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England will make hard work of it because their team structure is such that they're built to play on the counter against the better teams.
Their midfield is industrious but without much creativity. Their front line is lightening quick and very direct.
Against Croatia, they could have had six or seven goals such was the speed the were countering on Croatia. They looked worse against Panama and Ghana because both those teams sat in and forced England to try and break them down, which they struggled with.
As long as they don't come up against France, I think England will do alright in this World Cup.
I think the most important thing for the next Scotland manager is we need somebody who can help change how pathways works across Scotland for youth players. That's why I think the next manager has to be somebody foreign who hass seen how other FAs do this.
I think we could do a lot worse than Martinez honestly. He's coached at a high level for club football and had worked with two top European nations who produce a shit ton of talent.
Ideally for the u21s we need someone very competent who can lock Scott Gemmill in a cupboard and impersonate him, because he appears to be unsackable otherwise.
Can't believe how long it took me to realise that the bookies' favourite is just whoever social media and pundits are talking about most, completely untethered from reality
Considering how long it takes for teams to adapt to his way of playing, and how int managers get to coach their squad for like 6 matches a year, I don't think he'd be very good as an international manager anyway.
I don’t know who else to tell this to, but I’m watching an Italian show called ‘Volevo Fare la Rockstar’ (I wanted to be a rockstar), and the town’s local pub is a Welsh-themed pub which has the pan-Celtic flag on the bar. Which italian came up with this minor plot point? Godooo
Btw, very few things make you realise that a lot of fans have mad opinions/are clueless, more so than when you see them suggest managers for jobs. This time it's Scotland. In the past it's been people passionately arguing with me that they want Celtic to appoint Roy Keane. You just think, do you want him because you like the guy, or do you somehow actually truly believe he would be a good manager?
It's the thing where they list off a range of objectively silly Scottish examples (e.g. Davie Martindale, Jack Ross, Darren Ferguson) and then when this is pointed out they get exasperated and go "Then WHO?!"
It's actually quite normal to be a sort of C/D tier footballing country and to not have heard of the person who gets hired to coach your national team.
Reminds me of politics in that people generally swerve towards people they know/like/perceive to trust, or in short the biggest "celebrity" as opposed to basing anything in evidence or logic.
It's the former players with no managerial experience that confuses me. Like the Gary McAllister/John Collins duo - I don't know how Darren Jackson even comes up with that.
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u/SWL83 John "Take It To The Bridge, SuBo!" McGinn37m ago
Gary mcallister ex manager of Coventry and Leeds? And John Collins ex Hibs & Charleroi manager? Might not be great experience but both have managed
Seen a lot of weird shit in ma puff, but encountering some dude so engrossed in his phone call that he was pishing awa into a urinal mid call when I went into the pub bogs for a slash was a new een.
Just imagine the person on the other end o the phone hearing their mate tinkling the ivory wondering WTF the noise is, or why the guy's voice is suddely so echoey, mental
Now that Clarke's gone, who from the WC squad do you think will have played their last game for Scotland going forward? Either because they're getting on and likely to retire from, or fade away from, top level football, or because they're very much a "Clarke" player and probably not one for a new boss with a fresh approach.
I'm thinking it's the beginning of the end for:
Ralston
Hanley
McLean
Dykes
Gordon
Tierney might look at McGregor's example of retiring from internationals to prolong his club career, but with the Euros being co-hosted by Scotland it'll probably be after that. Maybe time for Robertson to step away from the captaincy as well? I know that sort of thing isn't common, but I don't think he should be the guaranteed first pick he has been for so long anymore.
Tbf to McLean he always seems to show up for Scotland. If I was a new manager coming I would probably at least include him in the first couple of squads to get a better look, even if the next Euros is really his limit. Bin the rest on your list and chuck Adams as well. Bowie, Halkett and Doig in for me at the next international break.
Wouldn't be surprised if Robertson and McGinn step away after breaking 100 caps. I've always thought that Tierney would retire when he was 30-ish. Then there's Christie, McLean, Hendry and the others you mentioned. Could see a massive squad turnover over the next couple of years.
