SimonLichtie

Lots of stuff being said in the last day or two that I'll be keeping my opinion to myself on, but happy to jump right in with these two and say they're really shitty comments about someone who has given tens of thousands of hours of service to the club for absolutely no financial gain over the past two decades. There's been a lot of people giving their opinion/ venting their feelings on a variety of things recently, but this really is a case of taking some low blows at someone for no other reason than cheap amusement/ laughs or whatever. It seems to me that this and the 'Booth flat renting empire' stuff is just people trying to jump on the bandwagon with their personal grievances while others have brought up what they believe to be legitimate concerns.

Much appreciated - I am, always have been, and always will be happy to help the club in any way I possibly can... However it is probably worth noting my 'skillset' is rather limited From an archive point of view - I have plans to do a whole variety of things in the years to come. Since releasing the archive, I've got very bogged down in the 'minor details' which take much more time to research.... lots of improvements on friendlies, opposition player names, referee names, programmes, player pictures for our more obscure players and other bits and pieces have been added but I'm very aware that very few people see these things/ particuarly care Once I've finished pissing about with the above/ as the year progresses I'll hopefully start to produce some more stuff that is more 'seen'/ of interest to more people..... I don't want to say I'll do X/ Y and Z and then it doesn't happen, but I've plenty of ideas with various things happening in the background.... Suggestions for things are very welcome!

Match fitness is not equal to fitness. Two entirely seperate things - every game we've played for the past 3 months we've had 3/4/5+ guys on the park who are not fully match fit. We are, at absolute best, when everyone is fully fit and on their game, a low end mid table team in this division. Having half a team who aren't lacking match fitness in every game takes that to a bottom end team who, as we've seen, will struggle to put together a 90 minute performance.

I thought we matched Thistle in the first 45 and had several really good chances to score - really frustrating that neither of the balls across the six yard box from Innes Murray were put away, especially the one Dow missed entirely. In the second 45 we tired and struggled as the game went on and ultimately it petered out...... absolutely summarised by Stowe's dreadful free kick right on full time. We are absolutely gone confidence wise, and we are absolutely done fitness wise. We haven't been able to put a fully fit team on the park for six months, and that won't change between now and the end of the season. Lets be honest, we knew two months ago we were pretty much done due to this. It is absolutely nobodys fault and no-one is to blame for the situation. These two aspects have done our season - we've seen it almost every game in the past 3 months. We can play well in spells, we can start the game well but when we tire due to the reasons outwith our control we end up being rolled over. A wee look at the team today... Gats - not fully fit Scott Stewart - match fit/ no injuries in recent months as far as I know Teale - not match fit, recently been injured Ricky - not match fit, recently been injured long term Delaney - not match fit, recently been injured long term Dow - probably close to match fit now, but has been injured long term Gold - has played most weeks but spent two months carrying an injury throughout that period MacKinnon -match fit for the past 3/4 weeks, not match fit prior to that Murray - not match fit, recently been injured McKenna - not match fit, recently been injured long term Bird - match fit In terms of us 'having players back' etc. that is obviously the case, but they're all a yard off the pace through no fault of their own. Normally players come back into a team and can play their way back in if the team is settled - we've got a team on the park where the vast majority of them are lacking in match sharpness. Look at Mikey today for exaaht have the fitness to play his usual 100 mile an hour game. It's not his fault, it's not the managers fault, but you can be damn sure it affects us on the park. That's just one example.... Do we have players who are out of their depth? Yes. Do we have players who have underperformed this season? Yes. However the injuries/ fitness situation just means I don't think we can properly judge so much.

I could write an essay on this Innes Murray has proven himself as a good quality L1 player, and has had a really good football upbringing that clearly shows. A good example IMO is the first 45 down at Ayr when he was playing on the right hand side while carrying an injury. Despite being not match fit, and not really fit at all to be playing, he was absolutely spot on positionally and on and off the ball read the game really well despite being 2 yards off the pace. He's played 7 games for us, and in all of them been in a bit part team with players he barely knows while carrying an injury at worst or 'just' not being match fit at best. Mark Stowe has proved himself at East of Scotland level, and in my opinion really struggles on and off the ball (but has shown improvement gradually as the season has progressed). He has been match fit and injury free all season, one of our only players to be in this position, yet ultimately hasn't really contributed anything bar the Raith Rovers again. We haven't seen Innes Murray play a single minute for us this season while fully fit so it's impossible to really judge anything from him. So looking outside of his time at the club - he's proven himself a good quality L1 player. Above that level we don't know. We've seen a lot of Mark Stowe this season, and sadly he's proved he's not a Championship quality player, we know he's quality at East of Scotland level but in between the two levels we've really no idea. In terms of improvement - I don't know why Mark Stowe's more likely to improve with experience than Innes Murray? They're both in their mid 20s, a years difference between them. All is, of course, just my opinion. I'd love Stowe to prove me wrong - and of course if we drop down a level he may be a bit more up to it. However Murray is the proven L1 quality player, so if it was a binary choice there would only be one winner every time...... we can of course keep them both

