Hello & Some Thoughts

Hi folks, I was on the old bbc 606 forum and have kept an eye on this forum with interest, its good to see some familiar names have made the transition. Due to a change of jobs I am no longer able to contribute during work hours unfortunately but it is still good to see the views on football and that the passion still remains amongst so many.

Anyway with regards this weeks events, I fail to see the fuss. I am in my mid 20s, and in my lifetime this has been the norm for Scottish Football. Our national team has not qualified for any event in over 13 years, in my lifetime I have only been old enough to remember us being in one World Cup in France and in history we have only ever made 2 Euro Championships. Lets be clear - we are not some kind of football superpower in decline, this is our level and it will continue to be our level until someone does something about it. For as long as I can remember people have been offering solutions to solve the problems, but none of them have ever been implemented. Summer football, winter breaks, less games, bigger league...these points have been offered for twenty years but with the exception of a winter break for a couple of seasons nothing has been done.

I read the paper today and it said this has been the worst season since 1994/95 when Dundee Utd were knocked out by a Slovakian mob, Rangers were beaten home and away by an Athens team who went on to have one of the worst CL records of all time, Aberdeen were beaten by Skonto Riga and Motherwell were beaten 5-0 on agg to Dortmund.

This was 17 years ago, so it is not a new problem. In that time we have had one good season for Scottish Football, the year Rangers got to a final, Celtic got to last 16 of CL and Aberdeen qualified from Europa League. We have had a couple of seasons where one club carried the rest of us eg Celtic making Seville and Rangers making last 16 of CL, but even in these seasons it was not great for Scottish Football, it was great for the clubs individualls. When Celtic made Seville Rangers were beaten in September by Zhizkhov and the rest were kicked out early on, and when Rangers made last 16 of CL Celtic were hammered by Bratislava in July and the rest were out by August. So I fail to see where the hysteria has come from this year, this has been happening for years and until it is addressed or changed it will be the case for another twenty.

It certainly hurts, but I am past being surprised at some backwater counties beating our teams. In my lifetime I have seen Rangers beaten and knocked out by giants like Sparta Prague, Levski Sofia, AEK Athens, Gothenburg, Unirea, Strasbourg, Grasshoppers, Auxerre, Kaunas, Zhiskov, Maribor, Malmo etc, none of whom are bigger clubs or financially better off than us whilst I also remember a 5-0 win for the mighty Xamax against Celtic in the 90s. We need to get back to basics and reality that we are not some superpower in decline, we are a backwater nation who need to start making changes if we want to be anything different.

I welcome all opinions.