The Ultimate Super Ayr Thread

[mps02]

I don't think we can afford to dump Hopkin due to the 2 year contract he is on. I hope I'm wrong. That performance last night was awful. I do not blame the players (apart from Afolabi), Aero lost the plot and was screaming at the bench as he went off. The issue lies with Hopkin. Can we afford to buy out his contract? Change is needed very very soon.

[HMIP]

4 minutes ago, UpInTheAyr said:

If he'd signed a couple of forwards, or utilised better the ones he had then let go, then he'd prob have kept his job till at least the end of the season. ~Scoring goals can cover up a lot of deficiencies

Bruce Anderson probably got him fired.  Should have been a good signing capable of scoring the goals we needed, but clearly another like Afolabi with a major attitude problem.

[Richey Edwards]

9 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Kelty are signing Championship level players for the league 2 levels below.  Kind of what Gretna did, except I don't believe Kelty's chairman lives exclusively off fags and Irn Bru, so they should be alright.

Was it not 100 fags a day and a few bottles of orange lucozade?

[TheScarf]

Just now, Richey Edwards said:

Was it not 100 fags a day and a few bottles of orange lucozade?

Aye it was Lucozade actually.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, HMIP said:

Bruce Anderson probably got him fired.  Should have been a good signing capable of scoring the goals we needed, but clearly another like Afolabi with a major attitude problem.

Daft as it sounds, I don't think we ever recovered from the capitulation at Cappielow followed by another smaller one at Palmerston. Ironically Muirhead was mostly to blame but ended up becoming our most important player. 

You couldn't make it up.

[Richey Edwards]

1 minute ago, TheScarf said:

Aye it was Lucozade actually.

His dentist must have hated him.

[D'Jaffo]

David Smith has had an incredibly easy ride from the fans since becoming chairman. The hub is undoubtably a good thing and I also heard through the grapevine that he was paying some of the staff’s wages through COVID even before he became chairman. However on the park we have been a complete disaster. It was him who appointed David Hopkin when everyone knew this was how it was going to end up. I really do think he needs a guy with footballing experience beside him to help him out with these sort of decisions. There’s also been incidents where he’s directly messaged fans who have been critical of the team/Hopkin/him so clearly he’s not someone who reacts well to criticism. In order to be involved in football you need to have a thick skin. 
 
He’s the man who can try and fix this by removing Hopkin. The fans abuse is currently being directed at Hopkin however I’d imagine this will start to be directed at Smith if he doesn’t act soon. I have no doubt that it Hopkin remains in position much longer we will be relegated and with a worse points tally than any of the times under Brian Reid or Ian McCall.

I genuinely couldn’t name one team I’d be confident of us beating this season. If we’re going by the size of the clubs then we should be looking to at least match QOS, Morton and be looking to beat Arbroath. All 3 of those teams have got squads that are better than ours right now and with managers who have could some idea of how to use it.

The longer Smith let’s this go on the more expensive a mistake it’s going to be. He needs to act now.

[HMIP]

1 minute ago, D'Jaffo said:

I genuinely couldn’t name one team I’d be confident of us beating this season. If we’re going by the size of the clubs then we should be looking to at least match QOS, Morton and be looking to beat Arbroath. All 3 of those teams have got squads that are better than ours right now and with managers who have could some idea of how to use it.

The longer Smith let’s this go on the more expensive a mistake it’s going to be. He needs to act now.

Is it though?  To bin Hopkin and his coaching team and bring in a new management team with the compensations involved to all and sundry could easily top 100k.  I’m honestly not sure if we have that kind of cash.  

[Superhursty7]

Falling like a stone = 5th in the league 2 weeks before we fired him.  Indeed, up until that last fortnight, we’d been top half of the league for the vast majority of the season.  If that dumpling Zanatta hadn’t missed an absolute sitter in the first half against Arbroath, he’d probably still be manager right now.  Which isn’t to say Kerr didn’t make mistakes..  But I do think the unfolding horror of Hopkin is leading us to exaggerate how bad things were under Kerr in order to justify the direction of the club over the last 6 months.

The big mistake with Kerr was he did not have an experienced back room team, it he had the numbers Hopkin has had to support it might have ended differently

[Hawk89]

25 minutes ago, UpInTheAyr said:

Still thinking about that "Hoppy" interview. How incredibly stupid is it to blame the fans, especially with another home game in a few days. How does he possibly think that's going to play out. There's a massive disconnect atm between the fans and the manager/team due to the past year, that's why it's so easy for both sides to sling shit atm.

It is almost as if he wants the fans to get on him, gives him plenty of excuses when telling everyone why he left and how terrible the fans were etc etc. 

[Thereisalight..]

I wonder how things would have turned out had we appointed Sandy Stewart rather than Mark Kerr

[D'Jaffo]

Is it though?  To bin Hopkin and his coaching team and bring in a new management team with the compensations involved to all and sundry could easily top 100k.  I’m honestly not sure if we have that kind of cash.  

The compensation figure is what it is. Ultimately Smith is going to have to bite the bullet and if he sacked Hopkin then there’s every chance Duffy and the rest of the merry band of losers will f**k off as well.

I’m more talking about the fact that the longer this goes on the worse we are going to get and the bigger the overhaul we will need in January. If we were to sack him and get a better manager in then there’s maybe just enough for him to work with provided we get 1 or 2 players in and 1 or 2 out. If we wait until Christmas and we’re 10 points off 9th then we’ll be looking at a much bigger job in terms of wheeling and dealing.

