Whenever a team loses a major game, those in the punditry are always looking for a scapegoat, and when the team is Scotland it helpful for them if there is a Celtic player they can blame. With Tom English, prior to the game, pushing for the idea that Callum McGregor might not even make the team – and he wasn’t the first to do that – I knew watching that last night that some of them would not be able to resist it.
Graeme Souness is not even worth bothering about. His comments are a joke. Souness is a joke.
He’s reached that point where he no longer feels he has to even present the thinnest veneer of diplomacy, or even rationality. Instead he goes off on biased rants about the things he doesn’t like or doesn’t agree with, and Celtic is just one of the targets in his sights.
I’m not even interested in his remarks, they are as thoroughly stupid as we’ve come to expect. Which hasn’t stopped the mainstream media splashing his rubbish all over the place today, as well as any other comment they can find which casts our captain in a bad light.
They highlighted a single throwaway remark from Roy Keane as well, although he clearly has others he blames more for what he watched than McGregor.
And of course he would. Most of the hacks pinpointed players who were more to blame than our captain, but as per usual there was a select few who took a perverse satisfaction in sticking their sharpened pencils into him.
It is depressing how predictable that was. I knew watching it that McGregor was going to cop flak from certain people, people who couldn’t wait to have a go at him.
Look, it was a bad night. In fact, it was a very bad night and particularly for the defence, who were at sixes and sevens and barely seemed to function as a unit. This has never been the strongest area of the Scotland team, and we all know it well.
But their lack of co-ordination was awful to watch, and whilst, yes, a lot of the flak needs to be directed at the players I think you could just as easily blame Steve Clarke for a chronically defensive setup and the ditching of the high-press football which has got him some of his career-best results.
That certainly could not have resulted in a worse night.
That was a collective failure last night, although Ryan Porteous is a player who has too many rash moments like that in his game. But he’s not to blame for the scale of the defeat; I saw nothing to convince me that we’d necessarily have done any better had he kept his head. There was just too little imagination or flare in that performance, and too little quality to resist when those rampaging German attackers were running at the back line.
Scotland is not out of it, but they need a good shake. They need to be much, much better and shame on the hacks who are pointing the finger at individuals, individuals who we need to stay strong and on their game and who will be playing in those games.
The only reason I can single out Porteous in this piece is that he won’t be eligible for either of them … but I won’t hold it against him if the rest of the team rallies, gets us through and he gets another chance.
Callum McGregor will be crucial to any hopes we have … but that hasn’t stopped a handful of people from sticking in the boot.
A lot of our hacks hate Celtic more than they love their country.
It shouldn’t surprise me to see the way some of them are behaving, but they do continuously find depths I didn’t think they were capable of.
The first ever CelticBlog podcast is out now … you can listen to it here.
Individually we were poor, collectively worse. Team selection and plan was non existing.
Callum and Tony did not have their best game in a Scotland shirt. But who did.
The midfield was absolutely atrocious (MIA) the defence was all at sea. The press were slating Adam’s for what, did not get the ball, no support all on his own why because they wanted Shankland.
Sourpuss is the Joe Biden of football. Totally outdated. It summed him up when when he said Scotland have 5m people, Germany have .
At least Roy went thro the lot
Just recovering from Friday, lost count of the number of German fans who said sorry for beating us so badly, after partying with them all day. Most of them also ask if you’re Celtic or Rangers, and they love it when you answer Celtic.
The hacks are suffering so badly from Brendan and Celtic’s superiority causing big Phil’s mental breakdown and their team’s implosion. They have to hit back at any possible target, which happens to be any Celtic player in a Scotland shirt.
On the match I’m sorry but we did miss Gilmour alongside Callum to protect the ball, as they’re the only two midfielders we have who do that job properly and help us settle into the match. Callum had to try and do that on his own and Kroos had acres of space to dictate the game.
We need to sharpen up big style for Wednesday.
CalMac didn’t have a great game but neither did anyone else. I thought the ‘keeper was nervous and that radiated through the defence, resulting in them defending very deep when already penned back by significantly superior opposition. It can’t have come as a shock to any of us that this level of game was beyond Ralston’s upper limit – we’d seen it before against PSG – but that’s on the manager for playing him, not the player. I’d been telling everyone who’d listen to me (and many more who wouldn’t) for weeks that an absolute scudding was quite possible in that game. The Scotland squad has a few decent EPL level players but nothing above that and has been padded out by players plying their trade in the English Championship, Saudi Arabia and the USA. A ruthless Germany team would spot the many weaknesses from miles away and exploit them to the max.
Many Scots were quite happy to see Scotland scudded as they don’t like the manager for calling them out and also too msny players with Celtic connections, the only thing is the players in their team aren’t good enough to get in the pool and just imagine Ryan Jack in the team, they can watch their favourites tonight, the fans who used to follow Scotland and boo the Celtic players now just want to see Scotlsnd humped and England to win and no doubt Ally will be kissing ass again.
Fantastic pod cast if the MSM
Try to ignore what happened it’s the like of you and a few other fan media to keep telling the truth keep doing this as I have a fellow tim who’s blind and I read your article’s to him everyday so the pods would be great
It was clear throughout Friday’s game that there was a huge gulf in class, but do we really want to go down that cliched route!
Maybe I’m wrong, but Clarke’s first mistake for me was playing a back 3, and two of those three being Porteous and Hendry.
Yes we had a collective howler, but any team’s chances are built from the back. I had reservations about Gunn when I saw his performances v Leeds in the play offs, and Porteous has talent but is so rash, that there’s always an air of inevitability that he’ll have at least one howling moment in every game he plays ! Completely unreliable in big games !
It’s not even the benefit of hindsight, but a back 4 would always be a safer option, if you’re defensively minded like Clarke !
I also appreciate the need to accommodate two of our best players on the left , but this could have been done in a more efficient way.
4-5-1 might have been the best option and afforded our defence & severely pressured midfield, more security, and a bit of protection in the wide areas.
CalMac is an easy target for these obtuse pundits, and nothing they say, would ever surprise any of us. Our captain is a magnificent footballer and ambassador for club and country, and has won more than most in his career to earn respect from all quarters, and is able to ignore the verbal diarrhoea from these buffoons.
It’s a very tall ask for us now, after Friday’s heavy reversal but in football, anything can happen.
Hopefully CalMac can be the main catalyst for a win on Wednesday!
He has nothing to prove to our fanbase !
Let the haters hate !!!HH