Diamonds are Forever
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Posts posted by Diamonds are Forever
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1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:
He could possibly think he could brush the relegation off as inevitable due to the squad/situation he inherited, and it wouldn't be a huge black mark on his CV considering the double is still fresh in people's memories. Get out now and look for a better job rather than try to manage in the 3rd tier and potentially fail, which would be enough to put people off despite the double.
If a relegation threatened Queens Park was the best job he could get on the back of winning the double then it's hard to see how adding a relegation to his CV and then getting out would result in a better job than Queens Park.
If QP go down it would mean probably Hamilton coming up, meaning League 1 should be shooty-in for a side with QP's budget next season and someone like Paton under contract. It would be a really attractive job and I think he'd be daft to walk away at that point.
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4 hours ago, Fuctifano said:
I think the issue with playing teams repetitively is more of an issue outside the top tier. Premiership clubs don't play (their first teams) in the Challenge Cup, and the nature of the playoffs means they can't play another Premiership team in them whereas in the Championship you're guaranteed to do so meaning a minimum of 6 games a season vs the same team before cup draws- and in leagues 1 & 2 you will do so if you finish 2nd or 3rd (or 4th and then beat the team from league above).
I think there's an argument for a bigger second tier -with split if need be- with the current Premiership / Championship play off format, at least if you finish 4th in a league of 14/16 it seems more reasonable to get a shot at promotion rather than 4th in a league of 10.
That's true, I also think the issue is one of stagnation in terms of the same teams being in the league year on year because of less movement up/down. Due to the play-offs there are some years when only the league winner goes up and 10th place goes down, so 80% of the league stays the same. If you had what we used, 2 up 2 down, then 40% of the league changes every year. So even if you stay in the league for a few years by year 2 or 3 the league is significantly different from the first season, so you're not as bored by playing the same team multiple times. Plus in that scenario you'd lose the possibility of the extra 2 games due to no play-offs.
Obviously the Premiership is even more 'stagnant' in that sense, but as you say not having play-offs within the league and having the split means you're only playing teams 3 or 4 times maximum, plus no Challenge Cup. I think the key to all of it is getting 2 teams automatically relegated from each division, that creates a much higher turnover of teams in each league which gives more variety.
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3 hours ago, parsforlife said:
I get really pissed off at the amount of handball penalties given due to the shambolic rulings that refs are being asked to work by, under current circumstances it should be a pen
. If they had sorted the rules out I still think we should probably be punishing young for having his arms so far out. Probably with an indirect free kick tho instead of a pen.
The first being no foul I agree with, contact is minimal and we shouldn’t be rewarding players for throwing themselves down after that.
The third, maybe there’s a angle I haven’t seen but everyone I watched I thought stonewaller
Yeah I'm not having the first one as a foul, he just collapses in a heap, the contact isn't enough to be a foul. Even if someone thinks it is, there's no way it meets the 'clear and obvious' threshold to be overturned so I don't blame the ref or VAR for that one.
Like you I think some of the handballs that are getting given now are absurd, but that today is a penalty. Very similar to the Wan-Bissaka one which was given. That said, there seems to be so much inconsistency regarding what gets given for handball that I'd not be too critical of that if it was in isolation.
But the third is just a horrific decision and one of those ones you genuinely can't find any excuse for. I know VAR is still individuals making decisions and they make errors, but if VAR as a system cannot correct errors like that then there is something majorly wrong with it. There are enough people involved in it to be getting that right.
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2 hours ago, NoAmarteyNoParty said:
Hang on, that last game, where Airdrie may apparently "rest everyone" is away at Queen's Park...
1 hour ago, Ayrmail said:Thistles manager will definitely not rest anyone unless they have an injury that needs it, you could see that last year he was only thinking about winning the next game and you would think that would be the same for Airdrie. It’s difficult to know if Arbroath will have a fight left in them perhaps the pressure off they may find something. Morton are safe but could end up in eighth if they give up. It is in our hands at least.
I'd much rather have Ayr in the league next year than QP, despite our results this year!
I'm just basing this on the evidence of last year. McCabe changed half the team in the last game before the play-offs, and the reason it was only half I think was because we could still have dropped from 3rd to 4th. The regulars who did start were all subbed off in 2nd half too. We then pumped Falkirk 6-2 three days later and obviously got promoted. Maybe we wont but I don't really see what is to be gained by risking players. If anything there would be even more incentive to do it this year as the play-off schedule is even tougher if you get through.
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40 minutes ago, Pie Of The Month said:
Agreed and felt the same even with us finishing in the lower playoff spots the last couple of seasons. Even just 3rd v 2nd would be better with the Championship having 36 games compared to the Premiership's 38 and have those games played at the same time as the last 2 Premiership fixtures.
