Media Suggestions That Scotland Play Celtic’s Attacking Maverick As A Wing Back Are Ludicrous.

There are times when I look at the work being done by Scottish football pundits and wonder whether or not I’m watching the same game that they are.

There are times when I listen to the stuff that they are saying, or read the stuff that they are writing, that I come away genuinely baffled that these people are earning a living in that business.

Because their ignorance about tactics and their complete lack of comprehension as to what it is they are watching is truly incredible. This is one of those times.

In the aftermath of the German game, two narratives are slowly taking shape.

The first is that the defeat would have prevented, or lessened, had Billy Gilmour played. The second is that Tony Ralston was part of the problem. You may agree with that or you may disagree with it, but there is a bizarre solution being proposed to that which is what I want to discuss.

But before I get to that, let’s talk Billy Gilmour for a moment, and this almost universal view amongst our press corps that we’re talking here about some other-worldly footballer who would take Scotland to glory if only Steve Clarke saw what everyone else apparently does.

Billy Gilmour, at 23, has a grand total of 116 club games. He has zero goals. He does have 27 caps for Scotland, and one goal. To provide you with just a little context, Matt O’Riley is the same age, he has 184 club games under his belt and has scored 37 goals. O’Riley has two more games for Celtic than Gilmour has in his whole career, and has 26 more goals as a Celtic player than Gilmour has amassed in his time as a professional footballer, Scotland caps included.

So, I’m finding the idea that Gilmour is a wonderkid very, very difficult to accept. It seems to me that he’s become a classic example of that football phenomenon where a player gets better to some people the further they are away from watching him every week.

I don’t get it. I’ve never got it, but in the beginning, I at least understood it, and that the hype was partly about shining a light on him because it reflected onto Ibrox, as he was their former academy player.

I genuinely don’t know what the hype is about now, although it could just be that having blown this kid’s talents out of all proportion that some of them just don’t want to let go of the idealised image they have in their heads … it’s a pity, though, that the rest of us have to be forced to endure the near-hysteria every time he doesn’t make a starting eleven for the national team.

It seems clear to me that including Gilmour in the team would not have made the least bit of difference to the outcome. Even if he were twice the player he is, which would still only be a quarter of the player they appear to believe that he is.

Steve Clarke’s decision to sit back instead of getting in the German’s faces was what doomed us from the start, that and the fact we were playing against a rampant, and outstanding, side in the Germans … you would think we’d lost heavily to Finland or something.

Maybe it’s skipped the attention of the hacks, but we were playing the host nation and one of the favourites, and went a man down before the roof really fell in. Sure, some people allowed themselves to be swept up in all the “we’re getting Germany early and that might help us” schtick, but most of us were pretty realistic about what our chances were.

Two German sides got to the Champions League semi-finals this year, and it was almost an all-German final, with Dortmund making it and doing very well on the night before succumbing to the nearly supernatural force that is Real Madrid.

A German club reached the final of the Europa League as well, before losing to an Atalanta side who I think took advantage of a bit of over-confidence on the part of the Leverkusen team.

Theirs is not exactly a football nation in decline.

It was a bad night for the national team, that’s not in question, but it was not the garment-rending, epochal disaster that some people would have you believe. The same over-reaction follows every Celtic defeat in Europe, no matter the calibre of the opposition. Some people just cannot help but over-react and lose their minds.

What appals me is reading people like Jackson this morning seeking an easy scapegoat and opting for Tony Ralston, a guy who isn’t even Celtic’s first choice right back, playing with total strangers in a game where one of our central defenders got himself sent off. Ralston is the best right back in the squad. Blaming him for the defeat is outrageous.

As many of us have said already, it was a collective calamity and a collective responsibility.

And as if looking for the “easy scapegoat” is not enough in itself, the simplistic answer many of them, Jackson included and the whole of the Record “panel”, have proposed presents even more evidence that none of these people are playing with a full deck; they want Ralston dropped … for James Forrest. They want us to play one of our best attacking options as a full-back.

I don’t know which part of their understanding is flawed here, but these are, after all, the people who have spent the last couple of years telling us that Tavernier is the best right back in Scotland although he very obviously isn’t and hasn’t been since the day he made his debut for the Ibrox club. They put him in every single team of the year, based on his goals and his assists … but refuse to accept that he simply cannot defend.

So there’s obviously a bit of that in this suggestion, but that does not make it any less stupid.

In case they haven’t twigged, James Forrest is not a defender. Whoever plays at right wingback in that game will probably be going up against Bologna’s Dan Ndoye, who had a great game against Hungary the other night.

To offer some further context, he’s the same age as Gilmour and has 29 club goals in 217 club games. He will be a tough enough opponent for Ralston to handle if we play the high line; a non-defensive player will leave us massively exposed on that flank.

These people don’t have a clue what they are talking about, and that’s a problem for me as they are paid to offer opinions at some kind of expert level. But you can get smarter evaluations than this in the bar of your local boozer.

Just because something works on EA Sports FC, it doesn’t mean that it works in the real world … in the real world we’ll get scalped if we try something like that, and the objective here is to win the game and get the three points.

Clarke has fallen into a familiar football trap, one that the really top tier managers do not fall into, and this is where he’s slightly limited in his outlook; he looks at the makeup of the Scotland squad, sees that we have a lot of good options at left back and even more in the central midfield and he has bent the entire squad to accommodate as many of them as possible.

So we have Tierney at centre back. We’d have Hickey at right back if he was fit. We have a rotating midfield five in the middle, of whom at least four need to be selected. It is madness. Sometimes you need to leave good players on the bench, because what matters is the cohesion of the team as a whole, and too often we sacrifice that so we can build the team around a handful of players, no matter how disjointed or incoherent that makes the shape.

None of the hacks confronts this.

None has suggested what appears blindingly obvious; that if we want a result against the Swiss it might be an idea not to go with three centre backs and a weird midfield diamond and to give us some proper width. Scrap this ludicrous defensive, fearful system.

Stop trying to get every central midfielder we can into the starting line-up.

Play a 4-3-3 with McGinn, McTominey and McGregor.

Play a front three of either Christie, Morgan or Conway on the left, with Adams or Shankland in the centre and Forrest on the right.

Let our attacking maverick focus on doing what he’s best at; beating defenders, creating chances, scoring goals.

Instead of, you know, asking him to defend …

Forrest at full back? Are you kidding me?

The Daily Record’s team of experts are all agreed on this mad idea.

How do these people have the balls to cash their pay cheques?

How does the company that issues those cheques think these people are worth the money?