(16-06-2021, 20:54)spireitematt Wrote:(16-06-2021, 16:45)St Charles Owl Wrote: Do you have to turn everything political!! Its a football match between the two oldest teams in international football at a major tournament and a game that is usually tight, exciting and often blood and thunder football, can't we celebrate that?? Southgate is the England manager, he isn't some intellectual scribe so I would expect him to make some mistakes in interviews, doesn't mean it's politically motivated!! Maybe he will call our next opponent Czechslovakia!!And if you are going to criticize Rangers fans for their St Georges square stupidity, then you should also be criticizing any Scotland fans who travel to this game if they don't have a ticket.
On to the game, as usual I don't have a ton of faith that England will win this game as they should. These games are often too tight, Scotland has a habit of raising their game a few notches for this one and we often don't!! If that happens then it could be close. As you say your biggest problem is scoring goals, you don't have a striker that is clinical and this will continue to hurt you. We on the other hand are blessed with forward thinking players but they have to turn up. We have to take advantage of the chances we will create.
As someone else said a couple of days ago on here, this has a 3-0 England win or 0-1 Scotland win written all over it!! I'd wish you luck but I would be being disingenuous, but if we were able I would happily have a beer after the game no matter the score!!
I said that St Charles on the other thread about England either winning this 3-0 or Scotland winning it 1-0.
We don't need to bring politics or Brexit into this, it's football and like you say St Charles there is already a big rivalry between England and Scotland.
The title of this thread though could upset Welsh or even Northern Irish fans of their national teams.
Rivalry even more so because of Brexit and the extreme English nationalist politics attached to it Matt plus the brazen misuse of the Union Jack and trying to display it as a dominant Saint George Cross!!
It is so easy to "sweep this shit under the carpet" and try to ignore all the poison attached to it. There was even an outrageous unionist idiot, E Deans, last week presenting a warped argument that all the four nations of the UK disband to form a team GB!!!??? I'm sure likewise "this could upset the Welsh and Northern Irish fans and their people in general"!!! Don't you think so!!??? This is an "old chestnut" resurrected again btw, all part of this divisive single nation Brexit philosophy, the reasoning being that the criterion for members of FIFA is being a sovereign state with wide diplomatic recognition and in 2018 FIFA defined a country as an independent state recognised by the international community. So Scotland is not an independent state, precisely because of independence rejection in 2014. Therefore it would be logical to have disbanded the Scotland team by the SFA after that!!!?? In other words, Scotland should disband the team and sign up to Brexit FC lol!!! What could possibly go wrong lol??? 
Then this clown came out with a classic bizarre insinuation that the SNP (keep them out of it eh!!) wouldn't exist had it not been for the first international game between England and Scotland in 1872!! Ehhhh - get your head around that one!! Needless to say these comments didn't go down well with certain reputable Scot university academics who were well qualified to recognise the great history of Scottish footie and the international footie team - quite a few guffaws thrown in for good measure!!!
Anyway, back to the footie and to all Scotland fans: I watched Italy playing out their second group match v Switzerland tonight - a 3-0 result and they are such a formidable team with eye-watering stats attached to them: 29 matches unbeaten and 965 mins without conceding a goal!!! Wowwww!! From a Scotland perspective, it shows us the huge difference collectively in class and player standards that we are trying at least to get close to. Scotland's progress is still a long-term project to try and "bridge that gap" as best that we can. It aint easy; but there are some positive "green shoots" coming through in what has been a long, evolving process of bringing in a new generation of talented Scottish footballers!!!