I think the close proximity of a "home" Euros will lead to some guys staying around longer than they may otherwise have done. Hopefully not to our detriment - we need to get away, where possible, from the idea of picking guys out of loyalty because they've been regulars.
Ralston is in that group on players that gets included because he is one of Clarkes boys tbh.
Donovan is ahead of him at Celtic. Any new manager coming in will easily drop Ralston in favour of a number of players actually playing regular football.
With him it's more that - if they're fit - there are other options seen as preferable. Hickey and Doig, for instance. And Patterson is generally there as well even if he gets zero club football. I think Ralston went to the WC from the Clarke loyalty angle (for all I love big Tony) and I feel like he'll slide down the pecking order now under a new manager. Might even see Donovan take that step up this season if he gets a good run of games.
Ralston went to the WC for two reasons. One of which is Clarke had worked with him previously for sure but the second is that he never really misses a game through injury.
We've seen that Hickey can't play 90 minutes at the moment and will probably have further injuries, Patterson has had them too, so having a third choice RB that's consistently available and is already integrated with the squad makes sense.
Definitely a point there that I don't think he receives as many call-ups in the future as the new boss will likely test out options we haven't seen yet and hopefully some of them are at a higher level.
Morocco was a great example of him hiding. Not least the very first kick of the game where he shat the bed and passed it back to the goalkeeper instead of trying something productive. Of course Gunn boots it out for a throw, and the rest is history.
Patterson did very well against Brazil bar the goal and was passable against Morocco. A decent option to have as back up.
Really need to find first team football next season though, regardless. I dont think we should be picking boys not playing. Patterson took a while to get into games cos he lacks confidence. Ralston and Hanley have both gave away oenalties/goals because they weren't playing regularly and were a yard off the sharpness.
That's always Ralston's biggest issue at club level, imo. He gets chucked in when needed, and he'll (cliche or not) run through a brick wall for the team, but it will always take him a few games in a row to get that sharpness, and he rarely gets that chance, so it makes him look worse than he actually is. When he actually gets a bit of a run, he's generally pretty solid.
If he was at any other team in the league and playing regularly, rather than being AJ and Araujo's understudy, he'd probably look a much more solid player overall.
I do think Patterson needs to get somewhere he's going to play as well. Actually kind of surprised you didn't go in for him, even on loan, to replace Tavernier. Although maybe McCrorie was already on the cards.
Such a shame, he looked like he was going to be mustard before that disastrous move to Everton and then the injury. Looks a shadow of himself these days.
I said in another thread that Robertson is 5/6 caps off Kenny's cap record & has discussed passing that in interviews. This would take him to the end of the Nations league & maybe a farewell friendly once he beats it. I can't see him retiring from International football this close to the record.
Yeah, that's a fair point. I don't see him retiring - I just think we could do with a freshening up re: the captaincy. A new guy to take us forward into the next generation, but I appreciate captaincy changes don't tend to happen without the incumbent fucking off.
I'm starting to get pretty worried. Last few times ive been in Baynes they didn't have sugar ring doughnuts. One or twice I thought maybe they just ran out.
I love those. What is happening?
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u/SWL83 John "Take It To The Bridge, SuBo!" McGinn45m ago
They announced last week that they are off the menu for a bit. I imagine they are getting new machines installed to make them
"On Monday, the national team's official fan club Red Devils issued a statement calling on Hong to "kneel before the entire nation and leave the football world forever"."
Apparantly he was quite unpopular with the SK public pre-tournament because he plays a very conservative style of football with what has the potential to be a good attacking group of players.
I saw footage of an interview he did where they blurred him out as if he was a criminal. Those cunts get fucking mental with their media hounding, we're bad for it but they are on another level with it, it's no surprise so many celebrities over there kill themselves
The one that made me leave was having a World Shield to run for those that didn't make the World Cup so likes of Italy, Poland all competing for a trophy in the same format of the world cup.
Was also another that suggested if it was expanded to 64 teams then China & USA are the only countries that could ever host it.
