Steve Clarke named the Scotland squad for their three games in September earlier, Stephen Kenny is expected to name his squad on Thursday
No huge surprises. I might have included a couple of the likes of Manning, Sykes, Connolly (shoot me, I know), McGrath and Kelly. Not mad on Hourihane but there’s a serious lack of midfielders who can sit - we basically just have 3 for 2 slots - Molumby, Cullen and Hendrick - the last slot is very bleak - either you pick someone from the 21s who isn’t ready yet or you’re looking at Hourihane, McCarthy, Arter or someone in LOI (a rovers midfielder or Chris Forrester I guess)
Kelleher still injured I guess? He's had no luck at all (and hasn't helped make his own luck either of course)
McGrath hasn't done much this year - he's playing for a Dundee United side getting ****ed on with alarming regularity - and much and all as he's never let us down, I don't think he offers much. Bit like Horgan in that regard.
Keane is probably the most interesting omission. And Brady the most interesting inclusion
Edit - I see the RTÉ article suggesting Connolly will be in the 21s squad announced later today. That's a rare demotion
I know we are badly deficient in midfield options, but Hourihane? When does "never having done anything remotely positive or useful" become a consideration for his selection. Would seriously have preferred Byrne as a left-field option who offers something different from the bench. Be interesting to see how he gets on tonight against opposition who are probably much stronger than Armenia and at a level with Scotland.
I think that the best squad available to him. Nice to see Brady and O'Dowda back - both are good on the ball, bring creativity and guile, and given our aerial strength, we can take advantage of Brady's dead ball deliveries/ crossing.
To be fair, Byrne is only just back from injury that kept him out the whole summer. His first 90 minutes since May at the weekend past. If he had been fit, and gave Rovers a bit of a kick through Europe, he might have been in considerationQuote:
Originally Posted by third policeman
The only positive The return of Brady with a bit of craft, without any attacking mid it is settle The 3-5-2 then
Thanks, Dont wanna start an argument but the Scottish roster is on paper stronger in club level analysis. However it could be just a cause of discrimination and an anti Irish hiring policy in the clubs of England, keeping into account that the Championship is actually the 8 the stronger football division in the old continent. But alas it also could be something more. Could it be that Ireland are producing better international footballers that club footballers? Could it be that, with the way Eire vanishing Scotland the other match, it could have been 4-0 if the Hogan header wasn't saved over the line in a last grasp attempt.
Andrew Omobamidele ruled out through injury and replaced by Liam Scales.
manning must have done something to SK, cant understand sk picking scales over him.
I think Scales has been playing more at centre-back than full-back for Aberdeen this year, but then you have the same question with Lenihan instead of Scales.
I think when you look at the Scottish clubs in Europe this year (ignore Rangers and Celtic obviously - but Motherwell losing to Sligo, Dundee United getting hammered 7-0 by Alkmaar, and Hearts losing home and away to Zurich), then it's probably safe to say that an SPL player outside of Rangers/Celtic is going to have to be running the show for their club to really be in contention.
lenihan is injured i think. personally think the level of SPL is low, its better than LOI for sure but its not a patch on the championship/higher l1 when you take the big 2 out of it. scales was way out of his depth at celtic so im not too sure what kenny think he adds to a national team
Lenihan has missed the last three games through injury. Jimmy Dunne is there also and could probably feel hard done by. Scales is a CB and left footed, don't think we've any other left footed CB that's been in the seniors.
Have to say I don't really know what to expect from these two games.
We saw real green shoots in June (the last two games) but also two awful performances which characterised much of the early Kenny reign. Which is the real Slim Shady? Did we catch Scotland jaded at the end of a long season and on holiday mode after World Cup exit? (And ditto Ukraine, their fourth game in a week after months of no football and a war added in). Scotland are missing Robertson for this one, but he was crap in Lansdowne anyway. They also still don't have a keeper, but I just can't see them being as lax again. On the flip side though, I can't see us being as lax against Armenia as we were in Yerevan, which is the kind of performance I thought we were putting behind us. But you could have said the exact same thing after March, with a decent hour against Belgium (B) following on from a dreadfully lax showing against Lithuania.
Up front will be the interesting part I think - our in-form forwards in June are now out of form. Obviously if your forwards don't perform, you're in trouble. But maybe the change of an international window will do them good.
I think most of all out of this window, I'd like to get some sort of idea as to which way the Kenny reign is going to go - it can't keep fluctuating as wildly as in March and June.
The only way we’ll find out is if he back the young players who actually fit the system instead of backing older players who just don’t, it was no coincidence that we improved the minute these changes were made.Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Scotland as a collective haven’t been great for awhile really, they’ve had afew games here or there where it’s worked but tbh I still think quite afew of their players are dining out on that Serbia performance in 2020 and results like in June had been coming for awhile now.
It’s one of those games that can go either way really as you don’t really trust either side.
It might until we get some consistently performing forwards......Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Did Scotland catch us jaded after travel back and forth to Armenia, and getting the run around by Ukraine?Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
It's a fair question, yep.
Though Scotland also got the runaround by Ukraine (and the first team at that), so I don't think we can use that excuse.
A bit of consistency would make it easier to see which way we're tending towards is all
The reason I lean towards it being more of an Irish problem than a Scottish problem is if you look at the Armenia & Ukraine (H) games we had a lot of older players who clearly aren’t comfortable playing the Kenny style but in those games our best performing players were the young players who are good at playing this style. But once Kenny dropped a lot of older guys and backed the young players from Scotland on we started seeing improvements which for me is hardly a coincidence.Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
The lesson Kenny needs to have learnt is not back these older players anymore.