Germany v Scotland

[Zapp Brannigan]

26 minutes ago, Grangemouth Bairn said:

To properly kick on and improve, McGregor probably should have moved around 3/4 years ago when it became apparent there was zero challenge to Celtic domestically.

Unfortunately for him there were never any offers so he’s stagnated.

There’s no doubt he’s been a good servant for Scotland though and is also a very good player for Celtic domestically.

I think he was more than happy to sit at home in his Celtic jammies and pick up his numerous meaningless accolades than really test himself but that's just my impression 

[ArtemisClydeFrog]

43 minutes ago, allyo said:

I wonder if the EPL is also over-rated. I was fooled into thinking that Scotland would be competitive because our top players are there. But they looked completely out of their depth.

Maybe England will get a shock too. (I've found my positive!)

There's such a range of talent in that league, any league really, that it's a meaningless label on its own. 

Ryan Christie is a decent EPL player, but he's as far removed from an elite talent like Foden as a half decent Scottish Premiership player like Luke McCowan is from him. 

We've some good players all in all but they're all very similar. Tidy or industrious midfielders with some strong running fullbacks thrown in. That's it. It's hard to be press resistant when you don't have a single player in the entire squad who can beat a man, and I don't mean flying wingers. Midfielders like Modric, Kovacic, Busquets etc are so effective beating the press because they can drop a shoulder and buy themselves time and space to find the right pass. We've nothing like that. 

Edited June 15 by ArtemisClydeFrog

[O'Kelly Isley III]

37 minutes ago, Barry Ferguson's Hat said:

So yeah, as I said, one of the worst results in Euros history.

We're a football country of 5 million people. 'Just happy to be there' is an absolutely pathetic attitude.

Totally agree.  And people who point to Scotland players in the EPL are missing the point, as they are very much the exception these days.

It's been a slow decline but Scotland has regressed terribly as a football nation.  And whilst we're never ever going to rank with Germany, England or France we need to ask why we are so far off the likes of Belgium, Croatia and Portugal, and as we are possibly about to find out Switzerland and Hungary.

When the answer becomes B teams then you know we're f***ed.

[Owsley 2]

The worst thing about qualifying for me is the endless news interviews with Scotland fans. I get that they're enjoying the build up, having a laugh, I've been there myself at Italia 90 but the number of mad predictions I've heard this week, 2-1 Scotland, 3-2 Scotland. FFS, we couldn't score three against Gibraltar and this Zoomer thought we'd score three against the hosts. It's absolutely cringeworthy. Last night was what I expected. 

[Shadow Play]

Just seen Steve Clarke’s post match interview.  I thought he was very frosty in his reply to most of the questions I saw.  His body language was not great either.  With only a recent win against Gibraltar, which was far from convincing, he surely must have anticipated the very real possibility we were going to suffer a significant defeat against Germany.  I don’t think it bodes well for the next two matches.

[saint in exile]

Wonder if Clarkes dreams were haunted by Negative Norman's last night?

[Grangemouth Bairn]

22 minutes ago, Zapp Brannigan said:

I think he was more than happy to sit at home in his Celtic jammies and pick up his numerous meaningless accolades than really test himself but that's just my impression 

You are probably partly right but he’s never had the opportunity to move and he’s signed a 5 year contract so we’ll probably never know.

[Bogbrush1903]

9 hours ago, 2426255 said:

In the games where we have tried to play possession football and go toe to toe we haven't done well, have we? England beat us 3-1, France 4-1 and The Netherlands 4-0. In our competitive games where we have tried to control the game without the ball we have had more success: Beating Spain 2-0 and losing to Spain 2-0.

 

Losing 2-0 to Spain is a success?

[tam the bud]

As an old fart who been watching us since 1974, i knew what the pre match talk would have been about.

Watch an other channel till 8 on the dot, at h/t turned over to watch part of the traitors.

15mins later back to itv, then the second the final whistle went, back to the traitors. 

Is anybody really surprised that most of the talk would be about England ?

As for us, shite. 

 

 

[Bogbrush1903]

2 hours ago, SH Panda said:

Isn't really tho, England losing to Iceland is objectively far worse.

I don't doubt some Scottish 'fans' enjoyed it, but for the majority disappointing result and we move on.

Much better to be here and get beaten, than not be here at all.

Embarrassing defeatist attitude, get a grip

[No_Problemo]

2 minutes ago, Bogbrush1903 said:

Embarrassing defeatist attitude, get a grip

I mean it’s quite blatantly better to actually be at the tournament, than not - that isn’t defeatist. 

It doesn’t mean last night wasn’t shambolic. 

[Colkitto]

14 minutes ago, tam the bud said:

As an old fart who been watching us since 1974, i knew what the pre match talk would have been about.

Watch an other channel till 8 on the dot, at h/t turned over to watch part of the traitors.

15mins later back to itv, then the second the final whistle went, back to the traitors. 

Is anybody really surprised that most of the talk would be about England ?

As for us, shite. 

