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Wednesday 1 May 2024:  kick-off 7.05pm

Scottish Youth Cup Final - Aberdeen v Rangers

Live on the BBC Scotland channel

🔴⚪️ Come on you Reds! ⚪🔴

Scotland squad


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13 minutes ago, tom_widdows said:

Given Denmark put 8 past the Moldovans, whilst a win against the faroes is a must, a 2-1, 3-1 etc wont do. Minimum 5-0

Yeah we need to go at them and rattle in a good few. Goal difference might still come into this.

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8 minutes ago, Jute said:

Yeah we need to go at them and rattle in a good few. Goal difference might still come into this.

Not great when we dont have a proper striker.

Che did well tonight though.

Christie was poor and mctominay needed to take more control in midfield as did mcginnis.

Fraser was great I thought 

 

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I hope Clarke bins the 3-5-2 after that. The way we're using it is more like a 5-3-2 and when teams get near our box we end up with too many players dropping deep and not enough players pressing the ball. All three of the goals we lost were that exact situation - too many players dropping deep, nobody there to press the ball, easy shot/cross under no pressure from a central area.

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Is it just me or is this like deja vu  from years of Deek? 
Pick players and put them in unsuited positions just so they’re in the side rather than pick the players that actually suit the system you’re trying to play?

fucking insane, no wonder we’re crap!

Edited by Madbadteacher
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2 hours ago, Madbadteacher said:

Is it just me or is this like deja vu  from years of Deek? 
Pick players and put them in unsuited positions just so they’re in the side rather than pick the players that actually suit the system you’re trying to play?

fucking insane, no wonder we’re crap!

Sort of, aye. They're quite similar managers in many respects. They like to second guess the opponent and setup to nullify them first. However, none of the players last night should have struggled in the roles they were given, they've all played them before. 

Clarke just made the McInnes-esque mistake (and that of every Scotland manager this century) of not recognising the fine margins in international football. The league setup is so condensed that if you lose a single point that you needed to take your qualification chances are reduced massively. That should be at the forefront of the Scotland manager's mind throughout every game. Last night was a perfect example. Clarke decided to try and see out the first half. It was a risk in the game itself, but an even bigger risk in terms of the entire qualification picture. We were on the back foot and they'd had several shots on goal before the opener, it was inevitable that something would happen. It was a classic example of not balancing risk correctly. Making a sub on 40 minutes and changing shape (as we did at halftime) could have led to the players not understanding the switch and caused confusion leading to a goal, but it could also have changed the flow of the game, saw us through to halftime without conceding. I can guarantee that Clarke knew what changes he was going to make at halftime but he chose to wait until then to make them (he might not have even made the change if we hadn't conceded which would have merely delayed the goal). It was a McInnes-like case of not managing the game as you see it happen, but by a series of predefined managerial rules and timings (canna make a sub before half-time, that's crazy), with a huge bias towards what you normally do or what is normally the done thing.

It's like playing in Europe, you're playing against players you don't normally face and in international football you're alongside guys you're not normally alongside and the standard of individual players (not every player) is fairly high in pretty much every team. I dare say that in club football in your own league that game could have been seen through until halftime, but we had so much time under pressure the goal was a big risk. One that's likely ruined our campaign before it's started.

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I think the Denmark result suits us to be honest. We're realistically playing for second after those first two results and we play Denmark at home in the last game so there's a chance they'll already have won the group by then. Also quite encouraged at how shite Austria seem to be, they were getting talked up when the draw was made as world beaters and they don't look much better than us in reality.

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3 hours ago, sancho_panza said:

I think the Denmark result suits us to be honest. We're realistically playing for second after those first two results and we play Denmark at home in the last game so there's a chance they'll already have won the group by then. Also quite encouraged at how shite Austria seem to be, they were getting talked up when the draw was made as world beaters and they don't look much better than us in reality.

I thought we could've beaten Austria if we had attacked them from the start.

We sat off them for 45 mins.

Good result tonight. The Faroes arent that bad.

Israel might get a result against Austria and maybe a draw against Denmark. Who knows.

If we had a more solid defence I think we could push for top spot. But we dont and wont .

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