

The defence of 'not adding more pressure to the squad' strikes me as flimsy.  If it doesn't achieve that, there's no point in insulting the rest of us in pursuit of it.  If it does, it's not looking like a successful strategy, given the lousy place we're already in.

[kingjoey]

17 hours ago, No_Problemo said:

Clarke watched that entire first half and didn’t do a thing about it. 
 

Clarke made those woeful substitutions. 

You think that he didn't do a thing about it after watching the first half? So he didn't take off a central defender, put on a midfielder, change to 4 at the back and move Fraser out wide? He didn't do any of that?

[No_Problemo]

3 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

You think that he didn't do a thing about it after watching the first half? So he didn't take off a central defender, put on a midfielder, change to 4 at the back and move Fraser out wide? He didn't do any of that?

Yes he did, after watching it unfold for 45 minutes and us going one down. Change it far earlier and who knows what would have happened.... it was pretty obvious to anyone we were getting an absolute hiding. 

[The Moonster]

12 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

I don't accept that we've got wildly expectant fans at all.  I actually think it's quite the reverse and that you're providing an illustration of that.

The defence of 'not adding more pressure to the squad' strikes me as flimsy.  If it doesn't achieve that, there's no point in insulting the rest of us in pursuit of it.  If it does, it's not looking like a successful strategy, given the lousy place we're already in.

I'm not a spokesperson for Scotland, nor have I mentioned any of the expectations I have for the National team, so I'm not sure how I'm illustrating that to you.

If you feel insulted by Steve Clarke's words then I'd suggest you're looking to be insulted. His comments are pretty much what I'd expect from a gaffer in his position, if you've got any examples of managers suggesting their team is underperforming in the press after matches that have worked with any larger degree of success then I'm all ears. 

 

[Monkey Tennis]

3 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

I'm not a spokesperson for Scotland, nor have I mentioned any of the expectations I have for the National team, so I'm not sure how I'm illustrating that to you.

If you feel insulted by Steve Clarke's words then I'd suggest you're looking to be insulted. His comments are pretty much what I'd expect from a gaffer in his position, if you've got any examples of managers suggesting their team is underperforming in the press after matches that have worked with any larger degree of success then I'm all ears. 

 

I'm not talking about the manager saying we're underperforming, but if I was I'd be able to cite people like Alex Ferguson in support of it.

I'm talking about a stubborn refusal to recognise in advance that we needed more from these games than we've delivered, alongside a refusal to recognise that we're now up against it and will need to produce something very demanding.

I'm not looking to be insulted.  I was behind Clarke's appointment and I remain behind him now (not that it would cost him sleep either way).  However, I hate when managers speak that way.  I think they're playing indulgent wee games designed to protect themselves, while basically belittling the press and the public.

[HalfCutNinja]

41 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Our national team is always under pressure as we have very expectant fans, fans that routinely think we should be wiping the floor with other nations when reality is far from it. They were quite clearly under immense pressure to qualify for Euro2020 and that was evident when we qualified given the reaction of the team and management. Given that the team had broken that duck, there then became expectation to follow that qualification up with another - this World Cup campaign. We've got off to a poor start and Steve Clarke's language is very obviously trying to alleviate pressure rather than increase it, given the situation we now find ourselves in.

I haven't suggested that pressure is a good thing for the squad or a bad thing for the squad, simply that Steve Clarke clearly doesn't want to add more pressure to the situation. 

I'd say the opposite. Scotland had twenty years of barren results, humiliations and embarrassments. Yet our support remained incredibly buoyant. 

The reaction wasn't about pressure it was just happiness at having finally done it. There was no pressure on anyone. Our fans don't expect anything. 
 

We are better than Israel though, and we want success. In order to achieve that you have to be performing at your potential, which means beating teams you're better than and winning games you're capable of winning. 

[The Moonster]

1 minute ago, HalfCutNinja said:

I'd say the opposite. Scotland had twenty years of barren results, humiliations and embarrassments. Yet our support remained incredibly buoyant. 