 

 

The ITV/STV coverage was a disgrace. Why didn't STV have their own studio output? Opting for the UK network coverage just sums them up.

They've covered England games even when Scotland are playing and that includes friendlies and women. 

As for the game, it looked like we froze on the day. Gilmour shouldn't have been dropped. Porteous done what Porteous does.

I still believe we have a good squad of players. Good players just don't turn bad overnight. The Germans were superb and we were never going to beat them. It's the manner of how we were beaten. 

Our big test comes in the next 2 games.  

Edited June 15 by Colkitto

[54_and_counting]

1 hour ago, allyo said:

I wonder if the EPL is also over-rated. I was fooled into thinking that Scotland would be competitive because our top players are there. But they looked completely out of their depth.

Maybe England will get a shock too. (I've found my positive!)

They looked out of their depth because of how they were setup

3 centre halves marking one striker, standing there watching a 2 man sitting midfield being absolutely schooled by 3 of the current best attacking mids in the world 

Not one of tierney, hendry or porteous even once thought "I'll step up and help mcgregor and mctominey out and leave the one front man to be picked up by the other 2"

Absolute amateur stuff that no one in the management team or senior players seen that and changed it

[IrishBhoy]

49 minutes ago, HoBNob said:

 

 

Sorry but we'll never agree on this. 

On the first quoted post Gilmour would've been pressing Kroos? Whit? And Gilmour would've stopped us passed around in midfield? People are just making stuff up. 

To be fair I didn’t say Gilmour would have been the one pressing Kroos, but what he could have done was play the role he normally plays for Scotland and find space to take the ball off the defence and pick a pass that gets us into the opponents half. Last night we had McGinn and McGregor trying to play from the edge of the 18 yard box and by the time they had attempted 2 or 3 passes Germany had the ball back. 

[Bogbrush1903]

9 minutes ago, No_Problemo said:

I mean it’s quite blatantly better to actually be at the tournament, than not - that isn’t defeatist. 

It doesn’t mean last night wasn’t shambolic. 

I would rather we didn't qualify if we're not equipped for it, last night was a humiliation....I can't think of a worse opening game of a tournament than that and, in my view, highlights the folly of having 24 teams qualifying for a Euros.

16 teams at a Euros was optimal, ok 24 gives more a tickle but it dilutes the quality at the tournament and makes it less of a spectacle.

Edited June 15 by Bogbrush1903

[true fan]

I wonder if the team were expecting the first 15 minutes to be a cagey affair with both teams sizing each other up. When the Germans went pedal to the metal from the whistle Scotland were in a state of shock and never recovered

Understand the ‘better not be there’ sentiment at times like this but not being there isn’t much fun. Gotta keep trying

Edited June 15 by true fan

[No_Problemo]

2 minutes ago, Bogbrush1903 said:

I would rather we didn't qualify if we're not equipped for it, last night was a humiliation....I can't think of a worse opening game of a tournament than that and, in my view, highlights the folly of having 24 teams qualifying for a Euros.

16 teams at a Euros was optimal, ok 24 gives more a tickle but it dilutes the quality at the tournament and makes it less of a spectacle.

Not qualifying would mean we had been even less successful. 

It absolutely was humiliating, but given our form up until qualifying we would have been pretty likely to qualify for a 16 team Euro’s too - we’ll see if things pick up over the next two games. 

[saint in exile]

6 minutes ago, 54_and_counting said:

They looked out of their depth because of how they were setup

3 centre halves marking one striker, standing there watching a 2 man sitting midfield being absolutely schooled by 3 of the current best attacking mids in the world 

Not one of tierney, hendry or porteous even once thought "I'll step up and help mcgregor and mctominey out and leave the one front man to be picked up by the other 2"

Absolute amateur stuff that no one in the management team or senior players seen that and changed it

The space out wide and in front of the back 3 was jaw droppingy naive

[54_and_counting]

4 minutes ago, IrishBhoy said:

To be fair I didn’t say Gilmour would have been the one pressing Kroos, but what he could have done was play the role he normally plays for Scotland and find space to take the ball off the defence and pick a pass that gets us into the opponents half. Last night we had McGinn and McGregor trying to play from the edge of the 18 yard box and by the time they had attempted 2 or 3 passes Germany had the ball back. 

Yup absolute madness to pick two players like mcgregor and mctominay for that role last night, both are very poor at taking the ball under pressure and not panicking/losing the ball, 

He needed 3 in there and one absolutely had to be gilmour, Mcginn the other (who isnt the worst at taking the ball and driving with it either) and then one other who'd do the donkey work for them

[Bogbrush1903]

1 minute ago, No_Problemo said:

Not qualifying would mean we had been even less successful. 

It absolutely was humiliating, but given our form up until qualifying we would have been pretty likely to qualify for a 16 team Euro’s too - we’ll see if things pick up over the next two games. 

My hope is that we scraped the bottom of the barrel last night, to quote New Labour of 1997, "things can only get better" but for that to happen we must be more positive tactically.

I said yesterday that Clarke went into his shell at Euro 2021 and again we saw that last night.