Match fitness and not being injured are simply two massively different things, and I think a lot of us are really underestimating that. Usually when a player's been out injured they need 3/4 games to get back up to speed, and we're also doubling that up with trying to get the players working together and forming partnerships. It's basically impossible - so many of our squad are struggling for various reasons. It's the absolute opposite situation to the recent past of having 3/4 seasons with a very regular starting 11 and anyone coming in / out through a rare injury or a signing would have a much easier time of it getting up to speed/ building up understanding with 10 others players who already have that. I think the above really is the biggest factor in the last four months of the season, but of course there's a multitude of different things that have also played a large part. If we had the luck with injuries and other things that we had 3/4 years ago, despite how poor we've been over the season I think we'd be well within the pack of 4/5 others above us. Regardless, it wouldn't change the fact that we're missing key players in key positions, that our old guard are really creaking at points and that we've been competing above our station for the vast majority of the last 5/6 years. We were never going to consistently compete in this division without this happening sooner or later due to the nature of it. Regardless of if we go down or not, we have to be keeping 10 and signing 10 type thing. It's important we don't lose all continuity and the basis of what we have as it takes years to form anything from scratch, but we certainly need to be adding as much as we keep. We're also going to definitely lose players we'd want to stay. Realistically, a mixture of what I want to see and what is realistic I think would look roughly as follows: Darren Lyon Aaron Steele Colin Hamilton Scott Stewart Tam O'Brien David Gold Mikey McKenna Innes Murray Craig Slater Leighton McIntosh I think we can/ should keep the above 10, with others moving on who we might like to keep for various reasons, and maybe another 1/2 staying who aren't listed.

I can't believe people are calling a team with an average of 2 points a game in this division shite My defence of losing to Dundee Utd is that they are a full time team with a budget literally 10+ times the size of ours. We're reacting like we've been battered 4 times this season by Alloa or Kelty Hearts (clubs with lesser budgets to ourselves) Of all the things that've gone wrong this season/ all the issues we've had, losing games to Dundee Utd doesn't even appear on the list for me. I have a far greater issue with the setup and the way we went about the 6-0 game against Queen's Park than any of the Utd games - a team relatively near us in the table that we got a pasting from because we were so off it tactically. I really hope today we start with the same shape and close to the same starting 11 as last week. Bird up top, Leighton and Charlie Reilly wide and supporting with a midfield 3 is clearly our best setup for me.

I suspect I'm in the minority, but I'm fairly happy with that overall We were never getting a result today, none of us thought we would, and to me it was far more important how we lined up and what shape we went with. I thought McIntyre got the shape and the starting 11 close to spot on - the only difference I would've gone with would be Gold for MacKinnon, with Gold being better off the ball and much more experienced in a game we were obviously going to be on the defensively for. If we keep that shape and the majority of that team starting every week we give ourselves the best chance we can. Dundee Utd are two levels above us, they're far better individually, much fitter, stronger and their shape both on and off the ball is superb, constantly making the opposition work and keep switched on. I'm not going to have a go at individual players in that situation - it's not their fault they're playing against Premiership players on several thousand a week. Very thankful we don't have to play them again this season at least - easily the best team I've seen at Championship level in our time here. The only player I would pick fault with today would be Kyle Robinson. Two absolutely needless bookings to pick up. The first one, there's absolutely no need for him to be getting involved with the game over, and then to be on a yellow card, 4-0 down and well into the second half and decide to chuck an elbow at the defender you've just been booked for arguing with two minutes previous is utter, utter stupidity. He's been poor since arriving in January, and to then behave like that when given 25 minutes to show what you can do after losing your place in the team is unbelievable. The positive is that surely Jay Bird will start next week with Robinson suspended......