The reaction wasn't about pressure it was just happiness at having finally done it. There was no pressure on anyone. Our fans don't expect anything. 

We are better than Israel though, and we want success. In order to achieve that you have to be performing at your potential, which means beating teams you're better than and winning games you're capable of winning. 

I disagree that our fans don't expect anything, these boards certainly don't support that view. The team quite clearly have pressure on them, which is again borne out by the sheer number of people saying we should wipe the floor with Israel. I agree that to get where we want to be we need to dispatch teams like Israel without fuss, but we're still a huge work in progress for me and Clarke still doesn't know the strongest team. 

There was no pressure on them? We had numerous "this is our time" videos with every Scot and his dug giving it the big one in the lead up to the Serbia match. England were lying in wait and home games for actual Finals were scheduled at Hampden. There was huge pressure on them to get there. 

[HalfCutNinja]

1 minute ago, The Moonster said:

I disagree that our fans don't expect anything, these boards certainly don't support that view. The team quite clearly have pressure on them, which is again borne out by the sheer number of people saying we should wipe the floor with Israel. I agree that to get where we want to be we need to dispatch teams like Israel without fuss, but we're still a huge work in progress for me and Clarke still doesn't know the strongest team. 

There was no pressure on them? We had numerous "this is our time" videos with every Scot and his dug giving it the big one in the lead up to the Serbia match. England were lying in wait and home games for actual Finals were scheduled at Hampden. There was huge pressure on them to get there. 

I never read anybody say we should wipe the floor with them, but then you write you believe we should dispatch them without fuss. Kind of defeating your own argument there.

No there wasn't, that's hope, not pressure. We were not favourites and everyone knew it and accepted it. I think you're mischaracterising what pressure is. Pressure is expectation, pressure is what Brazil had on them in 2014 when 200 million people expected them to win the World Cup. We just hoped they would do it.

[The Moonster]

6 minutes ago, HalfCutNinja said:

I never read anybody say we should wipe the floor with them, but then you write you believe we should dispatch them without fuss. Kind of defeating your own argument there.

Did you just ignore the bit where I said the team isn't at that level yet? 

Don't know why I involve myself in these debates, it's always the same.

[HalfCutNinja]

1 minute ago, The Moonster said:

Did you just ignore the bit where I said the team isn't at that level yet? 

Don't know why I involve myself in these debates, it's always the same.

Well if we're not at that level yet we shouldn't be dispatching these teams without fuss then should we? So which is it?

I don't really care, its a pointless argument and you're doing a good job of taking yourself on anyway.

[Monkey Tennis]

16 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Did you just ignore the bit where I said the team isn't at that level yet? 

Don't know why I involve myself in these debates, it's always the same.

He's got a point though.

It's a popular refrain when people bemoan a Scotland stumble over a lower ranked side, that the issue is vaulting expectation, or to use your phrase, a belief that we should 'wipe the floor' with them. 

I rarely see that.  Most of us are smart enough to know that football has changed and that many traditionally weaker sides are no longer that at all.   

However, most of us also know how qualification works and how failed campaigns look.  We also have this ranking system which is imperfect, but provides an indication of nations' relative strength.

It's these things that mean we feel there's a need and a realistic hope that we'll beat or 'dispatch' teams like  Israel.  That's what's reflected here, not some arrogant or dated belief in a natural footballing superiority.

[Thumper]

2 hours ago, The Moonster said:

Our national team is always under pressure as we have very expectant fans

Nonsense. Scotland managers come and go and end up back at club level constantly. We'd gone 11 tournaments without qualifying. We get horsed by some team in the fifth or sixth tier nearly every qualifier. In terms of expectations it's approximately on par with managing Clyde or Albion Rovers.

Considering the percentage of the team that either plays in the Premier League or regularly ends up in the Champions League, it is ridiculous that the national side's bogey teams are Israel and fucking Lithuania, and that unlike every single other country in Europe we're looking at a match against the Faroe Islands and hoping we can shitfest out a lucky 2-1.