Friday 23 March 2007

Georgia on my MInd

Hullo. Sadly not the state in Americas deep south, rather the former member of the USSR, who visit Scotland tomorrow hoping to upset the odds. With wins against the Faroe Islands, Lithuania and France, the form book suggests an easy win for my fellow countrymen in Alex McLeish’s first game in charge.

This match will not be an easy one however. A cursory glance at Georgians who have plied their trade in this county shows that they have produced some tricky players in their time, Kinkladze played with Manchester City, Ketsbaia played with Newcastle, and Nemsadze played with Dundee late on in his career. From the current Georgian squad, Zurab Khizanishvili plays with Blackburn after spells with Dundee and Rangers. He is partnered in defence by AC Milan’s Kaladze. The danger man up front will be another former Rangers man, Shota Arveladze. Georgia’s coach, Klaus Toppmoller, will have unhappy memories of Hampden, he was coach of Bayer Leverkusen when the lost to Real Madrid at Hampden in the European Cup Final five years ago.

As I said, this will not be an easy game for Scotland, clearly something of a baptism of fire for the new Scotland coach Alex McLeish, who faces an away match in Italy (on Wednesday) for his next match. I think Scotland can win tomorrow, but it will be difficult. In some ways this will be a tougher test than the Italy game on Wednesday, in terms of getting players into the right frame of mind. I think that Scotland will win by at most 2 goals.

PS: Sorry I haven’t been in touch, been really busy at work, and been too tired when I get home. As for the local elections news, I have had a couple of leaflets which I will hopefully write about soon.

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