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The Airdrieonians Off Season Thread 2015


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I'd be very disappointed if Paddy signed for Ayr. Perhaps they're offering him a full - time contract, in which case fair enough, but if it's a case of a few extra £s then its disappointing from the club in two aspects:

1. We shouldn't be getting out - offered by one of our rivals, who won't be splashing the cash, for one of our best players and captain.

2. Bad planning. I'd rather pay Paddy a higher wage than have the likes of John Boyle and Scott Stewart (even if they're getting paid buttons) on the wage bill at all.

Also, I don't blame Paddy for signing for them if they offer him more money or for whatever reason. But if it does turn out it was for money then I would be disappointed in the club for allowing it to happen.

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Think everyone needs to calm down. A couple of weeks ago it was all the "Bollan is away" stuff, now it's moved on to Boyle because of a sentence in a newspaper.

It would be a worry if our (best) out of contract players weren't wanted by other teams. Doesn't mean they'll go though.

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Jesus, Airdrie fans are taking this I bit too hard. We see it happening every year, players moving about teams in the same league. It happened last year, it'll happen next year. It'd be understandable if he moved to a team in the league below.

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Guest honestrae95

Ballantyne can f*ck off if you ask me, he clearly isn't giving Bollan the money he needs and now it's two years in a row that we've lost our best player.

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Despite all the speculation, I didn't see that one coming. It really does prove that there's no loyalty in football anymore.

We gave him a chance, got him back into the game and he's offski first chance he gets. I wouldn't have minded so much if he had gone to a Championship club but Ayr Utd?

I'd be interested to find out why he decided to sign for Ayr. In my opinion, if he had waited a bit longer he would have had offers from the Championship so it seems strange that he's commited himself so soon.

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Don't begrudge Boyle at all. More likely getting more money and a longer contract. Would have been daft not to take that.

I'm just disappointed in the club not offering him a better deal to convince him to stay.

As good as he was though, I don't think he's irreplaceable. Fitzpatrick and O'Neil could both do a job there or there's always someone new that could come in too.

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As I said in the Ayr thread though, surely whatever they are offering, we could at least match it? The guy is our captain, player of the year and in the League 1 team of the year!

Every summer we get told that we've offered players outstanding deals to stay but when teams with a huge difference in budgets or full time status come in - you can't compete. Ayr aren't full time and as others have said, they don't have silly money. It just doesn't add up to me.

You can't argue with players going full time or moving to 'better things' but if we start losing our best players to teams on our level, we'll never have a remotely successful team.

This season in particular, it's crucial we make a good go of this league. It's the last year of Bollan's deal & the league sponsor has increased the pay day depending on your position in the table. It's very much in our chairman's interest that we finish fairly high up.

Ayr don't need to be paying 'silly money' to be paying more than us, just look at the clubs who players have joined in the last few years either from us, or instead of signing for us - East Fife, Stenny, Brechin etc. Ayr are a step up from those, it's perfectly logical that at the moment players would sign for Ayr over us. We don't offer contracts more than one year and we pay peanuts.

The comment about not getting the chance to offer him a deal is laughable, they've had months to offer him something. It's a pathetic way of trying to spin the fact that he just took a better offer.

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I do think his loss is a bit overstated - and Ayr fans getting a bit over excited - by the fact that he won POTY and thinking he was our best player, far from it. There were at least 4 or 5 better footballers in our team last year - Docherty, Gasparotto, Lindsay and Fraser without a doubt, arguably Lister and Prunty too. However none of those players were with us for the whole season (well Lister was but missed 2 months through injury) so didn't win it. Boyle won it due to being consistently a 7/10 for the whole season. I'd rather have kept/keep all of the above from last season's side over Boyle.

That's not me criticising him at all, he was a good for us and I wanted him to stay, after Mark Russell he was the best left back in the league last year. But he's not a major loss and if Ayr were offering good money and a 2 year deal then I'm glad we didn't break our budget to try and compete.

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Think everyone is overlooking the Ian McCall factor here. He clearly had a personal pull with Boyle and has used it to good effect. It won't be the first time this summer we attract a decent quality of player solely because of our new manager either.

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