diamond_for_life

In reply to the post from D total I can always give my reasoning for my bets and although not in the know my research on racing is always extensive. For instance my early thoughts on the supreme. The main British focus is on Jeriko Du Reponet and Willmount. JDR impressed on debut but it’s a race and performance that could mean something or nothing. I’m happy to take it on at this stage. Willmount Looked very impressive indeed but I don’t fancy the British raiders to topple the Irish who already look team handed. A dream to share looked fantastic last season but I have a sneaky suspicion we might see it in the Ballymore as we might with JDR too. Mirazur West is a horse I’ve yet to see but is short in the betting. I was never into the hype surrounding Ballyburn and it was well beaten by Firefox who is impressing for Gordon Elliot who’s is flying at the moment. Down Memory Lane I like but not as much as Daddy Long Legs who cantered its debut. Most of the Irish hopes will meet at Christmas time and as I previously stated the winner is going to shorten massively and potentially for favourite. I’m praying that is daddy long legs. we shall see though. It’s exciting to me regardless. My next bet will be tomorrow after Constitution Hill is scratched. I’m hoping this interrupted campaign proves costly come champion hurdle time. It’s just whether I want state man or Impaire Et passe. My loyalty likely to favour the later.

Nice one mate I think Willmount is my pick in terms of the best of the British hopefuls for the Supreme so fingers crossed your rite and I breath a bit easier come Cheltenham. I took Love Envoi antepost as there seemed no way Henderson was running his star on heavy before the Christmas hurdle. You wear it well is very impressive too and hopefully one of us is celebrating after the race. Few horses at Navan I will keep an eye on other than that not much for me is worth a bet tomorrow but I will get a look at the offer races

We have stepped up a division and are looking better defensively than we did last season. Im not the best at researching statistics but by the looks of things we had conceded 23 goals after 14 league games last year. Last season we shipped about 3 a game on average to Edinburgh, conceded 10 in our games against Queen of the South, lost a 3-0 lead to Dunfermline, I could go on and on about us defensively last year. This season it’s 10 less conceded after 14 games. and other than Arbroath we haven’t had another doing. I admitted my naivety on thinking going forward we would damage teams in this league but we need to play with what we have. We are not individually strong enough to hurt teams and the way we play is to have high possession and minimise opponents chances. The slow build up play at times is no accident. Absolutely concede it can be frustrating as f**k to watch but it’s how we are going to play this season and I’m happy with that. I also get there’s an arguement to playing more attacking and we could get a few more goals but we also get get carved up by better teams than the ones who carved us up on occasion last season with pretty much the same back line we had then too. The defence deserves so much credit for how they have started this season. I always say I would never single players out but yet again I feel players are being unfairly targeted/treated and we still have fans with hugely unrealistic expectations of where we are as a club. People are quick to praise McStravick and rightly so but they then scapegoat McGregor every week without fail. Let’s be clear here though McStravick is another young lad still learning and will make plenty mistakes too. As I say hate doing this but he gives the ball away plenty (costly against Dundee Utd), he lasted what 10 mins on the park against Arbroath too. I’m not criticising the lad in any way, I want him to keep doing what he does and I love the excitement he brings he is potentially my most exiting player since I first clapped eyes on prime Willie McLaren. What I’m saying is can we take off the tinted glasses we have for some players and realise all players will make mistakes, make poor decisions and have bad games. It happens. Especially at this level. Lewis McGregor is a young lad who has had a torrid time at Morton. His confidence must have been in the gutter and he is trying to build himself back up. I get frustrated with him and I have moaned about his final ball or missing a chance but he is the most dangerous winger we have at the club. There is absolute no denying his work rate and he never stops trying. He misses a chance he goes again he doesn’t go hiding. That’s more than some I’ve saw over the years at Airdrie. He is what 19. Top class wingers are inconsistent and we expect what from him exactly perfection?? Gallagher was league 1 player of the year last year and folk still said he wasn’t good enough so I’m not shocked it came around again this year. People saying his lack of goals this year make him ineffective tell you what next time he plays watch how he moves round the park, comes deep, drags players about and creates space for others. Again I’m no Pep or Jose but the work that boy does that goes unnoticed is astonishing to me. We have some players in that squad struggling and we have some who are sadly not good enough for this level. The above mentioned are no where near the bottom of the list of things we need to worry about though. We are relegation favourites this year and on paper we probably have the smallest/least experienced team for this division. Again not saying happy clap nor am I saying accept sub bar garbage. Get a sense of realism though. We are not late 80s early 90s Airdrieonians. We are small fish in a big pond in the championship never mind going beyond that. Still seems to me people see us a far bigger club than where we currently are.