Finishing 4th in a 10 team league shouldn't be rewarded with anything.
35 minutes ago, Zanetti said:That's difficult to account for in advance though. Last season there was a single point between second and fifth.
I think the playoffs add a lot of excitement and reduce meaningless games over the course of a season, so they're well worth having.
Agree completely that in terms of sporting merit finishing 3rd or 4th in a 10 team league should never get you a promotion. We've been on both sides of it in recent seasons with QP finishing miles behind in 4th and beating us, and us finishing 3rd last season and going up, not to mention 4th this season.
That said, I do think play-offs add a huge amount in terms of excitement and probably finance to the game so I understand why they are there, they are inherently unfair so you'll never please everyone. I have no issue with 3rd and 4th being disadvantaged by having to play 3 ties to get promoted, it should be much harder for those 2 sides to get promoted because they were poorer over 36 games, there should be some reward for finishing higher up, unlike in the lower league play-offs where 2nd and 4th get the same reward at the end. The bit I don't like is the 11th place team getting the advantage of only playing 1 tie, but I'm not sure how you fix that while including 4 teams and not using the lower league format. I'd probably just go 11th versus 2nd and scrap 3rd and 4th.
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1 hour ago, No_Problemo said:
Possibly - but just seems sensible to give your 36 year old striker a bit of a break ten days before playoffs start, particularly as he is their only fit senior striker. I would still expect him to play some part anyway.
I’m obviously being a bit hopeful too.
It would be 17 days without a game though, it's probably right in the middle between being well-rested and being 'undercooked', I'd be surprised if he didn't start. We're in the same boat regarding play-offs and I'd expect we'll go basically full strength next week and then use the last game to rest everyone.
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31 minutes ago, cb_diamond said:
I'm not sure how much of a choice we had to be fair. The availability of keepers was pretty non existent ¾ of the way through the season.
I do absolutely agree though that he's a massive weak link.
I get that he hadn't played much football for a while but he's come in during our hottest run of the season and kept 0 clean sheets in his 7 games and is conceding goals at a rate of almost 2 per game (1.71).
Josh Rae was playing when the teams results were far less positive and he kept a clean sheet in over a third of his games with a goals condeded rate of much closer to 1 per game (1.07).
He can't deal with crosses, he's a poor shot stopper and he's a bomb scare under pressure. Realistically he's lowland league level.
We need to sort the keeper situ next season, with a proper sub keeper that isn't him or Hutts.
Don't really disagree with the general point, particularly the first part which is spot on. However I would say that while his goals against is much higher than Rae's, as a team our goals for has also been much higher when he has played. When Rae was playing we averaged 1.03 goals a game in the league, with Hemfrey playing we average 2.28 goals. Obviously my point isn't that Hemfrey is Kevin de Bruyne setting up goals, but rather our style of play has changed a bit since he has come in which has resulted in more end to end games. Was trying to think why and initially thought it was because we've had to due to losing more goals, but in most games we've still scored first so that doesn't really explain it. I think it's largely because with Rae being decent with his feet we play a much more controlled game when he plays, with Hemfrey it's been more direct which has resulted in us scoring more but also conceding more.
I have no issue with the odd blunder like yesterday, Rae has made numerous ones this season. And the more end to end, direct style has worked for us (until yesterday). But by far the biggest issue is cross balls, he does not command his area enough. I was sympathetic early on when he was new in but he's at the point now where he needs to be more commanding or we are going to keep being vulnerable to crosses and set-pieces into our box.
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Can only repeat the positive spin we're all trying to put on it. A reality check, but also if we'd won or drawn we'd have almost been obliged to go for 3rd, whereas now we can forget it and focus on getting players fit for 3 weeks time. McCabe has shown he can learn from things so hopefully today gives us prior warning of what to expect and prepare for it. If we have Ballantyne, Frizzell and McCabe available and the rest well rested I'm still confident we'll give Partick a really good game.
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15 minutes ago, Mr November said:
Nice for Frizzell to make the PFA team of the year for the third year in a row. Always find these teams quite interesting, I think most fans would say he’s done well but with Telfer having the better season. Surprised Megwa never made it in too but can see why players would vote for McMillan.
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.
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8 minutes ago, Mr November said:
We went into the last day level on points with Alloa last season and could have finished 3rd or 4th but still changed the team a fair bit as you say, so I think McCabe would do the same again.
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.
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35 minutes ago, DiegoDiego said:
Is there any data on this effect, either in Scottish football or in general? I'd be quite interested to see if it's a significant effect or if it's just conventional wisdom like "form goes out the window in a derby" which doesn't really hold much water.
