Posts Tagged: Scotland

Opinion — No Comments
13
Mar 10

Arse has collapsed, again…

Right, so, that’s that. That’s the season drawn to a close with a Maurice Edu header in the 92nd minute.

They are 13 points clear, haven’t lost a game in 4 months and we cannot pull our fingers out. Despite Robbie Keane. Keano rocked up on loan, and has been scoring regularly for us, but I don’t think a 6 month stint would have been enough to see us through. Maybe if he’d taken the Spurs boys to Dublin in the summer, we’d have gotten him all year, and he’d have made a Larsson-esque contribution to the season.

As it is, we’ve got Mogga, and his particularly dour brand of football. After spending the first half of the season bedding in (forgiveable) and trying to get a set of comparative cloggers to play sexy football, he’ll be spending the second half trying to persuade Keane to stay and apologising for flogging half the squad to Middlesborough. Continue reading →

Mince and Tatties — No Comments
11
Mar 10

Mince and Tatties 03

The trouble with running a blog and having to take compulsory family holidays is that while your correspondent was working his way down the slopes in an Elvis-esque way (by which I mean a fat sweaty guy wearing a jumpsuit and ornate scarf, all the while high on painkillers following a comedy fall in the car park on the morning of the first day), the world of Scottish football moved on without me.

And if you thought finding out anything about Scottish football was a complete bastard here in Holland, trying to find out who won the game between Peterhead and Dumbarton whilst atop a mountain somewhere in the middle of Germany is next to impossible.

So it was that in more or less complete ignorance I returned home, frustratingly unaware of anything that had transpired while I was gone. And yes, ignorance is bliss and all that, but for someone running a blog, ignorance is fatal. But, truth be told, having been away from the laptop for as long as I have been, it has been refreshing to have a break from the pressure of getting Inside Left into the number 87 spot in the Scotblog awards for next year.

Aye, I was getting used to not having to spend my evening researching articles for the site (no really, I dont just make this shit up, some real actual research takes place) and apathy was starting to set in, so it is with some degree of Herculean effort that I dragged myself back behind the keyboard and back onto these pages. So to quote Bill Hicks “it’s great to be here wherever I am, I always like it when I’m here”.

Spoiler: most of what you are about to read is pretty old hat. Apologies in advance… Continue reading →

Mince and Tatties — Comments Off
10
Feb 10

Mince and Tatties 01

The big news of the week has been Scotland’s group of near-death for the upcoming European Championship Qualifying odyssey.

Spain (by that time quite possibly Word Cup Winners) are just another Holland, so we fear the worst. We’ve actually performed better against Spain, statistically, than against the Czech Republic (or Czechoslovakia, for those of you born before 1989), so you may want to hedge your bets. Personally, I fear for our game against Lithuania and the prospect of playing Lichtenstein keeps me awake at night – the scope for things to go wrong know no earthly bounds.

» [Pie and Bovril] does a grand job of summing up the draw, as does [The Scottish football blog]
» In preparation, Scotland get their man [Unprofessional Foul]
» … but Barry Ferguson is not the only one having second thoughts about playing for Scotland [BBC]

Meanwhile back at the coalface,

» life at the arse-end of Division One ain’t all that and a bag of chips [Scotzine]
» Mark McGhee resorts to bad language [We Know SFA] and then goes all out to win over the hearts and minds of Aberdeen supporters [BBC]
» and all is not lost for Stirling Albion, as Scotland’s top sports surgeon Gordon Mackay says his bid to buy-out Stirling Albion owner Peter McKenzie is “not dead”. [Daily Record]

Finally: a new template. What do you think? Does my bum look big in it? (don’t bother, changed my mind).

Opinion — 2 Comments
18
Dec 09

The Scottish season so far: the national side

As we begin the run up to the end of 2009, Inside Left looks back on an interesting season so far in Scottish football. This season can best be summarized as ‘troublesome’, as our clubs struggle in European competition and our chairmen and directors struggle in the boardroom. And with financial trouble never off the radar, what is the future for Scottish football?

We begin though, with a look back at the national side’s efforts this year, and look forward to a difficult, but hopefully rosy (tartan?) future.

Continue reading →

If You Know Your History — 4 Comments
2
Dec 09

On This Day in Scottish Football

Scotland concluded their 1988 European Championship qualifying campaign with a goalless draw against Luxembourg, and on this day in 1911, a young Patsy Gallagher made his debut for Celtic.

Continue reading →

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