Scotty

After a couple of days to reflect on the match, the final result and the manner in which it was obtained still makes me angry ..... I have no complaints against the Italian side. They are world champions and in spells they showed why. However, at times, a neutral would have struggled to pick which side were the champs as we matched them for long periods of the game. They are the only side in the group to beat us home and away. I have no complaints about the Scottish side. They have been a credit to the nation throughout this qualifying campaign (with the possible exception of the Georgia game). It would be hard to single out one of these heroes for more praise than others as they have all done their part but I am sure James McFadden may get more plaudits than others. For what its worth, I thought Hutton was superb in Saturday's game. I have no complaints about the manager(s) who took us so close this time. Walter Smith and Alex McLeish have brought the pride and passion back to the national side that was almost completely gone in the darkest days of Berti's reign. Walter was slated when he went back to Rangers but it seems obvious that he had laid foundations that McLeish could build on and I will be chomping at the bit to see who we get in our next qualifying campaign for World Cup 2010. Will we get the Italians for a third time in a row? or will we maintain a high enough position in the rankings that we get an easier group ..... [edited to note: The draw for the WC qualifiers takes place this weekend !!! http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/preliminarydr...ste+things+come The Tartan Army now seems rejuvenated and back to a place where it was many years ago. I have special praise for the "enlisted members" who have been with the side through thick and thin but cant fault the 'reservists' either who were 'called upon' in the latter stages of the campaign. They have all done us proud. They say you have to win your home games in any competition to stand a chance - and we did just that. With the exception of the blatant assist by the referee against Italy on Saturday we did not let a single point leave Scotland after a game ..... and even away from home we didnt do too badly, failing to take all 3 points in only 3 games - Italy, Ukraine, and Georgia. The Georgia result was always one that was going to come back and haunt us but even if we had won there, and events unfolded as they did on Saturday we would still have been be on 27 points and hoping the French would lose to Ukraine or Italy to the Faroes !!! However, if we had won in Georgia and the referee did not commit that scandalous act that handed the Italians a winner, and it had finished as a draw, then we would be sitting proudly on top of the group as winners with 28 points, the French would be next with 25 and a game to play (Ukraine) and Italy would be on the ropes with 24 hoping for something to happen in the Ukraine as they humped the Faroes in Italy. So if I cannot complain about the Italians, Scots, French, Supporters, Managers or anyone else who can I complain about. Thats right, my complaint is about Senor Manuel Mejuto González and his two sidekicks Senor Juan Carlos Yuste Jiménez and Senor Antonio Artero Gallardo. In my opinion, these gentleman have (by accident or design) CHEATED Scotland out of at least the (slim) chance of qualification from this group with a blatantly erroneous decision that undid two years of hard work by a team that was written off before a ball was even kicked. I will leave others to come to their own conclusions about whether the decision was made due to ineptitude or for a more sinister reason, but I certainly know what I believe. Was this the only decision they got wrong? NO. To be fair, there were questions of offside for Ferguson's goal (i certainly thought he was when watching it) and for the Italian 'goal' that was chalked off (which didnt look offside) as well as a few other decisions that went the wrong way or were inconsistent. However, this decision right at the death, during a period of play where Scotland were pounding the opposition and just might have grabbed a winner killed the dream and they should be ashamed of themselves for the second best screwjob I have ever seen. (referee who did the final of USA V Canada in Gold Cup still wins that award) You could argue the offside/not-offside questions I noted above and say it evened out over the course of the game, but at least for those decisions you could argue that it may have been hard to see or the play was going too quickly and they could get it wrong. However, this final decision was mere yards from the linesman and the referee was also in good position and yet they still gave it. I have to question that decision and how it was made ....... and when I do I can only ever come up with answers that I have to carefully word (or suppress) !!!!

yes - but by the author of it rather than a mod it would appear

OK folks - cancel all your holidays in Spain, boycott the f***ers after that disgraceful decision to award Italy the free kick that ended the game and our euro dream. feckin disgraceful. Full credit to every single Scotland player on the park today for 100% effort. I cannot fault any one of them. My MOM was Hutton i think - never stopped running all day.

C'mon Scotland. a good solid performance in the first half (barring the first 90 seconds) in atrocious conditions and a near goal just at the death ..... we CAN do this - 2 goals is all it takes ...... and the booster for me - tuned to TLN (latino) channel expecting to get satellite feed from RAI or some other italian channel but turns out its Sky Sports coverage direct from Hampden and in english ...... bonus (except for the Craig Brown co-commentary) !!!

Yup SP - like the tackle described in this thread, the Vancouver incident was also indefensible and what made it worse was to hear the comments of the RCMP who seemed to metaphorically shrug their collective shoulders.