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.
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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.
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4 hours ago, Diamonds Are Red said:
There's no getting away from the fact our turnover has increased dramatically this season as outlined (prize money for cup and league, crowds, hospitality, JD transfer etc...) - without trying to put a dampener on it was there something on here a while back about us having a £200k loss (might have misread it) and you wonder if PH or a.n. Other is due back on loans?
Seems to be running it sensibly, and no sign of concern from Rhys, but you just wonder how much of that increased turnover will be allocated to player budget and what (if any, could be £0 or very little) is set aside to cover previous losses?
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.
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13 minutes ago, Hampden Diehard said:
That's ten times as positive as I could be after the last two games. Hope you're right.
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.
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1 hour ago, 101 said:
Airdrie have done incredibly well to get to this position obviously with some serious rub of the green, they ought to have had Frizzel I think it was sent off against us in early March and then another shocker of a tackle went unpunished against Ayr and I think those two decisions combined with a relentless schedule of games would have seen the wheels fall off.
But their schedule has been hectic and with some key injuries they have kept on motoring up the league so fair play.
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.
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19 minutes ago, cb_diamond said:
Yeah, absolutely, plus hospitality is sold out every week this season, which will be another wee bump.
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?
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13 hours ago, SandyCromarty said:
A good win for us and it puts the noise over Sheridan and Welsh to bed.
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.
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6 minutes ago, Diamond8 said:
Baird had one our players by the throat last Saturday, dirty fucker. Quitongo also a cheating p***k. Pleasing that this gang are losing.
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.
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5 hours ago, Zanetti said:
The impressive thing about Morton's disciplinary record is that they've not had a single player sent off all season for getting a second yellow card. That to me suggests it's very much calculated, and they know when to turn it on or off as required. It's definitely part of the game plan and it clearly works for them.
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.
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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.
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9 hours ago, A Diamond For Me said:
This should be a good game. Both teams have every reason to feel confident going into it - obviously it's advantage Airdrie for the playoffs, but both teams are in good form.
I keep expecting our fixture pileup to take its toll on us and it keeps on not happening, but at some point it surely must. We've been fortunate that McGill has become available again just as McStravick got injured - but we'll surely not see McStravick, Rae or Aiken again this season, and I don't know if or when McCabe will be back. Granted we've been doing pretty darn well without them, but those are all important players for us, and if we're not quite at the bare bones just yet, those are all players who you'd want available.
Airdrie fans can't *not* be looking for a win here with how we've been doing since the new year, but a draw would also be a good result in terms of keeping Dunfermline back.
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.
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1 hour ago, Dons_1988 said:
statement is good but I’d actually say it’s the wrong incident to call for VAR to be removed.
If you accept that technology has glitches like the Hawkeye system failing then you’d think it would be easy enough to have a strict protocol saying if the system isn’t working, don’t fucking guess and then lie about why you haven’t released the evidence of the decision. it isn’t something that actually requires the removal of VAR.
The removal of VAR is a broader point about the impact on the game and the problems of which it solves none of. That decision on Saturday at livi took a good 5 minutes after celebrating what seemed like a winning goal. And for what?
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.
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5 hours ago, Double Jack D said:
The fact we didn't press but there were still gaps makes me blame the players executing the plan. If and buts but we didn't start with a high press because we have done that before and you handed us our arse. We started with 2 holding midfielders in front of a flat back 4, that should tactically nullify the threat that your first 2 goals came from.
The argument you could make, with hindsight, is why didn't we start the game how we lined up second half. I couldn't blame Murray there to be honest as he was criticised following our game at Tannadice for having a powder puff midfield.
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.
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1 hour ago, Passionate said:
The McCabe debate, I actually think he is still one of the best midfielders in the league and also a very good sweeper, , can he play 36 games absolutely not, not for putting him out to pasture yet, not counting chickens just yet, if we get into the playoffs and the pressure cranks up , I would much prefer him on the park than off it...
Me neither, I'm not saying he should stop, but I wonder if he feels it's worth it to continue playing when he won't be as crucial to the team and obviously has other things to focus on.
It's clearly not been an issue him playing in the last 2 years so he may be happy to carry on as a squad player. I wouldn't be surprised if he stops though.
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Trapdoor to Hell
in Scottish League 2 General Chatter
Posted
First I heard of this was reading their statement, and it comes across as a half arsed attempt to deflect blame when they know they have no real grounds for complaint.
Whether that's actually the case I've no idea, but that's how the statement comes across. A half-baked explanation of what happened followed by a meek acceptance.