Diamonds are Forever

Telfer has been an 8/10 every week, which is noticeable to Airdrie fans who see how consistent he is but to opposition players/fans that's probably not the kind of thing that makes you stand out. Frizz has been a 5 or 6 out of 10 in a lot of games this season but has also had a few (mainly since February) where he's been excellent, which is more eye catching. I think that will be shown by Telfer winning our POTY, but Frizz getting in TOTY.

That's true, forgot about that. Explains why we only changed half the team. Plus Gal was going for top goalscorer so started. Safe to assume he'd have rested most of the team otherwise.

Depends what bit you mean. It is undoubtedly true that teams rest players. I remember a while back quite literally playing an Under 19s team against St Johnstone before a play-off and we lost 4-0. But more recently, last year in the last game before the play-offs we rested 5 players, and most of the rest were subbed during the game. We still won, but that was against Edinburgh City who had began their decline and had nothing to play for. The year before in the last game against Peterhead we changed 10 players. We drew 1-1 at home and given the form we had been on (20 game unbeaten run) and how poor Peterhead were we'd have won that game with a full team. Neither game mattered for either team so made no difference in the end, but that's 2 managers, Murray and McCabe, who are probably going to be in these play-offs with a history of making huge changes. If we have play-offs sealed by the last game there's no way we're playing our best 11 for the whole game. The only reason could be that we want to finish 3rd so if that's a possibility then we might, but I still don't think we would. Whether it would actually affect the scoreline is an unknown obviously, but it would make sense that it would given the size of our squad.

A shame to see Gal move on but no doubt it's the best thing for all parties. Arbroath obviously releasing it to appease the fans a bit which is pretty desperate, but in reality I'm not bothered and think it will give fans a chance to show their appreciation and hopefully give him a boost to get another couple of goals before he leaves. Along with Fordyce he's the most important player in the club's recent history. The 2 of them were central to turning the club from a useless League 1 side into a promotion chasing side and now Championship side. His first season with us we finished 3rd in the Covid season only 5 points off the top, then 2nd, 2nd, 3rd and reaching 3 play-off finals and ultimately promotion, and now 4th/5th in Championship. When you look where we were in the years before that it's night and day and he's a big part of that. He deserves huge thanks from Airdrie fans and delighted to see he'll be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Even apart from the money, which as you say could all disappear quite quickly, one thing that finishing 4th and the positive feeling around the club would hopefully mean is that we are a more attractive option for potential signings next season. At the start of the season there's no doubt that of the full-time teams we'd have been last in the pecking order for signings in the Championship. Mainly financially, but also players would have assumed we'd be down the bottom and not fancied it. Next season, even if our budget increases enough to be in the same ballpark as some of the other clubs hopefully the perception of the club is more positive than it was at the start of the season and we'll get good quality players. Particularly if you are a young player and see the opportunities they are getting, how much they are improving and the style of play that will hopefully help them develop.

Not that it's needed but an extra incentive to take points off Dunfermline next week (please!), it will make your last game against us much easier. Looking back to last season we rested half the team in our last league game before the play-offs, so would assume we'd do the same if it came to that.

We were winning against Dunfermline at the time of Frizzell's tackle, even if they'd got a draw out of it we'd have seen it as a decent result. He then was subbed after 70 minutes in our next match (0-0 draw) after playing pretty poorly so there's no evidence him missing that through suspension would have made a material difference. Even more so McMaster, we were losing 2-1 at the time and lost 2-1, it would have had literally no impact on the Ayr game and his suspension would have been for the Arbroath match, which I'm confident enough to say we'd have won regardless, that scoreline hugely flattered them. They should both have been sent-off, but it's a hell of a stretch to claim either made much difference to those games or ones afterwards to the point the 'wheels fell off'. On the flip side I could point out a few decisions in those games that we didn't get like penalties, (non) offside goals and non red cards like Baird last week. As all fans could. If you go through our recent wins you'd be hard pushed to find a team who had any complaints about us winning, and in a few cases the scoreline should have been higher. As you correctly say we've had a few injuries, lost our keeper for the season during this run-in, McStravick also seems to be out for the season after really coming onto a game, and McCabe has missed the last month, while dealing with a busy schedule. Certainly wouldn't say we've been unlucky with injuries compared to other sides (like Dunfermline, Arbroath or Morton early season) but we've not had a clear run either and dealt with it well so far.

