diegomarahenry

It was tested, Fjortoft almost played as a sweeper in front of a back 4, he was certainly playing a higher line than Muirhead and McGinty. They dealt with Stranraer having a run at them pretty well. Apart from one ball that got caught under Fjortofts feet and caused a stramash on the edge of the 6 yard box, where they didn’t get a shot away, I don’t think they got further than the 18 yard line. We didn’t give them chances rather than they couldn’t create any. Hamell in his specs and skinny jeans has them playing out from the back and everything on the deck. they looked reasonably well balanced and organised but if they can do that on rutted pitches in February is another matter.

Faal and Adeloye are different types of player, Adeloye looks like a target man type but also full of running(for 30min anyway, although he did take a knock) but Faal looks more of a ball to feet, better at holding up the ball than Adeloye. Despite Faal being about 7 foot tall. it will be interesting how they do against Hearts. A. Because we’ll presumably be chasing shadows in midfield again and have less of the ball than we did tonight and B. They will be up against a good championship team in Hearts. I know they are a premier team but based on last seasons form, they were a good championship team as opposed to a premier team playing in the championship. The boy in the midfield, I don’t think he’s worth another look based on last night.

Its like an ice hockey game, Ayr seem to pull the midfield when we lose possession, we are never where the ball is.

None of the trialists were standouts. Both forwards are worth another look, the boy with the long hair had plenty of energy but his positioning meant he rarely got a pass. The keeper didn’t have a touch so it’s hard to say. Going forward, we only managed to create any real Chances in the first half, Adeloye did plenty of running early on and put himself about but burned out after maybe 35 min. After that it was mostly quick balls forward to no one like last year. The other forward looked like he could be awkward to play against and is worth another look. Thought Houston played well, Murdoch in spells to when we played the ball on the deck but out of possession the midfield looked lost again, Salkeld had one glaring chance he didn’t take and I don’t remember him doing anything else. one positive was that I don’t think Stranraer got in our box let alone had a shot at goal, defended everything really well despite the midfield giving Stranraer a free run at them.

https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/charlie-albinson/profil/spieler/297913

Those who remember Nigel Jemson will be cautious

10 clubs in 6 years, I’d play him in all the friendlies and cup games before offering anything

Adeloye has been more involved in 10min than Wright was in 10 games

Early analysis, still a shambles out of possession, not been great with possession. looks like set pieces will be our main threat

Watching Ayr warm up, there is one lad about 18” taller than everyone else

Let’s hope over the summer that McGinty has turned in to Baresi and McKenzie has turned in to Vialli there are cliches banded about in football about pre-season that teams need time to gel, players need a good pre-season and players having to catch up that missed pre-season. like all cliches there is a bit of truth in them. Our only hope at the moment is that Hopkin has made the team fitter than ever, watertight in defence and McKenzie has matured in to a 25 goals a season forward.

Slightly better form than Queens and a game in hand, 9 games still to play.....

They failed last seasons in both forms, Morton and Ayr, he has now amalgamated them and hasn't managed to attract another player from outside his bubble. This does not look good and no one can see it working They were relegated by a vote, they had a game in hand due to them being in a cup final

I would have asked all the candidates at interviews what their preferred style of play was. I’d have asked them about contacts and preferred agents. Fot instance, Kerr liked to play passing football, had contacts in the English game and the youth game through McCardle. If he asked Hopkin and he said, I’m going to play the same way as Morton did last year and sign half their squad, we walked in to this mess. if he said he knows a company that will showcase non-league jobbers from England that can’t get a club there, then we walked in to this. It doesn’t have to be like this.

I think you have read something in to this that isn’t there. Kerrs appointment was a mistake, there were points where he did things that made you think he maybe had something but those points were few and far between. We had a real chance to build on momentum, I said our aim should be second or third based on Dundee being pish and Inverness cutting their budget and us finishing fourth. I was delusional and Ayr have no divine right to be top 4, we are a yo-yo club and what did I expect being an Ayr fan. Kerr was the man for the job and we should be happy with…….etc A year on, we manage to somehow survive relegation and have the first pre-season in my time as an Ayr fan were I genuinely have no hope in me that the club will succeed this season. No one signing or end of season form to make me think, maybe this is our year. So we have gone from almost relegation to the fourth tier, part time and crowds of 600, to the top 4 in the Championship, full time football and having players regularly in the under 21s, players getting caps within 3 years of leaving us and people still think, ah, but we are a yo-yo club, we’ve always been shite. The rise and consistency we achieved in that spell was remarkable, I don’t think a lot of Ayr fans appreciate or want to acknowledge it because In doing so would be to appreciate and acknowledge McCall. there was no reason we couldn’t have harnessed that consistency and I expect that is why Kerr got the job. It didn’t work and maybe through sentimentality he was kept longer. And this is where Hopkin comes in, he is an experienced manager at this level, made Kerrs side worse, changed the style of play to one that didn’t work and then didn’t change it. Signed players that didn’t work for him before, almost all players that were offered terms left to join clubs round about us or even part time. Has shown no imagination so far in the transfer market other than signing players that played for him or Duffy, like he did at Morton with Livingston players. And when you mention this, people still say, we are a yo-yo team, we’ve always been shite. It’s cyclical, we have to accept we’ll only be good once every 30 years.