Hey mate first serious bet this week is on Daddy Long Legs for the supreme at 18/1. Absolute shot in the dark but couldn’t help but be impressed and it’s the best 2 year old (I think) I’ve seen this season especially with Mullins being very quiet. will find out more if the clash with Down Memory Lane happens this month at Leopardstown. Watch this race closely on the 27th. You’ll likely find a good few Cheltenham candidates in this and the winner should go near favourite for the Supreme after it.

Haha happy to send some over in the coming weeks mate from now till end of January I will be all over it

My jumps season is still motoring along nicely with 2 winners from 2 singles yesterday and a return from Shiskin in a double who was luckily declared a non runner. I was that confident I put the offer race on the night before and it ended up halved in price before the off. With the drive to Stranraer and back taking up most of yesterday I will catch up on results today and get a look over at Punchestown. Over the next week or so is when my antepost Cheltenham bets start to roll in and will make a conscious effort to post more over the coming weeks and months. I don’t expect to emulate what I did last year but as I state often I’m all about jumps racing and it’s my passion and hobby. The flat I am absolutely shit at and that hasn’t changed since in about 15 years.

There’s no excusing last nights performance against your rivals that was simply pish and questions do rightfully need asked. Having watched yous dominate last season and looking at the start of this season whilst performances might not but where they should be (I don’t know looking in from the outside) don’t you think you are were you probably should be in terms of league position? Win your game in hand and you go to 4th behind the likely top 3 before a ball was kicked. Dundee Utd winners, Raith 2nd and Partick 3rd was always the likely scenario. Again not trying to bash a club your size but what else realistically was going to happen? If you guys finish this season 4th then it’s job done for your first year back no?

Season 3 is doing my tits in so far. Get promoted and buy one player (despite how much he is probably costing it’s 1 player ffs). Go from 2nd in the league to 7th on a bad run granted and they are talking about sacking the manager. Even Rebecca and Leslie are considering it. Get yourselves to f**k. That is a cracking season so far for a team like Richmond. I had to get that off my chest

Bit of a ramble here but with County having their new manager lined up we can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s the first time I can remember I feel the dread every time a top flight manager gets sacked. Makes me realise how much I have loved the last 18ish months. Even Murray I wasn’t overly fussed with losing although at the time I wanted him to stay. Been reading loads of different threads about loads of clubs recently (too much time on my hands perhaps). This is really not meant to be a happy clapping post at all (as I usually state I’m pessimistic as f**k) but I genuinely believe we need to really appreciate the position we are in since Airdrieonians/Airdrie Utd returned. You just need to read some threads to see the shit state clubs can find themselves in Clydebank, Clyde, QoS, Dumbarton (all clubs we played regularly when I was younger) to name a few would give their right arm to be where we are. I’ve been reading some lower league threads too (Darvel, Johnstone Borough, EK, Tranent) again just to name a few are or have been throwing ridiculous sums of money about to get up the pyramid. Edinburgh, Kelty, Cove have done it and now find themselves in danger of of heading the other way again (Cove less dramatically than the other 2 mentioned). Berwick spent money to try get back out the lower league but got blew away with budgets from the likes of Spartans and EK and are now struggling. Cowdenbeath, East Stirling, Albion Rovers all long-standing clubs with little chance of ever getting back as long as money men keep pumping money into the Lowland league and below. These teams just can’t compete. I would never tell anyone to settle and we must strive to improve and do better. I would also never dream of telling anyone how to support our club. This club has not felt this good for a long long time though. Dare I say bar our league winning season as Airdrie Utd we haven’t had a feeling close to where we are rite now in decades. It’s a moment of realisation for me more than anything but I just urge people to savour this, enjoy it and back these guys even if things turn over the next few months.

Those first three words are the best thing I’ve read on this thread all night.

Happy for people to disagree but I thought Morton should have won that in the second half. Few long range efforts and a good chance last few minutes was not a patch on the chances they missed.

I don’t know much about the Welsh league but TNS being 1/3 to beat Arbroath tomorrow am I missing something? Seems for our game it could be a struggle for either side to get a strong team on the park due to injuries, cup tied players and I’m assuming 1 or 2 on internationals (ATS).

He needs time to develop. Come back in about 8 years thanks.

The first game was a strange one as despite getting absolute pumped 4-0 I still feel Arbroath will play better football this season and lose. They dominated but they didn’t need to get out of 3rd gear to do so. We were absolute shocking and although the ref didn’t help either side really it was probably the most clueless I have seen us this season. Most games so far whether we win, lose or draw I can at least recognise patterns and a bit of a game plan. This day I saw a team all over the place and absolutely put to the sword. Should we play like we did against Raith we should cause problems against a currently fragile defence and I’m hoping we can score more than 1 as our goals scored so far is not enough to keep us up currently (IMO). My biggest worry is Arbroath are very direct (I don’t mean long ball merchants) but they don’t f**k about and I feel they will again cause our defence major issues. From what I remember they exploited us down the left with balls into the box getting the opening goal (Hylton has probably impressed me most this season) then scored again from the left for the second. More worryingly was them having both Bird and Mcintosh on the bench at this point who caused a whole different set of problems second half. Im hoping on the artificial surface they are not as effective and we can get our passing game quick and direct like we did last Saturday. 3-2 Airdrie is my feeling but genuinely wouldn’t be shocked to see a pumping for either side either.

