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1320Lichtie

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1320Lichtie last won the day on November 25 2023

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About 1320Lichtie

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    Arbroath
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    Arbroath

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  1. Fair play to McCabe he’s managed to create a real team unit and fair play to the players, they looked off the pace and standard required but they’ve all come on leaps and bounds. To be honest one of the biggest differences and I’ve said it after the last game at the Excelsior has been the lad Megwa. Craig Watson playing wide out on the right was the main reason you got a pumping at Gayfield that day. But Megwa coming in has totally transformed the whole defence. As for Arbroath we have been an absolute shit show since Jay Bird and Hylton started scrapping against Dunfermline at home. Inverness away the week before and the 80 minutes up to that point when we were beating Dunfermline the best we’d been all year. Bird got sent off, we drew against Dunfermline conceding in the 92nd minute and the week after all the silliness with injuries started away to Raith. It has been as bad as I’ve ever witnessed in all my years watching Arbroath, 10-12 players missing weekly and guys out of position. Players and the team all over the place and half fit coming in one week and missing the next. It’s been a shambolic poor poor season and I’m already buzzing for it to be over and done with. Good luck to Airdrie going forward. It’s a tough division that’ll only get tougher next season so enjoy the good times while they last.
  2. Maybe in your opinion it hasn’t but you cannot deny that the vast majority of players who are good enough to and want to play at this level want to be in a FT environment and live a FT lifestyle, that only is massively beneficial to everyone except us in the league
  3. Just to clarify I don’t think FT is the right direction for us to go in as a club, I think we have it spot on with what we’re attempting to do. But we’re at a point in time where we are at the end of a cycle and it’s time for a new fresh start, to try and achieve what we have been doing again, and I’m not talking about challenging for the Premiership I’m meaning to get back into the Championship and mix it for as long as we can. Like I said earlier on and got a bit of a hard time from some, being in the Championship is not the be all and end all for me I just want to go and enjoy my Saturdays watching Arbroath play football. That is all any fan wants, so I would never ever rip up our model and attempt something that in my opinion would be silly just so we can try and be in a certain division. No way
  4. Standards at FT now, especially in terms of player fitness and physicality, will be a million times higher than they were 50 years ago. Also it doesn’t really matter. Majority of players who are capable of and want to play at this level want to be in a FT environment, like I said earlier every other club in the division is at a huge advantage simply down to the fact they have a massive pool of players to pick from compared to us, who can only compete if we get a large amount of the best PT players in the country to the club
  5. FT is a must if you want to become a permanent fixture in this division in my opinion the proof is in the pudding. It’s why doing what we’ve done is so unusual. It’s too big a jump especially in terms of fitness and physicality for a lot of PT players initially and they get absolutely no time to bed themselves in they need to get up to the standard immediately. Also hard to get the best PT players signed up and a part of your team when you’ve already got the best PT players playing in your team. Nobody is coming to sit on the bench. So when things eventually catch up on the guys that are a part of your team (like it has with every single one of our defenders this year and last) all the players we could’ve been looking at to replace them are elsewhere and a fixture at another club. Turning over players is so much harder when the only players who are PT and would be good enough to play in the division are the best ones. Whereas it’s so much easier for the FT clubs to do this without it causing too much problems. There’s a huge pool of FT players who are up to this level, in fact there is an over spill of them just have a look at Falkirk (know they’re a big big club but still league below) and Hamilton. Also benefitted a lot in the first 3 seasons of FT teams and clubs being in a bit of a mess but can’t say that about any team this year. Add in to the fact that the likes of QP and Raith have started splashing the cash. QP weren’t even a thing at this level until recent years now they’re another club with a Championship level FT budget. The best PT players are better than the poorest FT players absolutely but it’s so much harder to manage and get right when the pool of them is so much smaller.
  6. No Arbroath fan has any delusions of grandeur or haven’t realised how amazing the last 3 seasons (before last and this) have been that’s absolute nonsense and simply completely untrue I would also be hesitant in writing too many players off. Look how poor that Montrose team looks on paper and they’re flying in L1. The board and club have to start planning for next season. Who they want the manager to be (still think McIntyre has not really had a fair go at it) will be the biggest decision. Then after that the group of players we need to try and keep to build a new squad around. Have to say I’m not overly bothered about a lot of them. McKenna, Gold, Stewart are the main 3 I would say and ToB if he’s not completely broken by next season. Handful of solid guys already contracted and then others who could potentially be the same if we were to keep them eg Lyon. The signings going forward, in the main a lot of them will have to be guys we want to be here for a sustained period of time. That’s how teams like us and Montrose to a lesser extent have done well. It’s a core of guys and team effort. All the faces coming in and out over the last 2 year has absolutely fucked that and any togetherness and identity we had. No revisionism on DC either please. The guy had become toxic, we’d played the worst football I’d ever seen last season (actually played a lot of last season without a striker ffs, remember that ) and then this year he went and fully lost the plot. Was absolutely time to go and we’d be in this same position whether he was here or not.
