Quote Originally Posted by hibsbollah View Post
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When you look back on the game, it’s a bit **** from a Scotland perspective.

We’re at home. We’re starting off a new campaign. We’re playing a team higher than us in the fifa rankings, sure, but not exactly a leading world nation. We play with one striker 6 midfielders and are battered for large chunks of the game, surrender most of the possession and emerge with a point thanks to McGinns magic. But it’s still a poor result against a team we’ll have to finish above and fundamentally Clark’s tactics are so negative, I thought there would be a new optimism and positivity after euro qualifying and maybe a taking off of the handbrake. Doesn’t seem that way.
Agree with his,

Clarke has tightened us up, made us very difficult to beat and installed a fighting team spirit and should be commended for that.

However, I don't think we need to play half as negatively and defensive as we do a lot of the time. On paper there wasn't much between the starting 11s going into the game (maybe minus Dykes and O'donnel), but for the first half hour or so we gave them far too much respect, sitting very deep and giving their holding midfielders far too much time on the ball. With players like McTominay, McGinn, Robertson, Tierney, Christie, Armstrong on the pitch, all with great technical ability, I felt we could have tried to press them harder and play a bit more football through the midfield when we did have the ball. Instead of just punting it to Dykes and trying to win second balls most of the time.

For me the substitutes were needlessly negative as well. About to bring Fraser on for Dykes, but as soon as we equalise he changes his mind and brings on McGregor instead, despite the fact we had them under pressure and were looking like we could nick a winner. I could at least understand the logic behind that substitution as McGregor has excellent ball retention for keeping us in control and it let McGinn get further forward. However the McLean sub had me fuming. For the last 15 minutes or so our attack was Adams and about 10 centre mids. Far too negative when if we want to qualify from this group we really need to be taking 4 points of Austria, and last night was a great chance to do that which Clarke bottled imo.