Down Under with Usain Bolt’s Scottish Football Coach

Nick Montgomery, former Sheffield United captain and Scotland Under 21 midfielder, is now the assistant coach for Australian club Central Coast Mariners. He spoke to Pure Fitbaw about coaching the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt, the Scottish connection at the club and Celtic’s Aussie wonderkid Daniel Arzani.

Three Managerial Candidates To Jag Partick Thistle Back To Life

‘Tell him he’s Pele and get him back on.’ Famous words uttered by the infamous John Lambie and just the sort of inspirational gold which Partick Thistle need right now. Is there an inspiring candidate out there who can fill their managerial vacancy and elevate the Jags back to the top flight in Scottish football?
Pure Fitbaw gives you our three picks for the position!

Scotland Just Lack A World Class Goalscorer

International tournament qualification is, for a country of Scotland’s size and quality level, tough and getting tougher. There’s a lot of luck and factors that can’t be controlled at play such as the group draw and injuries and fair comparisons cannot be drawn with the relative regularity with which we qualified in the past.
Maybe using the limited coaching time to focus on defensive organisation and marginal gains such as set pieces can increase our chances but my feeling, based on analysis of the teams in the UEFA Nations League pot above us (all of whom have qualified for one of the last three tournaments), is that we’ve really just lacked a top class attacker who can conjure goals from nothing and be clinical in the limited opportunities international football provides.

International Break Scouting: Cucho and Ibrahim Sangaré

Here, deep in the bowels of Pure Fitbaw Towers, we’ve finished basking in the glow of a Scottish victory over Albania in the Nations League and have fired up the dusty old statistical scouting databases, twiddled with our abacuses and watched hours and hours of game footage to bring you the first of our International Break scouting reports. Each International Break we will analyse some stats and highlight some young players to keep your eye on throughout the season.

Olivier Ntcham: The Coach’s Analysis of Old Firm MOTM

In the first Old Firm clash of the 2018/19 season Olivier Ntcham was the standout player. Pure Fitbaw has previously highlighted the young Frenchman as one of the Celtic players that English Premier League clubs should attempt to buy in the summer 2018 transfer window, suggesting Everton, Leicester and Watford as potential destinations. Here, Laurie McGinley – football development officer and coach for the SWPL team Glasgow Girls and co-creator of The Curve Mindset – talks us through the player’s performance against Rangers.

The 12 SPFL Premiership Clubs Ranked For The Stay At Home Fan

Are you Pure Fitbaw but also pure lazy?

Or perhaps there are other reasons such as disability, financial constraints, working hours, location or family commitments which mean you can’t actually go to watch football live? Although Scotland does have one of the highest overall attendances at football per capita in Europe there are many more people who love football but don’t go to games. We’ve all read reviews of pies, ticket prices and pubs close to the ground but Pure Fitbaw is here to review some aspects of the modern match experience for the stay at home fan. For each SPFL Premiership club, to understand how immersed you can get in the experience and to check which clubs are making the most of opportunities to engage with their fans away from the ground, we tried to buy the 2018/19 away top from their websites, watch their club TV channel and Instagram Stories content and finally check out the tone and key match day content of their Twitter feed.

In a completely unscientific manner we’ve awarded scores out of 10 for each club and reveal the winner at the bottom of this review.

Deadline Day Regrets: SPFL Players That Should Have Moved To England

Transfer deadline day can be an anti-climactic event – promising so much in the build-up but delivering little aside from a few middle of the road moves and a lot of reporters waiting idly at grounds where nothing is happening. Still, we are all lured into watching Jim White and his yellow tie even if his reporting colleague, seemingly there just to be a glamorous looking sidekick, tends to actually offer more than White when it comes to football knowledge on the odd occasion she is permitted to speak. The highest profile departure from the SPFL to cross the border on their earlier than normal deadline day this season was Josh Windass in a move to Wigan for a reported £2.5 million fee.

Here at Pure Fitbaw we have highlighted a few more players that should have looked for an exit strategy at that point and brought a little more excitement to deadline day. 

Is Tactical Analysis McCall Guesswork?

Pure Fitbaw spoke to Stuart McCall at the IRN-BRU Cup 2nd Round draw recently and we took the opportunity to ask him about his experiences playing for Scotland and his thoughts about the national team ahead of our fixtures in September. McCall was selected for Italia 90 just months after his international debut and scored his only Scotland goal in the group stage match against Sweden. We’ve reviewed the goal to understand how this incredible moment came about for the player.

The End Of False Dawns At Clyde FC

An experienced management team, a trusted chairman, a talented squad and a united support…this is Clyde we are talking about, right? Are the famous Bully Wee finally about to get the success they crave, or is this another false dawn for one of Scotland’s oldest clubs?