Quote Originally Posted by Stevie Reid View Post
This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Perhaps worth remembering that Northern Ireland's revival under Michael O'Neill only came after some very difficult times for them. NI had won two of their previous 24 matches when he took over, and then one out of his first 18 - I remember many, myself included I'm sure, expressing surprise at the fact that he still had a job. Even with their qualifying for the Euros, and getting to the WC playoffs in 2017, he has still lost more games than he has won with them.

I would never wish to run down his achievements because their turnaround has been incredible, but sometimes you need a bit of luck as well - I still can't get my head round how they got a Euro qualifying group (that they had been in pot 5 for) that consisted of Romania, Hungary, Finland, Faroe Islands and Greece. They got a great draw just as they were in the ascendancy, and took full advantage - and to be fair, definitely kicked on, as they finished 2nd in a much tougher WC group. When Wales were on the up, they qualified from the Euros in a group with Belgium, Bosnia, Israel, Cyprus and Andorra.

When we were the best we have been in recent memory (ranked 13th - 17th in 2007/8) we somehow got a Euro qualifying group that included Italy and France (who had contested the World Cup final two months before Euro qualifying began), and the Ukraine also. We beat France home and away (their only two defeats), won 8 of 12 matches and didn't qualify despite averaging two points per game. We have had the World Champions or best team in the world in our groups quite consitsently.

We need to hope that we can improve significantly, and then somehow get a group of similar makeup to those of NI and Wales 2016 ones in order to progress to a tournament, I would think. We never seem to get the latter.
We might have been a bit unlucky to get France and Italy (although that France side was on the cusp of a rapid decline and IIRC they failed to win a game at Euro 2008) but we still contrived to lose a key game to Georgia who I think finished bottom or second bottom of the group, so ultimately be blew it as usual rather than being unlucky.

As for getting a 'lucky' draw like Wales and NI would anyone actually be confident that Scotland would qualify from them? We did our best to fail to win a 'League C' Nations League group comprising Israel and Albania, while we're currently below Kazakhstan in our Euro 2020 qualifying group.

Over the last 22 years, it ultimately hasn't mattered how tough or easy our qualifying groups are perceived to have been, the bottom line is we've simply not been good enough. I caught a few minutes of a programme a few nights ago about our ill-fated 1978 World Cup campaign. The disbelief and anger from fans as we got gubbed by Peru and limped to a draw against Iran was an eye opener because the hype around Scotland at that time was such that we were actually being talked about as World Cup winners. These days we can't even qualify for a tournament let alone think about winning it.