Reason for horrible exit: lack of quality or overly-defensive tactics?

[pandarilla]

This seems to be the debate in the last 24 hours or so - so what was the main problem?

Edited June 24 by pandarilla

[Sergeant Wilson]

5 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

This seems to be the debate in the last 24 hours or so - so what was the main problem?

Should we cut and paste all the arguments from the other threads?

[JS_FFC]

Bit of both. The tactics were rubbish and the players failed to perform even the crap tactics well.

 

Both of those plus the injury bug played a role (but isn’t an excuse)

[Butters Scotch]

Both

[Gordopolis]

Yeah bit of both

[Wee-Bey]

[Monkey Tennis]

It's more a question of quality.

To an extent, that's intrinsic.  We know that some of our players, particularly, but not exclusively, those called upon due to injury or suspension simply aren't good enough.

Some of our better players, however, failed to display the quality they have.  I'm honestly struggling to pick a player who got significant time across the games, who you'd say played well - Gilmour perhaps? 

We might have shown more enterprise and we might have selected slightly different personnel and made more timely changes.  However, I'm not convinced that any resulting difference would have been vast.

Simplistic and bleeding obvious I know, but I simply don't think we played well enough.  Our potentially big players were generally poor, while the thinness of our squad was also exposed.

I don't think we were ever as good as a lot of people believed last year.  The win in Norway was key, but it was bloody lucky.

[Ewanandmoreagain]

Both 

[Chripper]

Lack of quality.

I'm 99.99% sure that Steve Clarke didn't tell his players not to score.

We have no creativity in the final third. We have no one who can play a defence splitting pass and no dribbler.

Hopefully Ben Doak will solve the latter.

[itzdrk]

33 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

This seems to be the debate in the last 24 hours or so - so what was the main problem?

Ultimately it's the players that failed, nobody could say seriously that we didn't take our best available squad to the tournament.  Hickey and Dykes are absolutely huge losses to how we play but it was hardly some part timers replacing them.  Every one of those players failed big time through either not showing enough in training to get on the park or performing terribly while on it.  

The managers tactics were too door and negative, but that doesn't necessarily translate into not being able to shoot or pass the ball forward.  

[MarkoRaj]

To get through the groups in a 24 team euro you just need to win against one of the lower ranked teams in the competition.

This should not be beyond us.

Georgia, Albania, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Ukraine

There's very little between those teams and we've beaten most of them in recent years.

I don't think a lack of quality holds us back from getting that one win, I really don't.

In the past when you'd have to finish in the top 2 I could understand that argument but not now

 

[S7C]

They weren’t even impressive defensively. The tactics were a shambles.

Tactics are more important. If you play the right way you can get more out of a poor squad, but all the quality in the world doesn’t matter when you have someone so relentlessly negative calling the shots.

[JS_FFC]

5 minutes ago, MarkoRaj said:

To get through the groups in a 24 team euro you just need to win against one of the lower ranked teams in the competition.

This should not be beyond us.

Georgia, Albania, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Ukraine

There's very little between those teams and we've beaten most of them in recent years.

I don't think a lack of quality holds us back from getting that one win, I really don't.

 

In the past when you'd have to finish in the top 2 I could understand that argument but not now

 

 

Hiya Ally, hiya pal

[Dons_1988]

Lack of quality is the main factor in our historic failures and will likely to continue to be well after clarke’s time.

If you look at this tournament in isolation though, have no doubt that the quality is there in the group to have performed better across the three games. 

It would also be unfair to put it solely down to clarke’s tactics. I was comfortable with our approach against Switzerland broadly and it’s hard to analyse tactics from the Germany game when a team just doesn’t show up and is like a rabbit in the headlights.

Last night I really believe that clarke’s inability to react to what was happening is what cost us. Georgia had us absolutely sussed and we just didn’t have a coherent alternative plan to change the game against a poor team. 

[ogoftheskye]

With what we have, lack of quality very likely prevents us from going beyond the last 16. It doesn't explain 3 shots on target in 3 games and bottom of the group having qualified for the tournament relatively comfortably.

And there have been times over the past 9 days when I had to remind myself that we did qualify fairly comfortably, and weren't just invited to the tournament out of pity.

[scottsdad]

Manager baldness not an option?

[Gordon EF]

Lack of quality limits us, obviously. Missing important players for us, like Hickey and Dykes, compounds that (and Ferguson who doesn't play much but should).

Do we have enough quality to realistically do a lot better than we did and get out the group. Of course we do. A win over Hungary is all it would have taken. Hungary is not an team filled with quality. Take Szoboszlai out of it and they really don't have anyone whose club career suggests they're significantly better than what we have available. In fact, these "market value" sites put our squad ahead of theirs, even when we've lost high value players like Hickey, Patterson, Ferguson, and Doak from the squad.

The main reason we couldn't get that one win was poor management.

[Deanburn Dave]

With a bit more belief and confidence we could have played more on the front foot and perhaps have squeezed into the last 16. ..........BUT the problem is that if we had got there we don't have the players to go further. You need a few class players, guys who can turn a game and affect the result.

[LuboMoravcik]

Bit of both but we were a bawhair away from having a real chance of a win had we actually tried to attack.

[gannonball]

I would say more the former as really that's why Clarke went with a back 3/5 in the first place. Sticking with it religiously however made us very predictable and he should take flack for that. Hungary bizarrely needed a win more than us yet they knew how we would play and countered us.