Quote Originally Posted by Pearcey3 View Post
We have been in the top 20 on merit. You don’t fluke results for 7 years.
There also needs to be some context here.
Scotland are currently ranked 40 and moving upwards. In their entire history they haven’t reached the knocked out stages of a single major tournament. We did that in successive Euro tournaments.

Context also applies in where and when we played Iran. The game was played on the hottest day of the tournament in the middle of the afternoon in a stadium of mainly Iranian supporters. How would that game have panned out on a cold, wet and windy afternoon in Ireland in front of mainly Welsh supporters? I think it would have been very different. Football is played throughout the year.

We have massively overachieved. How many countries with smaller populations have achieved what we have? The emphasis is on the word “smaller” here and not similar or slightly greater.

We are now likely to drop down the rankings as our best players retire. There is no shame in that. This has been a golden period for Welsh football with so many highs. There are now likely to be plenty of lows but we are used to that. However we will still have some highs and need to enjoy them when they occur.
I think this is an excellent post. I really do feel that the conditions are being overlooked, or not being taken fully into consideration. Anything less than peak physical condition will and has been magnified. I think we are far from crap, I think we have just suffered, as always, from a lack of numbers to pick from from and real quality amongst those numbers. In my mind Rob Page has come in for some harsh criticism and has made decisions based on the whole picture and all of the information. He has done what he thought was best I'm sure. It's all too easy for us fans to sit at home and pick our teams based on players operating at peak performance. We forget that it is highly unlikely a manager will be able to field 11 players who are "at it". We have achieved qualification for 3 tournaments from 4 because we deserved to on merit. Now we are entering a transition phase and results will continue to tail off in the short term I suspect. My hope is that blooding more youngsters now will pay dividends down the line. Yes some players have under-performed but we are not crap. England failed to beat a good USA side and essentially matched our result. Are they crap too? Of course not. We need to get behind the boys and hope they give us a send off that they will be proud of when they hang up the international boots for good.