If we're not strong enough to keep Utd out while sitting in and making them break us down (something we've not done properly in any of our games v Utd so far) then how are we going to keep them out without offering protection to the full backs and sitting deep!? If McIntyre were to make the same mistakes as against Queen's Park I'd be absolutely horrified to be honest. He has to have learnt from that.... Today worries me for a variety of reasons - I've no worries about the game, an absolute free hit with defeat expected, but I'm worried about the choices off the back of it. If we have learnt from the past few weeks, then clearly Bird starts up top today and we play relatively deep instead of the comical high line we previously tried. Being against Utd, assuming we lose, my worry is we then chop and change the shape/ starting 11 based on today and against Airdrie we're lining up with a weaker starting 11 than we should be putting on the park. Hopefully unfounded worries from myself, and hopefully we play our strongest team today, next week and for the rest of the campaign

Absolutely glorious stuff - we were dead and buried but somehow became a different team after Bird's excellent first goal. We've got 10 games to go and if the manager puts our best 11 on the park in those games I think we can make a real go of staying in this division - hopefully he's learnt a lot tonight and Tuesday and we see the fruits of that in the weeks to come

My reaction at 19:47 to realising we were somehow playing a narrow 4-4-2/ 4-5-1/ 4-6-0 with no striker while also leaving huge gaps defensively: I'm absolutely no-where close to questioning McIntyre being in charge - for me he is our manager for the rest of the season and at that point it can be evaluated - and I've liked a lot of the things he's done/ changes he's made over the past few months tactically but tonight was one of the worst tactical/ personnel match ups against an opponent I've ever seen from an Arbroath manager. Playing away from home against Queen's Park, the way we set up was madness. We've all seen QP play this season, they like to move the ball quickly, they like to use the wide areas/ quick switches of play and they love getting in behind the defensive line. We lined up with no out ball/ player looking to hold the ball and bring others into play, an obscenely high line and somehow gave absolutely no cover to the full backs who were massively exposed for long periods of the game. We lost 6-0, so quite clearly we were poor individually and as a team, but that setup against that team gave us absolutely no chance from the first whistle IMO. Queen's were excellent and are clearly a level above us individually, but we've won plenty of games against teams better than us individually over the last few years by playing to our strengths, not into the oppositions, and by being a strong team to pick off. Tonight we were the absolute opposite of that and didn't give ourselves a chance. We seemed to start in a kind of 4-4-2 situation with Dow dropping into the centre of the park, but then at times Mikey would also drop and often we found ourselves hemmed into 30 yards of the park with a high back line and very deep front line. With no-one up top to take the ball in and hold it, and no-one to play a creative ball out of the centre of the park we just couldn't get any sort of a hold of the game. At the same time, we're so narrow were allowing Queen's to ping the ball out left and right and give wingers at worst a 1 on 1 v the full backs, and more often than not just free range to walk into the box or play the ball across it. Things were clearly not right after 5 minutes, and we just kept plugging away doing more of the same. There was a period of 10 minutes or so where all Queen's had to do was let one of the centre backs hold the ball, we would do a half arsed press with 3 players, Murray and Reilly would push inside and 2 passes later they've taken out midfield/ front line out the game due to our own naivity. For me we should've been going into the game looking at the absolute opposite of what we did - sit deep, make them break us down and double up out wide whenever out of possession. Going forward, have a target looking to bring the ball in while also playing on the counter with Reilly.

No. You're seeing my - somewhat ill judged - opinion on a social media post by the club. I think if I said I made 'basic mistakes from time to time' in my job I'd be massively downplaying it to be honest. The main reason I've quoted yourself and not the other posts is that 'paid media team' is obviously not the same as what you've said. I've no reason to doubt what you say about peoples roles/ responsibilities and that being the case me saying 'paid media team' isn't really fair at all, so happy to take that back and apologise If the club were paying a person/ persons whose full time job was the media side of things, I'd totally stand by my comments, but that not being the case I'm wrong on that front. To be honest what I should've really said was along the lines of 'It'd be a good idea for our social media team to have things proof read/ double checked where possible' in order to catch these things. More of a 'this would improve things going forward' than a negative outlook. I guess that's me fucked my chances of getting a birthday shoutout this year from our socials.......!