  7. We are relegated now, of that there is no doubt Now we need to start on where we want to be as a club next season and who we want to be here Next year is a whole new beginning and it’s going to be a tough one
  8. Hamilton would still be absolutely fine in L1 but his best days well behind him and ToB would be a good player in L1 too, he’s been peppered with niggling injuries for a long time now but still a really good player when he’s at it, not seen much of that for a while though - but I’m just guessing they’ll both want to work with DC again and we’ve got to prepare for that. Atleast we would get a fee for ToB. Hammy definitely be away. ToB I think it’s 50/50 and it’ll depend on how he feels about the club and McIntyre and boys that will be here next season.
  9. Bird is only 22 and stays up here with Norey. Pretty sure he’s not got any family up here. Also we should make Scott Stewart a great offer he’s exactly the kind of guy we need. He will be close with the assistant manager Jimmy Boyle too I’m sure, him and his dad Sandy are close. Fancy McKenna to stay another year here he loves it and so does his family, he’s a big fans favourite and will probably be pissed off at missing so much time this year. Again I’d offer a great 2 year deal to him. Gold will stay he’s due his testimonial. Not sure why Lyon would be likely to be released the man has been solid and shown his value playing all over the park. Sure we’d be very interested in keeping him about. Likes of Delaney will be looking for a full time move. He’s an Irish lad and can’t see him having a proper job away from football. Pretty sure Slater will have signed more than a one year deal in the summer.
  10. Hammy a stick on to EF for me. It would suit him down to the ground seeing his career out there. Whatever happens we are going to have to build a new core of players, we are going to be in a completely different place next season. Signings we make in the summer will be massive. Have to get a lot of them right. If we go down I don’t see a big bounce back I think we will have to take a season to find our feet, hopefully sign the right guys, build a bit of an identity with them and then hopefully season after we can be in and around the play offs. Pretty hopeful of keeping Stewart, McKenna and Gold to be honest. Steele, Slater, McIntosh, Stowe, Murray on top of that is a good start, ToB too if he stays. Would love to get Lyon signed up a couple of years. Next season is going to be a big season and a tough job for the manager, it’ll be a fresh start. Dropping down a division should provide a bit of relief however and we should still be absolutely fine. I don’t quite understand. What does that look like? I think he looks like he cares?
  11. Don’t think it would come across too well if he was like that in an interview on the clubs YouTube. They things tend to go viral, I can think of several occasions like that most noticeably Billy Brown at EF and John Hughes at well a few places. Stewart, McKenna, Gold and Lyon have to be an absolute priority right now in terms of getting them signed up for a length of time. Steele, Stowe, Slater, Murray and McIntosh are already on deals. That would be a good core to build from, next targets have got to be established PT players who can build up the squad. Don’t have to be guys who are too flashy or stand out on paper either. But this rebuild has got to be done correctly. I’d like ToB, Hamilton Gaston to stay but not sure what they’ll be looking for.
  12. Only side we see to McIntyre is the ‘professional’ stuff too. Me and a couple of my mates bumped into him in a pub in Glasgow after we got beat 2 zip from Partick Thistle this time last year and he was absolutely brand new and was happy to talk and have a laugh and tell us some stories for 10-15 minutes. I mean I get it that’s how football is now and everyone wants change and success so fair enough but just don’t see how it’s a fair shot at the job if we were to get rid in the summer personally
  13. Bird and Norey are definitely one and done they’d have to permanently move into the town or up to Scotland and find work if they wanted to stay at Arbroath. In regards to McIntyre, no manager anywhere can be a success if they’ve not been given a chance to build up their own team. He inherited an absolute shit show and the shit show become even worse with the crazy injury situation he’s had to contend with and trying to sign players in January is extremely tough. The squads been bigger on numbers in recent weeks but it’s still players back then out again and it’s all a bit of a mess still there is no chance of any consistency. We have just got a whole new staff in I do not see what the point would be in getting rid and starting all that again. McIntyre is the manager but there are a whole load of people involved with the players behind the scenes he’s not got to be some charismatic patter merchant he’s just got to make signing’s and pick the team and how it sets up. Would surely need to give him a chance to do that otherwise we’re back to square one
  14. Tam definitely really started to struggle a bit more this and last year with form and injuries, seems permanently peppered with niggling injuries. Not as much as Hammy though who looks to have lost a fair bit of pace when he wasn’t very quick in the first instance. Which is understandable as they’ve gotten older and Hammy has had a serious injury to deal with. Would never ever ever question the commitment of either of them though I think they’ve just got to the stage in their careers where they are passed their peak, this happens to every player. Look at Jason Thomson last year, exactly the same thing. I think Hammy will definitely move on to L2 with EF next season and I have a feeling ToB might end up there too. They’ve been absolutely brilliant players here and will both go down as club legends but we are definitely starting to see and in a way have been in the process of the beginning of the end for a lot of the old core and the time is coming for attempting to build a new core of guys. Which will be a really hard job.
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