Clyde and Stirling Albion were both clubs roughly the same size as Ayr. They even financed fancy new stadiums in the 90s to get to the premier league. Airdrie did the same. Bad results, bad management and a growing ambivalence in the support saw them bottom out in the third tier of Scottish football. In the Roberts era, we were in real danger of doing the same. Within 20 years going from 3-4 thousand average home gate to just breaking 600. Being ran like a junior club. Part time to full time to part time again. McCall taking over, when he had been in charge of Clydebank when they went bust, Morton when Hugh Scott tried to put them out the game and Airdrie when they went bust was what turned Ayr around. McCall was able to convince Cameron how the club could operate professionally without breaking the bank. We had a budget that was expected to have us top 4 last year. We signed players operating at the lower end of the premier league that should have been an upgrade and it didn’t work out. Hopkin has reputedly a better budget than last season, with Hamilton and Kilmarnock replacing Hearts and Dundee, I would expect our budget is probably top 6 in terms of value, behind Dunfermline and Partick certainly. right now, with the signings made in the Ayr/Morton hybrid - Ayrton - we could end up 9th based on last season. I was shot down by some folk on here this time last year for saying Kerr wasn’t up to it, standards had slipped and we needed to get back on track before we dropped out the top 4. I couldn’t see us getting better and we needed to build on McCalls momentum. I was met with the same arguments here, we’ve always been shite, we’ve always been yo-yo etc. A year on, we avoided relegation on goal difference and have lost out on players to Morton and QOTS. One of our players chose junior over staying at the club. it didn’t have to be like this and it doesn’t have to be like this. All the shoulder shrugging “we’ve always been pish” chat needs to stop.

I used to brag about this stuff as well when I was fourteen. all excited for the school holidays wee man?

This one is a rollercoaster. Guy wasn’t good enough for a team we should be competing with, glad we didn’t sign him Guy chooses Morton over Ayr, a team we should be able to compete with on signings Begs the question, why are we looking at him, why didn’t we get him and what the f**k is going on? My guess for next season is 50/50 we will either be relegated or win the league. It is either going to be really good or really, really, really bad. Fortunately we will know in about 6 weeks.

For the last 18 months, my work has empowered the management to give us gifts from the company that reflects their personality. It actually made me tense when I found out they were doing it. The thought that managers were now going to be inflicting their flair, creativity and personality on you under the pretence of doing something nice. Especially to someone from Scotland. My first gift was a box of dried meat (my boss is French) the note said, like her it was traditionally French, with a proud French heritage. I’m vegetarian. The second gift was a company branded Sushi storage box. I checked the corporate store and it cost €50 so I am guessing it was her budget and she was stuck for something pretentious to get me. The last gift I got was prints of shite pictures that her friend painted of her home town. So she must have flung her pal a few quid on the company expenses. I hate my work. This idea makes it worse, just give me vouchers or pay for a night out like you used to.

based on that reel, his career highlight appears to be winning a throw-in once

No one knows how McGinty will perform for Ayr. Maybe the pressure and being coached by Jim Duffy will be the perfect storm for him and he'll have a great time. Or, he turns on the usual performances that stunk out Greenock last season. There is no surprise that Ayr fans favourite times were when we played attacking football on the deck. The McCleod era, the Daziel days of Hurst, Teal, Lyons, Kerrigan, Ferguson and Horace, The McCall Era of Shankland, Moore and Moffat, Where the likes of Burley and the long balls to Graham, The Reid era of 6 at the back are not thought of as fondly. Hopkin has set his stall out to play a brand of football that has never been popular at Ayr and has signed players that have not been particularly successful elsewhere. He is making a gamble that may pay off but it will have to pay off very quickly or fans are going to be vocal about it. He didn't need to do it, we are not struggling like the days of Roberts or Connor or Reid, we have a budget, we could have signed 4 players in May that have proven their use in the lower end of the premier top end of the Championship. Signed wide players, signalled an intention of playing passing football. He didn't so he is either convinced that this will work or he has no ideas what to do other than this.

I don't remember to much displeasure at signing Muirhead, a lot of Falkirk fans slated Kerr when we signed him so folk just assumed they would be wrong about him as well. McGinty has been universally hated at Thistle and Morton. Sometimes a move can just not work out for a player, Like Trouten at Ayr, Sam McGivern, Colin McGlashin, Tommy Bryce, All players that scored for fun at other clubs until they arrived at Ayr. But to be rotten at two clubs, consistently will be a hard habit to break. The mood of fans on here certainly was, as long as he doesn't sign McGinty. He is going to have to put in some great performances to win the fans over, Hopkin signed him so that pressure will be on both of them.

A tornado has hit Hodonin in the Czech republic on the border of Slovakia. Looks like there are a number of victims already. https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/online-prenos-vsechno-co-ma-ruce-a-nohy-jede-zachranovat-na-jih-moravy-168143

So he signed him as a replacement for a defender that wasn't leaving for another 5 months.....................and then signed Sam Roscoe in the summer?

Muirhead wasn't signed as a main centre half, McCall picked him up from Falkirk as cover owning to the fact we had 1 centre half if you sellotaped all the working bits of Adams and Bell together. He was never first choice and even last year hardly ever played at the back. He is a decent centre half that can pass the ball, his only failing is his once a quarter red card. Last season he was the only player looking upset when we lost which a lot of fans liked, me included. I prefer him to Miller. He served a purpose when the rest of the midfield and forwards were all under 5 foot 8 and may be needed to cover in midfield or defence. Falkirk fans didn't like him but he has done ok at Ayr, there have been a lot worse.