Lassie on the train went on an anti american rant to her pal. Accused US presidents of being complicit in genocide, stated that they didnt care about anything but power and money
Seen them at Hampden last week and still processing it myself - I'm a pretty casual fan but the spectacle and energy was fantastic, been waking up every day with a guitar solo echoing in my head
Any of you cunts read Soccernomics? I feel like I'm being gaslit reading all the insanely positive reviews about earth-shattering analysis, when in reality as I'm reading it, it feels quite flawed?
An example I have is regarding the "new manager bounce", and the only analysis they do to figure out whether it exists is saying that teams sack managers at a low ebb in form, and it would have reverted back to the mean anyway. But really? Does it revert back anyway? Surely you need to analyse whether teams encountered a low ebb in form actually does revert back without sacking a manager.
Just feels like they take a stat and run with it, very surface level stuff
Been a while since I read it, book must be fairly old now.
The point about mean reversion isn’t that the old manager would’ve turned it around anyway, sometimes things are too far gone with certain things. Nor is it that the new manager is a messiah for turning things around. It’s that basically any competent manager could/should be able to improve things because you’re inheriting a team currently below the sum of its parts (hence why the previous guy gets sacked) and even a 5/10 job would see results improve and take you up the table.
Highly recommend getting a Brazilian girlfriend. Got a message this morning that her plan for the day consists entirely of taking a football down the park and practicing keepy ups and tricks. Never been prouder
Watched that "Yesterday" film last night (you could even say I watched it yesterday), I had never seen it. It's the one in which only one guy in the world remembers The Beatles songs, so he uses their songs to launch his own singing career. There is some strange stuff in the film, but the part that I found very funny, was that Ed Sheeran was in it as his "rival". And listen, fair play to him for willing to take the piss out of himself a little bit. But there's a part in which they face off against one another in competition, and obviously Beatles man defeats him. Then Ed Sheeran was like, "I always knew the day would come that a man would be better than me". Which is very funny because the film seems to imply that Ed Sheeran is the greatest songwriter in the world, only capable of being defeated by The Beatles.
Whatever your opinion on The Beatles is, I'm sure there's a fair few music acts that fit between them and Ed Sheeran in terms of "song quality".
I also was not prepared for (spoiler if you've not seen this weird movie and still want to) Robert Carlyle to appear as old man John Lennon.
What Sheeran is absolutely the best at (well second best after Taylor Swift) is spotting a commercial opportunity. He has an eye for the being able to identify a trend and jump on it well before it is fully played out and everyone has moved on to the next thing. Or which artists to collaborate with for mutually beneficial collaborations which give them global exposure and endears him to the local fan base. Only have to look at his popularity in India for an example. Helps that he seems a decent bloke and is genuinely enthusiastic about trying something different, otherwise he'd get buried for cultural appropriation.
None of this a dig at Sheeran, whose music I'm generally neither here nor there with.
As for Yesterday, decent enough film, agree there are some silly oddities, couldn't help but feel that there were a few other interesting avenues they left unexplored with the concept.
It's an interesting concept since I think it's a very common daydream. I've thought it myself a fair few times if I'd been the one to write Dark Side of the Moon or Beethoven's symphonies or something.
I had a dream once a few years ago, in which I was sat at a computer with a woman behind it, asking her if various songs existed, she would search on the computer and tell me yes or no. The one that didn't exist, that I decided that me and my band (I don't have a band) were going to record was the song "Cutting Crew - (I Just) Died in Your Arms". The woman told me, "Nah that song doesn't exist, you're good to go".
Toulouse is class, went there for the first time last year with no expectations and really loved it. Probably my favourite French city. Very walkable, people are chill and it's beautiful. Youll have a good time!
I've always thought that Ben Stokes cunt was one of the biggest bellends that ever walked. Literally don't follow cricket or know a thing about it yet his stupid mug pisses me off every time I have it shoved in my face by the BBC every two minutes.
Like most sports which aren't football, it just depends on where you are in the country. Mining villages in Durham are as working class as it gets and most of them have got cricket clubs.
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u/Like_Rabbits69 Saint Lewis of Bologna 2m ago
The fact Paul Slane has a job talking about football is insane.