Possibly maimie, but of course I couldnt possibly post it here as it is most definitely dodgy ....... must go and check my PMs :004:

I am not sure of the media rights for this particular game and therefore will not remove the above links. SP - One thing I have heard about the TV for this championship is that Setanta supposedly dont have the rights to Scotland's home games .... I am sure I watched Scotland V France on Setanta but could be mistaken but that might explain one of your questions. I am going to stick with TLN rather than any internet sites I have never previously encountered - who knows, i may even learn the Italian for "Scotland qualify for Euro 2008" :004: :004:

Do you get TLN ? Its on live on there .... the commentary will be Italian but at least it is live http://www.tlntv.com/channels.aspx

welcome to my world !!! I have these problems every week but for a different reason !!!

could be ..... I will let you into a little secret, the pock marked horse field he is standing on in that photo is not the lush bowling green surface of the TCS but was taken as he walked past the away end at the last ever game at Brockville......

although you should have seen Tommy's face when they announced he only got second place !!!! [attach=1] seriously though ... well done to Tommy who has always maintained the TCS surface as one of the best pitches in Scotland. I cant repeat what he said about undersoil heating but I think most people could imagine :015: tommycumming.jpg_thumb

the phrase smoke and mirrors springs to mind .... as a poker player, do you show your hand to your opponents ?

We had a wide split of users who were either for/against Charlie Christie when he was appointed and there was still a wide split when he resigned. I was and always will be 100% supportive of Charlie's time as the manager of the club. He made some good decisions, he made some bad decisions, but every decision he made, including the decision to resign was always done with the good of the club at heart. So on to Brewster .... no he wasnt my first choice, and for various reasons, he probably wasnt my second, third or fourth choice but the fact of the matter is that he was given the job by people who know both him and how to run a football club better than I do (or have at least given a good impression of that over the last 14 years). Although he might not have been first choice on my list, it appears that many of us - myself included - may have had our judgement skewed when we bought into the spin about Warnock and others when the vacancy arose. However, none of what happened in that tumultous time was Brewster's fault. Because of that, he came to the club with many people disliking him for various reasons, some of his own making (previously leaving, DUFC record etc), some because of people's respect for CC and disappointment at his resignation, and some because the aforementioned spin made fans believe we had settled for second best. Since then he has probably had more negative scrutiny than any other ICT manager in history. Am i sure he is "still" the man for the job? As I said above .... I didnt think he was the man for the job in the first place and a couple of months into it I would have to say "I dont know". However, much like Charlie, I do believe we need to give him time before making a judgement. We have seen (or in my case heard) some good games where we played well, we have seen some bad games where we have played crap. A lot of us dont believe he makes the best use of substitutions or tactics but at the end of the day its dead easy being an armchair manager isnt it. So what will help me decide ? I will be interested to see how he reshuffles the pack in the next few games after last week's nonsense. That will go a long way to showing his ideas. I will be interested to see if he learns from each game and starts adapting his tactics during a match rather than doing like for like substitutions 10 minutes from the end. He did try to do that last week by bringing on Barry at HT but I think quite a few of us think he got it wrong ... however, at least he did try. I will be interested to see if he can get our players to play the ball on the deck where we have ALWAYS been better rather than go for the constant hoof (although he's not the only ICT manager guilty of that). I will be interested to see how he approaches the transfer window and who he might bring in (and get rid off). Someone commented that he hadnt even started looking. I have it on reasonably good authority that this is complete bull**** ! Now its time to give the guy a chance ......... One final thing to remember though ..... ICT may be a sporting organisation, but there is always a lot more politics going on in the background than most of us will ever know about and perhaps some can handle that a bit better than others !!! :004:

On the radio he said he said he (Tokely) was completely out of order - he let his team-mates down, he let the supporters down, he let himself down... From memory I'm pretty sure he also described him as a disgrace as well.... I kind of formed the opinion he wasn't best pleased with him... :023: see match report or this link ..... http://www.caleythistleonline.com/images/s...L_101107_CB.mp3 when asked about the red cards he had some sympathy for Bayne and then said "... and the second one from Ross Tokely is an absolute disgrace. He's disgraced his self and his team-mates, let them down badly, at a time where we'd a mountain to climb with ten men ... "

fair enough ... on all three :004:

1. He's 36 so only a short term solution. 2. He already turned us down. 3. This article seems to dispel that rumour.

What gives you the right to tell people to stay away from this or any other website just because you disagree with their views ? This IS, always has been and always will be a supporters site and the conversation on here is no different to many conversations you might hear in the stands during a game or in cars or pubs after the game. The only difference is that here it is written down for a wider audience to see. Over the years we have seen thousands of posters come and go - some always positive, some always negative and some who give out balanced opinions on both sides. When things are going well people come on and praise the team and likewise when things are not so good the post-mortems begin. In fact, as the club climbed the leagues, the board of directors, wanting to keep in touch with the fans were even happy to name us as the official club site for nearly 5 years. There were many factors that precipitated this site's (amicable) reversion to unofficial (fanzine) status and from my side one of the main ones was the plain and simple fact that when the club was promoted to the SPL they were going to be under intense scrutiny for absolutely anything that was posted on "their" website and the forums would have to have been either closed down or censored so severely that it would amount to the same thing. I did not want this as I have always tried to allow people to post their opinions with the minimum amount of intervention from the site "owners". Some posters may not agree with the amount of moderating that happens (although it is a lot less than some believe) but whether the post is full of praise or highly critical, we will not stop people from debating their varying points of view with other posters unless it happens to break one of the rules we have established over the last 14 seasons. The club, players and management dont always get things right and I would suggest to you that if you are one of those head in the sand "everything's always perfect", "the club can do no wrong", and "if you criticise you are not a real supporter" kinds of people then it is you who should consider staying away from the page so that others can have a balanced debate !

If Italy get a penalty you need to use all your poltergeist hunting powers to make the ball move just as its taken :015:

Can they do it ? YES !!! The two games against France show we can get results against the best in the world Will they do it ? Thats the big question !!! I bloody well hope so and will be urging them on from in front of a screen somewhere with all my might ... but as much as we have seen great results against the French and others, we have also seen shabby ones like the loss to the Georgian youth team so anything can happen !!! I will settle for an 87th minute goal with furious defending for the final 3 minutes of normal time and 3 minutes of added time .... Scotland to win it 1-0 and the country to be pished for a week !

If I were to pick who I thought was our best manager then I would have to agree with many and say Pele. As said above, he laid the groundwork for what followed and the managers who came after him have reaped the rewards in most cases. However, arguing stats is always a circular argument as you can manipulate them to say whatever you want within reason ..... for example ...... If its on overall games (and you exclude caretaker managers) then Baltacha won 32.50% Paterson won 46.77% Robertson won 53.66% Brewster won 34.00% first time round Christie won 33.33% Brewster has won 41.67% second time round Brewster has won 35.48% overall in both stints so that would make it Robbo, Pele, Brewster, Christie, Baltacha in that order .... if its on best ever seasons (and you exclude caretakers or seasons where the manager had less than 1/4 of the season) then 94/95 - Baltacha won 32.50% 02/03 - Paterson won 66.67% 03/04 - Robertson won 61.70% 05/06 - Christie won 41.18% 07/08 - Brewster won 41.67% so that would make it Pele, Robbo, Brewster, Christie, Baltacha in that order .... if its on worst ever seasons (and you exclude caretakers or seasons where the manager had less than 1/4 of the season) then 94/95 - Baltacha won 32.50% 97/98 - Paterson won 38.64% 04/05 - Robertson won 28.57% 05/06 - Brewster won 32.00% 06/07 - Christie won 32.56% so that would make the best Pele, Christie, Baltacha, Brewster, Robbo in that order ....

would take a lot more than the 700K that is in this story !

The problem with soccerbase is that they sometimes get it wrong !!! For example, John Docherty was never manager of ICT on his own ! When caretaking duties were happening both he and CC took on a joint role and they omitted the first spell when Robbo left ! Here are the CORRECT managerial stats up to and including last weekend. click on an image to view it in a larger size [attach=1] [attach=2] [attach=3] [attach=4] [attach=5] [attach=6] [attach=7] [attach=8] [attach=9] [attach=10] [attach=11] DSM00.gif_thumb DSM01.gif_thumb DSM02.gif_thumb DSM03.gif_thumb DSM04.gif_thumb DSM05.gif_thumb DSM06.gif_thumb DSM07.gif_thumb DSM08.gif_thumb DSM09.gif_thumb DSM10.gif_thumb

His mistake was leaving Bayne on the park. that was the accident waiting to happen which was then compounded by Rosscoe's folly. Perhaps he should have made two half-time substitutions and the game might have turned out differently !!! At any rate, hindsight is wonderful and what is done is done and we will never know what might have happened if he had done things differently .... I only hope he has looked at the whole game and his own decisions in it, acknowledged to himself at least that he may have made an error, and learned from it .....

are you sure you didnt get it right the first time :015: :015: :015:

I hope we do see the real Marius very soon as we definitely need someone to spark the side to life in coming weeks. Whether he is getting assists or not as debated previously, doesnt really matter as it is clear that he does seem to bring the best out of Denzil who is banging them in when paired with MN as opposed to others. However I am sure the fans would like to see him bang a few of his own into the net, get rid of the mounting pressure to score and be able to settle down and play like the former international player he was and future international player he wants to be.