[HMIP]

3 minutes ago, Superhursy7 said:

30 minutes ago, HMIP said:

Falling like a stone = 5th in the league 2 weeks before we fired him.  Indeed, up until that last fortnight, we’d been top half of the league for the vast majority of the season.  If that dumpling Zanatta hadn’t missed an absolute sitter in the first half against Arbroath, he’d probably still be manager right now.  Which isn’t to say Kerr didn’t make mistakes..  But I do think the unfolding horror of Hopkin is leading us to exaggerate how bad things were under Kerr in order to justify the direction of the club over the last 6 months.

The big mistake with Kerr was he did not have an experienced back room team, it he had the numbers Hopkin has had to support it might have ended differently

That was the bit I never really understood.  When he got the job, it seemed clear that he would have an assistant and a coach.  Lee Miller was spoken about quite openly as the potential coach, but when that fell through, the coaching position just seemed to get forgotten about.  I really don’t know who is to blame for that.  Looking back, Mark Roberts didn’t have an experienced back room team either (to begin with at least), so it just seems negligent of the chairman to go down the route of a rookie manager again without learning the lesson of the Roberts era.  

[Lochwood]

It’s not just him look at his backroom team, there’s five of them , surely to god the Chairman is a good business man and Put in a performance related clause which he’ll never meet. If he hasn’t I’m afraid he is guilty of gross misconduct and get ready for the seaside league again. He made a very  good point in that he has never seen that many players all have a terrible night in one game, I have to agree with that, he should have just accepted that in his report but to blame the supporters. Was absolutely suicide and will sink him whenever there is no way back. Most fans were never happy of the day and timing of this game so for the numbers to turn out that did deserves great praise I didn’t think we would have got any where near that.

[HMIP]

5 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:

The compensation figure is what it is. Ultimately Smith is going to have to bite the bullet and if he sacked Hopkin then there’s every chance Duffy and the rest of the merry band of losers will f**k off as well.

I’m more talking about the fact that the longer this goes on the worse we are going to get and the bigger the overhaul we will need in January. If we were to sack him and get a better manager in then there’s maybe just enough for him to work with provided we get 1 or 2 players in and 1 or 2 out. If we wait until Christmas and we’re 10 points off 9th then we’ll be looking at a much bigger job in terms of wheeling and dealing.

I guess it comes down to whether we think this season is already a write off and we will have to regroup in League 1 or if we genuinely think a new manager could make a team out of what we have.  If it’s the latter then coughing up the compo to get rid of Hopkin might make sense.  But if I’m honest, I think the recruitment has been an unmitigated disaster and any new manager will be faced with a squad full of utility players who can’t create chances or score goals.    The only unknown factor we have is O’Connor, but for some reason, Hopkin clearly doesn’t fancy him despite blathering on about he’d been tracking him all summer,  I don’t think we as fans have seen enough of the guy to make any informed judgement.

[TxRover]

39 minutes ago, TheScarf said:

Kelty are signing Championship level players for the league 2 levels below.  Kind of what Gretna did, except I don't believe Kelty's chairman lives exclusively off fags and Irn Bru, so they should be alright.

Which is no assurance of promotion, ask Falkirk. The Snake’s signing of a boatload of his old chums from higher levels was supposed to presage a fun run through League One, but instead resulted in an implosion that still haunts them.

The bright spot for Ayr is that they can look at QoS last year. A start that suggested they should simply be dragged out back and shot, turned into a short lived push for the playoffs, all due to a middling squad finally gelling, and a manager pulling his head out of his ass. Can Hopkin do that, the jury is out, but I suspect your have enough players of decent quality to survive, if they can be harnessed and pull together.

[D'Jaffo]

I guess it comes down to whether we think this season is already a write off and we will have to regroup in League 1 or if we genuinely think a new manager could make a team out of what we have.  If it’s the latter then coughing up the compo to get rid of Hopkin might make sense.  But if I’m honest, I think the recruitment has been an unmitigated disaster and any new manager will be faced with a squad full of utility players who can’t create chances or score goals.    The only unknown factor we have is O’Connor, but for some reason, Hopkin clearly doesn’t fancy him despite blathering on about he’d been tracking him all summer,  I don’t think we as fans have seen enough of the guy to make any informed judgement.

I’d hope any new manager coming in would look at the squad and come up with a plan to use McAdams, Reading, McAllister, Muirhead, Murdoch, Maxwell, O’Connor and Moffat. That’s 8 players right there that should be playing every week. If Smith acts fast I think this season could be saved but as it stands we’re going down.

[Superhursty7]

The squad could be improved no doubt about it but there is the making of a half decent mid table squad back to basics and play 442 and get the best out of what we have

[HMIP]

1 minute ago, D'Jaffo said:

I’d hope any new manager coming in would look at the squad and come up with a plan to use McAdams, Reading, McAllister, Muirhead, Murdoch, Maxwell, O’Connor and Moffat. That’s 8 players right there that should be playing every week. If Smith acts fast I think this season could be saved but as it stands we’re going down.

I remember watching us get relegated with a team that included Frank Rolling, Cammy Duncan, John Sharples, John Traynor and Duncan George.  But even with those players, we had no quality in the attacking third, couldn’t score goals and went down.  Looking at the players you’ve listed, I can only see a similar fate.  
We really are investing a lot at this stage in O’Connor, a player we know nothing about, has no track record at our level and can’t even get on the park ahead of Salkeld.  I can only hope that his non-selection is an indictment of Hopkin rather than the player.

[Finlay21]

32 minutes ago, HMIP said:

Is it though?  To bin Hopkin and his coaching team and bring in a new management team with the compensations involved to all and sundry could easily top 100k.  I’m honestly not sure if we have that kind of cash.  

I reckon it would be around £175k-£200k  to get rid of management team , unless we kept on Duffy as manager and 1 of the other 2 as his assistant , 4 guys all on full time contracts and will be on decent salaries