OxfordDon

Yer ma's live cam was down

Its an interesting area of discussion but prob best if this did have it's own thread - I've stuck a new een up with a quick collation of the Scotland callups across our last WC qualifiers as a starting point if that's useful. http://www.donstalk.co.uk/index.php/topic,19844.0.html

Following on from chat in the World Cup threat about comparing squads, and the difficulty of doing so for Scotland given we dinnae have a WC squad for some reason. I had a wee bit of free time this afternoon, so, exciting individual that I am, I collated the Scotland squads used over the last WC qualifiers as a starting point for comparison instead (in the sun, with a beer, for half an hour, I hasten to add). I then went away and did something more interesting that had nothing to do with football. There were 42 callups in total across the 10 games, but we can narrow that down to a comparable 23-man squad on order of priority of squad callups > appearances > 1st team appearances > sub appearances, which gives us: 23-man WC Qualifier "squad" PLAYER NAME CALLUPS / PLAYED start (sub) Craig Gordon 10 / 7 (0) Christophe Berra 10 / 6 (0) James Forrest 10 / 5 (2) Chris Martin 10 / 3 (5) Ikechi Anya 10 / 2 (5) Andrew Robertson 9 / 8 (0) Leigh Griffiths 9 / 7 (2) Robert Snodgrass 9 / 6 (1) Barry Bannan 9 / 5 (0) James Morrison 9 / 4 (1) Kieran Tierney 8 / 7 (0) Darren Fletcher 8 / 6 (0) James McArthur 8 / 4 (4) Grant Hanley 8 / 4 (1) Russell Martin 7 / 4 (0) Matt Ritchie 7 / 3 (2) John Mcginn 7 / 0 (2) Charles Mulgrew 6 / 6 (0) Steven Fletcher 6 / 1 (2) Steven Naismith 6 / 0 (1) Jack Hamilton 1 6 / 0 (0) Scott Brown 5 / 5 (0) David Marshall 5 / 3 (0) 19 further callups that didn't make the cut Allan McGregor 5 / 0 (0) Stuart Armstrong 4 / 4 (0) Matthew Phillips 4 / 4 (0) Callum Paterson 4 / 3 (1) Ryan Fraser 4 / 0 (1) Jordan Archer 4 / 0 (0) Oliver Burke 3 / 2 (0) Lee Wallace 3 / 1 (0) Shaun Maloney 2 / 0 (0) Tom Cairney 2 / 0 (0) Steven Whittaker 2 / 0 (0) Liam Cooper 2 / 0 (0) Callum McGregor 2 / 0 (0) Gordon Greer 1 / 0 (0) Alan Hutton 1 / 0 (0) Barrie Mckay 1 / 0 (0) Stephen Kingsley 1 / 0 (0) Jordan Rhodes 1 / 0 (0) Mark Reynolds 1 / 0 (0) The image below gives the data in chronological order - interesting to see how callups shifted (or didn't) across the games. Onywye, feel free to use this as a starting point for comparing with the other nations.

There seems to be an ongoing feud in editing his wiki page to read Hamilton or Aberdeen, started 2 days ago. No club has actually announced him as a signing yet, although the Sun decided he was signing for Hamilton on the 7th.

I'm not sure the logic of this holds - a comparable scenario would be discounting English, Welsh and NI players in a post-independence Scottish squad as they were born in the former United Kingdom. An overall comparison with the current Scottish setup is somewhat complicated by the fact that, for some inexplicable reason, we don't have a world cup squad. I'm not sure what would be the best previous setup to use - Mcleish's latin assemblage seems a bit too experimental, and our qualifying squads tended to change over time due to the strung out nature of the qualifiers. Any suggestions?

20 of the 22 players in the Croatian World Cup squad are based outside of Croatia, only 2 play for Croatian clubs. 4 of the 22 players were not born in Croatia: Ivan Rakitic - Möhlin, Switzerland Mateo Kovacic - Linz, Austria Vedran Corluka - Derventa, Bosnia Dejan Lovren - Zenica, Bosnia

On the plus side, we're guaranteed to be seeded for the 3rd round if when we win.

Red card and pen to Japan just 180 seconds into the match, think you might have jinxed them min

Lawrenson has a serious fear of technology, or change, or both, judging by today's Fra/Aus commentary.

Love you too big guy

Given that this conversation has veered away from even a token association with football and seems to have become just an airing of assorted prejudices, isn't it time this embarrassment of a thread was moved to "off topic"?

tbf, we perceive Peterborough to be pish. Here's hoping Forrester can make the step up from League 1

Forrester was one of the scorers when we played a friendly against St Patricks in 2014:

Difficult to judge reliability from that source, HITC is a grab-bag of groundless speculation posing as journalism. They had Wayne Rooney going to Sevco a few weeks ago.

I'd call the hospitality bar "Wiggy's Wallet" and then never open it.

Given Skrtel is meant to be on £65-70Kpw, presumably this means Sevco's highest wage offer was around £15K. Or to put it another way, fat chance of landing any of those names they've been touting.

Well there's a surprise - Martin Skrtel's deal to Rangers off as club 'cannot fund it'. The whole thing screams naivety on Gerrard's part and/or duplicity in what Sevco promised him.

Ross confirmed as new Sunderland manager https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44238168

Peterborough seem extremely keen to get shot of them, which hardly bodes well.

Good luck to him, but would say he found his level. Exeter's gain is our gain too.

It's just a rehash of the first "story" - they both come from HITC, who are about as reliable as a chocolate firegrate.

https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=https%253A//www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/sport/football/posh/breaking-news-scottish-club-chasing-peterborough-united-pair-lots-of-offers-for-transfer-listed-players-1-8499363

This image is strangely satisfying https://res.cloudinary.com/jpress/image/fetch/w_700,f_auto,ar_3:2,q_auto:low,c_fill/https://www.scotsman.com/webimage/1.4739954.1526417377!/image/image.jpg[/img]

Hae to admit I struggle to warm to a player whose performances on the pitch led to actual imprisonment

I have a suspicion his Sevco managerial career will last for exactly as long as they are in both cups.