It was also the case for ourselves when we sold joao balde to East Kilbride, which saw us announce it before the agreed time and quickly have to delete the post. . It blows my mind that a paid employee in charge of social media is unable to schedule a post properly. Frustrating...

Signing announcement absolutely littered with basic errors. Really basic stuff that we wouldn't have happened last season..... Personally I find it frustrating we've replaced a volunteer with a paid media team who are quite clearly lacking the basics in several areas.... I'll always stand up for volunteers making mistakes, but paying people to f**k up the absolute basics doesn't sit well with me....

I spoke to both Scott's relatively recently about this! We've also had Stewart Forsyth and his son Craig Forsyth (both played for Dundee also) and I'm 99% sure we've had three generations of Stirling's play for the club between the 1880s and 1940s....

No sarcasm at all - simply pointing out that, in my opinion, a parent club loaning out a player cant force them to play. I simply can't think of a way they could do so?

How did they force them though? It cant be implemented in the contract, so surely it'd come down to 'if you don't play him, we won't loan you other players/ will recall him in the window' type thing?

A fairly primary school playground response to this, but what are they gonna do if we don't play him?! Make us?! I expect the most likely situation is there are two wage percentages in his loan agreement. One that we pay if he plays for us, and one that we pay if he doesn't. Essentially the 'punishment' for not playing Boruc would be that we have to pay a higher percentage of his wage in the weeks we play games and he doesn't. Quite simply they cant make us play him, and if the manager thinks we have a better option in goal then he can, should and I expect will go with it. There is of course also the bigger picture - if we take a player on loan, tell his parent club he's almost definitely gonna play, and then bench him quickly after his signing for no real reason, don't expect that club or manager to be loaning you players for a few years afterwards.... I'm happy enough with Boruc and have no issues with his performances so far. I don't think his kicking has particuarly cost us/ hampered us in any games despite it being an obvious weak spot for him and I think the other parts of his game seem to be at the required level.

How dare you question me! Do you know who I am!?!?!? .............You are of course correct! We equalled the dreaded Todd run from 2016 of 5 games without scoring, but didn't better it Good to see someone is paying attention and keeping me in check

The brief summary of today would be for the first 45 we were extremely poor for a variety of reasons, while the second 45 we were significently improved before holding on during the final 10 (what the f**k, Napier?! ). A draw probably a fair result over the 90 minutes with both teams struggling for large parts of the game. Personally I'm really happy with the second 45 and really happy with have something to build on. I thought our chances of winning today were extremely slim realistically. Four of our starting 11 were coming back into the starting 11 after being out injured and they're clearly going to be lacking match fitness. In the first 45 you could see all 4 of the guys who were coming back in post injury really struggling to get to grips with the pace of the game, understandably. I give players coming back from injury a fairly free pass for 2/3 weeks to get back up to full speed and I think Slater and ToB seemed to be back into the pace of things in the second half after both being a yard off it in the first half. The subs made a massive difference, with McIntosh really struggling first half, Norey struggling with the pace of the game throughout and Stowe just being completely ineffective. Second half after the subs we became to come into the game a lot more and even created 3/4 relatively good chances as well as scoring from a corner after some of the worst set piece defensive positioning I've ever seen. Due to how heavy the pitch was and our lack of match fitness/ fitness in general we fell out the game towards the end but managed to see it out despite Craig Napier playing an amount of injury time that nearly saw me leaving East End Park in an ambulance. All things considered, I'm also delighted we actually scored a goal and haven't just beaten our 2016 Todd Lumsden record of failing to score in 4 games in a row...

It is definitely worth people bearing in mind that all of the 'must win' games last season were called wrongly by those who said they were. None of them were must win games, as proved by the fact we stayed up. I think it unlikely, but there's still a chance people could again be proved wrong this season

I would say that one other person definitely did see it - and that's Colin Hamilton. I didn't see anything myself, but Hammy clearly did and was immediately over having a go at someone opposite me. I've no idea if it did or did not happen, but it's worth keeping in mind Dick isn't the only one who thinks it did. I actually take much more issue with the second part of what he says in terms of us basically not begging him to stay on as our manager. That's really quite a wild take and only appeals to those outside of the Arbroath bubble in Scottish football. To say he wanted the chairman to come out publically and basically give him free reign regardless of how the rest of the campaign panned out is absurd. We weren't even halfway through the season! A year prior to his departure when we were initially struggling after our miracle season that would've been much more understandable and he had more than enough credit in the bank at that point. At the stage he resigned he was running on empty, incredible he'd want the chairman to come out and publically back him to continue for at least another year or whatever at that point! I think Dick deserves a lot more respect than he gets from a lot of our fans for all that he achieved at the club, however he's never been a person I've warmed too. He's always embellished and exaggerated things whenever possible in his usual cheeky chappy way, and it's pissed me off since the mid 00s while he's managed both for and against us. This won't be the last time Dick references being hard done by or similar comments when it comes to ourselves, and it shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone to hear him say as much.

