The long awaited Scotland-Netherlands reaction

OK readers, its been a long time coming, but here's my Scotland-Netherlands reaction post. I don't think I'll write as much as I first thought, because I do want to get on to talking about other things pretty soon. You all know the result, so I wont be going into any sort of match report or anything.

Right first things first, we didn't qualify, but we did play well. We managed to muster quite a few good opportunities against a strong Holland team, and despite their obvious class, managed to keep them out for about 85 minutes. We gave quite a gutsy performance, really getting right in the Dutch players faces and trying not to give them any time to breathe in possession. To sum up, I think we played our tactics just right.

However, as pleased I was with our overall performance, there is one thing that really annoyed me from that game. Allow me to quote myself from Tuesday 8th September.....

"All of our chances will have to be taken, if we get anything in front of goal it HAS to end up in the back of the net."

Not really a particularly insightful thing to remember, surely everyone in dark blue knew it, well everyone except our man Kenny Miller. I'm not saying Kenny played terrible, he had some good moments, but that miss was just embarassing. If you have a team like Scotland, trying to beat a team like Holland, and you are playing one man up front, HE HAS TO BE ABLE TO SCORE.

The Holland goal was a stupid lapse in concentration, but there was always the danger our defence would start to come apart as the game went on. Of course there is no shame in losing 1-0 to Holland, but that goal was a dagger through the heart after a spirited performance..

Discussing this game with my uncle at my sister's birthday party at the weekend, we came across a couple of talking points. First of all, we need a captain. Ferguson is gone, and Fletcher, McManus, Caldwell etc etc are not captains. We came to the conclusion that the only player in the squad with the potential and natural pedigree to be a great Scotland captain, is Scott Brown.

He is still young just now, but with us needing to rebuild completely for the Euros in 2012, this could be a perfect time to just hand Broony the armband. Give him it right away, so he becomes familiar with his role, and by the time the qualifiers come around, he could easily be the captain we so sorely need.

Ok that's enough for now, I'll let us mourn our qualifying in peace. Until the next disappointing friendly folks!


Just a little bit to finish, Arsenal striker Eduardo scored the winning goal against Standard Liege in the Champions League tonight. In a game he was originally suspended for after a two-match ban for diving. Well, now we know UEFA's stance on cheating. If you play for a big team, cheat all you like, UEFA don't have the balls to punish you.