Raith or Hamilton await the winners of our tie with Morton I am sure. Also away from home

Certainly the first time I will have been in that part of the ground. I thought we would all have been housed in the main stand cant see this game having much of an attendance

The draw has been pish for the challenge cup with a trip to Morton again facing the winners. I completely get the hatred of the b teams I don’t like their involvement either but I will be going tonight and it’s still a cup I very much want us to progress in despite it not being a priority for many. Sadly for Airdrie cup competitions and finals will not be a familiar experience for many and I will always advocate trying to win any “competitive” competition we are in. Having been born in the late 80s I was too young to appreciate the Scottish Cup runs and our brief spell in Europe so since then I’ve had to make do with this cup and 1 league win. I get making changes and it’s been a rough few games but I want to see us competitive tonight.

A few times this season we rode our luck and got 3 points. Today could be a reversal of that as I feel it’s the best we have played and should have scored 1 or 2. hopefully we do the same second half though in terms of our attacking play.

This isn’t meant to be a criticism of the players but we are not good enough to compete with Dundee Utd. Not a few teams in this league. Absolutely we gifted them goals but they had another few gears in them if needed no doubts. Even the money Raith spent should see them clear in second. The recruitment from Partick looked decent at the start of the season and that’s another budget we can’t compete with. I’m not advocating happy clapping or just accepting shit performances last night frustrated me but I think the great start to the season is clouding the realisation that we are relegation favourites with a squad from league 1. 3 loan players from hibs (2 signed before promotion). Todorov, Hancock and McStravick the first team signings whilst arguably losing 2 of our best players in Smith and Justin. I have absolutely no doubt McCabe would have wanted more signings and good experiences championship players at that but our squad is going to struggle look at Dunfermline who finished what 22 points in front of us. Hardly setting the division alight. I think we need a plan b too and I agree now teams sit off us our build up play is too slow at times leaving it congested in the middle of the park. I like a few of our midfielders as individual players but again for me as a collective unit we are not able to dominate the middle of the park in any game and we have no where near the creativity or direct threat coming from there like we did last season. I don’t know the solution though without new players neither do most of us.

Feeling pessimistic about this one so will be conservative and say 2-1 Airdrie rather than the pumping I’d expect us to hand out.

Away to Stranraer in November. Only good thing was it wasn’t a team in our league but we never seem to get the good draws in cup competitions

Oh how I’ve missed the jumps

Not been on since Saturday and it’s been a refreshing read with loads of positive and constructive opinions. For me personally I just took it for granted we would still create enough opportunities and score a lot of goals due to how we played and who was on the park. It was the defensive frailties I was worried about (as I think most of us were). I pictured most of our games being high scoring affairs this season. The Hamilton games showed how tough it would be create chances though and I don’t think I gave that enough notice due to the occasion. Even throwing more bodies forward goals will be much harder to come by this season. I could be wrong here but I think McCabe recognises that and this possession football is as much to protect the game from defeat as it is to create chances. Especially with no real additions to the defence other than Hancock. The slow play doesn’t help going forward but it stifles the opposition. Dundee Utd being the perfect example. We never really looked overly threatening but we never looked out of the game either. I think this is how our season will go. We won’t see the naivety that got us some doings last season but we are not going to score the 3+ goals we were accustomed to last year unless we have a clinical day in front of goal. Most games will be decided by the odd goal and that’s not something we are necessarily used to. Again I may be wrong but I think most of us expected to be handed a few doings and also hand out some surprise doings. I don’t think many envisaged a season were most games will be tight and separated by the odd goal. Raith and Morton will consider themselves unlucky and we will consider ourselves unlucky in a lot of games this season. There is a few players I thought would step up a level rather easily who haven’t and there are a few I thought would struggle that have surpassed my expectations. We are a lot more worried about McGill now than last season yet a lot more positive about Telfer than we were last season. Could say the same about a few more.

We have some right delusional fans especially those who post on Twitter. We mostly knew this was going to be tough today and anyone thinking otherwise needs to have a word with themselves. Unfortunately the great start to the season masked that we are running with an almost identical squad to the one that finished third in league 1 last season. One defeat shouldn’t crush our hopes but it certainly shows we need so much more than people will care to realise.

Probably the most obvious yellow of the game (foul by us) goes unpunished.