super_carson

If they've already been delivered probably expect them to be on sale for the last home game of the season, maybe even used for it? I suspect they'll be doing promo photos this week and released/unveiled next week. Having strips out at the end of a season seems to be a good way to go about it based on last season.

I can understand that some fans might feel frustrated that so much money is being spent on off-pitch projects while we've been staying up by the skin of our teeth in 3 out of the last 4 seasons, but it's probably been the right way to do things. Dave Smith could easily have pumped the equivalent money into the playing budget, but there's absolutely no guarantee of a return on that and football is littered with examples of clubs spending loads in a short period of time and it blowing up in their faces when they don't get the success they are looking for. At least with the infrastructure mostly in place now, there should be a solid base for the club to operate on. Hospitality should be a much more attractive product to market to casual fans/corporate sponsors, and the improvements in the retail side of things (the O'Neills products, physical and online shops) should all provide a much more stable source of long-term revenue. The issue for me is the transfer policies. I'm all for exploring alternative markets, but we've become far too obsessed with signing players from within the M25. That's not necessarily down to what money is available for on-pitch, but how it's being used. Surely we will see that policy being massively scaled back this year - by all means scout and explore if there are potential players but we desperately need to be signing guys who are a bit more of a known quantity.

Wasn't he absolutely minging in the 4-4 game before Christmas?

Sorry to hear that Derek. It's easy to see why football means so much to folk when it's across generations like this.

Wonder what will happen with Rose. He's certainly had a good return of goals in his loan spell at Hamilton, but he struggled for any sort of consistency in the Championship. Worth keeping?

Good result today, but if we are going with the policy of dropping players for making one mistake that is massively risky IMO. I'm all for having high standards, but it brings a huge amount of additional pressure on to players that's not needed. McGinty in particular has probably been one of our best players this season and has led the team pretty well over the last few years, so that particular decision seems harsh (If that's what it is). Either way, glad we got the result today.

Well I think that pretty much confirms Albinson is out of the picture now. It's a bold statement from the coaches, but I think there was a rumour of Brown and him having a bust up and that's only going to go one way.

Given all our January signings were loans till the end of the season, I get the feeling Brown will be wanting to bring more of his own players in in the summer. I wonder if we will see a move away from trying to sign players from the English low leagues en-mass.

McGinty was definitely enjoying himself today, really enjoyed seeing him feeding off the crowd. There was one point where he headed the ball away with such ferocity that I'd not have been surprised if the ball burst. Tomlinson's transition to full back/wing back won't happen over night and there's going to be some mistakes along with way. He did well going forward but the defensive awareness will develop over time. Also, delighted for Dowds. He works incredibly hard every week and must have been frustrated that he hadn't scored for a while. Hopefully this starts a wee run of goals!

Maybe it's more of a reflection of the nature of of modern football, but I don't think there's much wrong with Bullen making comments about Ayr. Granted, posting on Facebook maybe is a bit off, but we wouldn't think twice about it if he was doing punditry or a podcast. As Robbo said, he obviously built relationships in his time at the club so I think it's unreasonable to expect him to just cut those out now he's lost his job. He was seemingly a nice guy who lost his job due to results. There's really not much else to it.

There's no mass conspiracy theory lads, but it's awful refereeing and a complete bottle job from the TMO. He clearly says the ball is on the ground twice when speaking to Berry. I don't understand how or why he rolls back on that when Berry sounds like he's prepared to award the try. That's what needs to be looked at, and I'll not be surprised if that TMO doesn't have any other games during the championship.

You need to be careful when dealing with a goalkeeper as it's a position that's so significantly influenced by confidence. It's an exposed position in the sense that a mistake will more often than not cause a goal, but it's also painfully more obvious when a goalkeeper is struggling for confidence. I think Charlie is a good goalkeeper, we've seen that plenty of times - especially last year - but he has made a couple of mistakes recently. Some of those are compounded by further errors because he's probably under pressure, either from himself or from management (getting dropped after the last Dundee Utd game being an example). He won't have all of a sudden become a bad keeper, but I do understand why people are frustrated. It just causes further problems if you start to chop and change in lieu of an obvious available upgrade.

Rose is frustrating because there's a player in there somewhere but I just don't think we've worked what type of player he should be yet. He was signed as a striker but that's not worked out so far. Maybe a somewhat free role behind Dowds?

University sports facilities are generally very good, so training there shouldn't really be considered an issue at our level.

To be fair, I'm Edinburgh born and raised so allegiance is thanks to the sins of my father. My kids will only be allowed their local team or Ayr though...

Financial boost, probably on the telly.

Bonnyrigg away, purely because I can literally walk to the game.

I think the problem will some of the Mathie dissatisfaction is we don't know exactly how much recruit is down to just him. I always thought the MD would just handle the legal and financial side of things? Scouts should identify potential players but that the final decision on whether or not to try and sign should be down to the coaching team. Part of the problem is that because it's not completely clear what the process is, people fill in the blanks themselves and perhaps come to the wrong conclusions.

If (and it's a big if, given it's based on nothing more than social media rumours) the likes of Courts and Bowyer have turned Ayr down for the reasons mentioned then maybe the club need to go back and look at how it's currently running the football side of things. You are always likely to struggle to attract good, experienced managers if they don't get the autonomy to sign their own players who they think will fit in with the tactics and style of football they want to play.

I'm on the fence with McCall. We all have amazing memories of 2017-19 with some of the football played, and I would like to think he'd have more resources at his disposal than he did the first time round (which may go some way to help alleviate the post Xmas slump his teams seemed to suffer). It just still doesn't sit right with me the manner of his departure and the feeling that he maybe strung Ayr along a bit that season knowing the Patrick job was realistically going to come up again. I'm also not entirely sure he'd enjoy working within the new structure.

Would imagine it'll be a White/Murphy/McGready caretaking team for the next week or two unless something was already lined up.

It had to happen. Don't like to see anyone lose their job but it didn't even look remotely like being turned around and was for the best for all parties concerned. A likeable guy who just didn't seem to have a plan to get out this mess.

It's a reich state of affairs.

I wish it had worked out for Kerr, certainly don't think he was any worse than what followed. On our current manager, it is really worrying that he keep referring to those draws against the fife teams as some justification for the awful form. Comebacks are all fine and well but you're not actually supposed to aim to go behind early on...

Being bald isn't so bad, I've saved loads of money on shampoo since my mid twenties.