4 set-pieces of nonsense

Oct 5 2008 Gordon Waddell

IT'S a learning process, apparently. Every game we play in Europe.

So why do we never seem to learn? Over and over the same things happen and we hear the same old excuses.

Four of our teams have taken on foreign opposition this season and all four have blown it big time - coughing up stupid set-piece after stupid set-piece.

And what do we hear? We're naive. We're inexperienced at this level. We were conned.

Answer me this though - how many times can you be naive? By definition it's only once, right? After that you surely have the nous to see it coming.

Not us, though.

Rangers? Out to Kaunas in the qualifiers - a corner, needlessly conceded, and a 30-yard free-kick.

Queen of the South? Second minute of their first Euro game, a corner, needlessly conceded, set the tone for the whole tie.

Although to be fair to Gordon Chisholm and his men they're the only ones who can genuinely claim to be rookies.

Never was our problem more clearly hammered home than last week though.

Celtic? Do everything right in one of the toughest away gigs in Europe - until Paul Hartley dangles a leg in where it should never have been.

Did you see Gordon Strachan's reaction? He went tonto. Why? Because the guy made the most of the challenge? No chance. It was because his man made the schoolboy error of giving him the chance to do it.

Afterwards, we got predictable accusations of a dive - but as ever it's a convenient smokescreen to cover up the real question.

Which is: Why even give him the chance to get his snorkel and flippers out whenwe know what's coming? Inexperience? Spare me.

And then Motherwell? All week the manager had been bumping on about what AS Nancy had coming to them.

Yet within 25 minutes Well had coughed up two dead balls in areas that couldn't have been any more dangerous if they'd booted a Doberman in the danglies then tried to hide in a barrel of Pedigree chum.

Of course they were going to get hurt. Yet still the excuses came - this time Mark McGhee saying he was sure Paul Quinn had been pushed before his two-handed shove on Moncef Zerka - despite the fact there wasn't another white shirt within 10 yards of him.

Bob Malcolm's challenge from behind on his man matched it for sheer ineptitude.

As Stephen Hughes said afterwards, if you go down to a couple of 25-yarders from open play you hold your hands up.

But Well didn't. None of our clubs did. They all went down to situations they could have avoided and know how to avoid by now.

Last term Scottish teams played 39 European games. This season we could be finished at 12.

If Celtic are lucky - and defy all known logic to win away from home in Aalborg - they can add to that tally in the UEFA Cup.

Another galling thing, though? Seeing Kaunas get seven pumped past them by Sampdoria. Seeing Nordsjaelland take the same-sized tonking from Olympiakos.

If our boys were losing to superior forces you'd suck it up. But they're tossing games away to teams who get found out a minute later.

Not in the case of Nancy, to be fair. They could play and had a cigar on for 90 minutes at Fir Park. Even when they were defending they were playing.

But our failure has instant consequences. For all the good last term did to our co-efficient, for all the plaudits earned, these results are like that first tug at a loose piece of wool on a jumper - it all unravels.

There's a danger that as soon as this season kicks in to the five-year cycle - and UEFA's revamping of their competitions hits - we lose our automatic Champions League place.

If that goes so does the automatic £10million in the coffers of the SPL champs and the spending power that's supposed to let us breathe the same air as the big boys.

So if these European experiences are a learning process let's hope to hell we've understood the lesson we've just been taught.