Social media..... My personal opinion is that our social media output could be massively improved through having a basic hierarchical structure in place that would benefit everyone, allow the club to actually post more content than ever and allow the fans/ community to be much more streamlined in seeing the content they're interested in. Taking Facebook as an example..... You have Arbroath FC - our official and number 1 page Structurally, you then have other pages for things like Arbroath Archive, Arbroath FC Woman, Arbroath FC Shop, Arbroath FC Community Trust and any other offshoots you want to have/ that are put in place in the future. The archive/ woman's page, club shop, community trust pages post all their own content, and obviously anyone can like and follow these pages if they wish to do so. This allows these offshoots to post as much content as they wish, without the main Arbroath FC Facebook having posts being made every hour or two. The Arbroath FC Facebook then reposts/ shares some of these. I.e - the womans team can do live updates for their games on their page, and anyone interest will follow the page, and see all of these on their feed. The Arbroath FC Facebook page shares a post the day before the game about where/ when it will take place, and on the day the page then again shares the full time result/ comments. These two posts keep people informed without overloading them with it, and if they want further updates they can follow the Woman's page. The same goes for the club shop - there can be daily posts on their page, even becoming more personalised with more photos of happy customers etc. while the official page focus on just sharing some of the posts relating to new merchandise/ stock currently on sale. This would enable the official Facebook page to continue to post a variety of things relating to the mens team, womans team, merchandise, our history, the community trust etc. without overloading things, and for people who wishes to have multiple posts everyday specifically about merch or whatever can follow that page. Overall we would have more content than ever going onto social media, but with it being seen by those who wish to see it, and not seen by those who don't wish too. The official page would still keep everyone updated with the bigger things happening in each of these areas without overkill and while in the shorter term it would take some work to get people liking/ seeing what they wanted too, in the medium/ longer term we would end up seeing our social media output grow both in terms of output and in terms of interaction in my opinion. If we want to really build up certain areas of the club we have to keep pushing content to those who want it, but we need to make sure we're pushing the right content to the right people. If 500 people see a post about something, and 100 are interested/ find it useful but 400 don't, there's a problem there. If you can post the same post on an offshoot page, still have it seen by those 100 who are interested but not on the feed of the 400 who aren't, then the problem is solved.

Couple of off field things which are obviously sitting poorly with some fans - firstly, Always Arbroath... I understand initial worries from people, but it only takes a minute to look at our publically available accounts to see that the vast majority of worries are completely unfounded. I've no idea why anyone is talking about money troubles etc. for the club..... For the club to be in any sort of difficulty, we'd need to have basically tripled our wage to turnover ratio Our income over the 20 odd months or so hasn't significently dropped, and we've not suddenly added 10k a week to the wage bill over this period. At least one of these scenarios would have to be true to get near any sort of 'financial difficulties' and to have gone from a cash balance of over 1 million at May 2022 to struggling now. Surely the far more logical, sensible reaction is 'oh, the corporate director we have at the club is doing his job'? I'd be far more concerned if one of the presumably higher earning staff members at the club was sitting about doing f**k all thinking 'ach, I've done enough this year financially for the club' I'd be far more concerned! Instead we're still trying to innovate and bring in finances with a scheme that is doing by many other clubs in the country and is nothing new. Having issues with the scheme itself - understandable and totally fine - adding 2+2 together and getting 100 regarding our finances seems to be happening a lot here though.... Personally it's not something I'll be getting involved in, like buying merchandise or a brick in the wall etc - they're not things that interest me personally. I prefer to show my support in person at games and through putting time into things like the archive.... both of them take a significent amount of time and money every year themselves However, everyone is different and some people for a variety of reasons are unable to attend games/ have the time I do and therefore they contribute financially to things like Always Arbroath to do their bit.

The Evening Tele did a some excellent player profiles of our main players during the 1897-98 season, see below: