Team VS Italy

[SMcoolJ]

10 hours ago, Gala Tartan Army (Borders) said:

Not sure how much you can blame strachan for that result - he played best players he had at his disposal. It was the classic scenario of one decent team playing for their places at the Euros and other thinking about summer holidays.

Easily - he played Mulgrew at left back.  Any manager thinking this is good warrants blame.  Sounds like the tactics were p1sh again.  Also, and just from reading post above, i understand that Paterson was hooked at half time.  Why does he continually do this to debutants - was Paterson that bad?

[Marky]

The lack of width created by having fullbacks like Martin and Mulgrew instead of Hutton and Robertson was startling. 

Im not sure they even ventured into the other half. 

 

[Bannannan]

5 minutes ago, Marky said:

The lack of width created by having fullbacks like Martin and Mulgrew instead of Hutton and Robertson was startling. 

Im not sure they even ventured into the other half. 

 

It's not allowed to go into the oppsitions half.

[bossman4]

Probably the most defensive we've played under Strachan, Italy though still the masters at keeping the ball and look very hard to break down. Could be a decent each way bet for the euros, will be very hard to beat.

[thewelk]

16 minutes ago, bossman4 said:

Probably the most defensive we've played under Strachan, Italy though still the masters at keeping the ball and look very hard to break down. Could be a decent each way bet for the euros, will be very hard to beat.

Italy were pressuring everything the Scots did to the point they  made it look like we can't even take a throw in with more than a 50% chance of success. Will be interesting to see how they do against Belgium.

Edited May 30, 2016 by thewelk

[scotlad]

11 hours ago, Toepoke said:

If his mates had planned to dress him in pink and get him to charge aimlessly around somewhere in the Mediterranean, then that box has been ticked....

2 hours ago, SMcoolJ said:

Easily - he played Mulgrew at left back.  Any manager thinking this is good warrants blame.  Sounds like the tactics were p1sh again.  Also, and just from reading post above, i understand that Paterson was hooked at half time.  Why does he continually do this to debutants - was Paterson that bad?

Mulgrew at left-back, probably his weakest position, was a bit of a strange choice, considering we have left-backs coming out of our ears at the moment. 

I also don't don't understand why Celtic's players were omitted, their next club game isn't until the middle of July! 

[killiefaetheferry]

It was always going to be a training type exercise - for both teams. Like another poster said yesterday, I gave up on the friendlies about 5 years ago due to realising how worthless they could be from a spectating point of view. Especially when we are only playing half of our realistic potential starters. Fair enough to bring in some fringe guys or debutants, and even the whole trip experience may help with bonding etc, but this one in particular - neutral venue against a stronger nation with a reputation for being defensively solid and good at retaining the ball.........well it turned out as expected, a bit 'meh'.

Used to enjoy a few beers and the trip down to Glasgow for friendlies ( also went to Denmark and Austria) but it got to the stage for me that the football was ruining a decent day out .

I would echo the others who are saying we need to watch out for getting a proper doing against the French. I can only suspect that Strachan took these games expecting to only be able to use them as a defensive training exercise, but if the French are as 'at it' as I expect them to be then it might be worth a few quid on a heavy defeat.

[AlfieMoon]

I think last night highlighted the importance of our mentality and tempo in our approaches to games. 

We are sadly lacking in ability, touch, class, vision, composure and generally all the things you look for in any side of any sort of quality. I think what last night exposed is that when we're in a slower-game, then the lack of all of those desirable attributes exposes us even more than usual. The other thing that looks to be a big part of it is mentality where similarly, if we're not 100% up for it, switched on enough, or recognising of the challenge in front of us then we will never compete as we should. It explains why we were so sadly lacking last night as well as why we're always prone to dreadful games like Georgia and why we never spank the wee teams in the way that many other nations do. Pretty depressing! 

[stitch]

it was very depressing watching that game

the line up was wrong if you want to park the bus then you need the players in the right position..

we cant take a goal kick without it going long. we let them play from the back. we don't make them work off the ball

a throw in is a 70% chance it will go to them. we don't even press when they have a throw in.

we watch the ball and not the man sometimes 2 or 3 players going after the ball and they just play round us.

we are so narrow when in defence we just leave there winger with 20 to 30 yards of space.

if we are playing 5 in midfield we need to keep the wide players wide or they just get in each others way with no outlet.

i would like to say this is because we used a lot fringe players but we have been playing this bad for the last 20 years and we still try the same thing now. 

 

[bossman4]

17 minutes ago, stitch said:

it was very depressing watching that game

the line up was wrong if you want to park the bus then you need the players in the right position..

we cant take a goal kick without it going long. we let them play from the back. we don't make them work off the ball

a throw in is a 70% chance it will go to them. we don't even press when they have a throw in.

we watch the ball and not the man sometimes 2 or 3 players going after the ball and they just play round us.

we are so narrow when in defence we just leave there winger with 20 to 30 yards of space.

if we are playing 5 in midfield we need to keep the wide players wide or they just get in each others way with no outlet.

i would like to say this is because we used a lot fringe players but we have been playing this bad for the last 20 years and we still try the same thing now. 

 

I don't think we deliberately set up to be that defensive, it was just the way the Italians play forced us to go to a 5 at the back and pushed our wide men back.

My big concern apart form our lack of touch and inability to keep the ball, is that we seem so reliant on having two full backs bombing forward, without that we offer very little else, so in the case of Sunday without a Hutton and Robertson we don't have that. 

We had no drive in midfield on Sunday, was all very static and sideways, clear to me that McArthur and Fletcher doesn't work and as I've said a few times since then the only way I can see us competing with the likes of Slovakia is to stick with the likes of Morrison and Brown who give us that drive. Along with the likes of Maloney who will give us a bit of flair, I'm hoping the likes of Snodgrass can now offer us something different, I'd have him in the No. 10 position every time.  

All that does though is raise the question of whether we stick with the same old in a desperate bid to qualify or do we actually right off the next campaign or two and blood younger guys like McGinn, Burke, Tierney, Patterson, McKay, Mclean. Personally I'd like us to get a bit of a balance in that regards.

Reality is though that our first 11 isn't going to change that much from the Poland game last year, apart from Snodgrass coming back in. Probably mean's we'll do ok until we bottle it in Lithuania next year or fail to beat Slovenia and Slovakia at home