And gates from Hearts game which I reckon will be £50k+. And sale of JD to Palace. The squad will obviously have had a pay rise from last year but from the signings you wouldn't imagine our wage bill went up by orders of magnitude, however our turnover clearly has. A huge summer for the club in terms of future planning as we are unlikely to ever have such a big profit from one season again. Do they use it for one big go at promotion on the basis it might be McCabe's last year and there won't be a Dundee Utd type in the league? Or do they 'stick to the plan' and try and build more foundations to become a sustainable Championship side longer term?

By 'noise' you mean someone asking a geniune question out of interest, that you seemed to get quite upset about? In any event, it puts nothing to bed. Queens Park have pretty good fixtures. Both of you have Dunfermline away so that cancels itself out, but QP have Arbroath who are as close to a gimme as you can get just now, and they play us at home in the last game. Unless we lose the next 2 and Dunfermline win the next 2 we'll have a 2nd string side out resting players for the play-offs. That's a likely 6 points. Obviously you have the 2 point cushion plus the GD is like an extra point, but I reckon ICT will need another 2 wins to be safe which will be difficult.

Also stamped on O'Connor's foot/ankle out of sight of the referee, much like tonight. They were all responses to totally innocuous incidents too, it's not like he's raging in response to being hacked down himself. A very strange guy.

Yeah that's the thing, and why the claim that they are treated more harshly by referees is nonsense. It would be quite the bizarre psychological phenomenon that meant referees treated them more harshly with yellow card offences but less harshly with red card offences. For the most part it's calculated - quite a physical style, try and get in front and then break up the game with fouls, a few of which get bookings. Having said that, in last week's game they did seem to lose the plot a bit, Baird in particular. As mentioned by someone, I don't have any issue with it and wouldn't care at all if we were like that. It's been great watching us, for the most part, play quite attractive football the last 2 years. But there's also part of me that cringes a little at the constant chat of 'footballing philosophies' around our style of play. Can only speak for myself but if we'd had the same results in the last 2 years playing the way Morton do it wouldn't have made any difference to my enjoyment.

This season it's a myth, everyone has now played the same number of home and away games and Dundee Utd, Raith, Dunfermline, Queens Park, Ayr and ICT have all picked up more points away than at home. And in total across the whole season more points have been picked up away from home than at home (12 points more). It doesn't seem to be a majorly significant factor either way, but this season it will almost certainly end up that overall teams did better away from home.

That's why a win here would be so great. A draw would still put us in a good position, but a win virtually seals 4th which means we could rotate a bit in the final weeks and lighten the load on the key players. You don't want to lose momentum, but if we were to have any chance of getting through the play-offs we'd need to be pretty fresh going into them.

That's what I think. There's perfectly good reasons to remove VAR, but this isn't really one of them. It's just an example of poor procedure, if VAR technology isn't working then you just use the on field decision like we would if VAR didn't exist anyway, it couldn't be much simpler. The statement from the SFA basically saying 'it was the correct decision so stop panicking' completely and utterly misses the point. No-one, apart from Aberdeen (and even they've been very reasonable in their statement), really care whether it was actually the right decision or not. People care that they've not followed any proper protocol and just overturned an onfield decision by guessing, coming out and saying that their guess was correct isn't really going to do much to reassure those fans.

You didn't really press, but didn't sit off either and hold a shape. For the first goal Matthews is well ahead of the play running in circles in the midfield marking no-one, completely vacating a massive space. And Byrne (I think?) makes a half hearted attempt at pressing Frizzell but ends up just taking himself out the game. At the point where Frizzell skips by him there is a space about 50 yards wide and 30 yards deep in front of the Raith back 4 with not a single Raith player in it, all from 2 straight forward passes from Airdrie. For the 2nd goal those same players are ahead of the ball again and have taken themselves completely out the game. For both those goals if you had a well organised side who held their shape out of possession neither of them happen. Equally so with a well drilled pressing side with a high line and everyone committing to the press. The halfway house that Raith did leaves massive gaps that good players will exploit. You can always isolate individuals to blame but to me there just seemed like an overall lack of idea over what they were meant to be doing, which surely falls on the manager.