The Ultimate Super Ayr Thread

[Richey Edwards]

Falkirk now are basically us in the mid 2000s. Toiling in the third tier and making a load of clown shoes managerial appointments. 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Richey Edwards

[Trogdor]

Expectations do need to be tempered a little bit. We've had two good results but until we've played the first quarter of fixtures we just don't know how the league will settle out. Will Arbroath and QP be bottom half or top half teams? Will we?

I'm just enjoying basking in some positivity and actually looking forward to a game on Saturday.

We still have frailties, that's self evident but it almost certainly could be worse. We need to sort the home form, let's start on Saturday!

[Iain]

20 minutes ago, Richey Edwards said:

Falkirk now are basically us in the mid 2000s. Toiling in the third tier and making a load of clown shoes managerial appointments. 

We at least had the excuse of being skint.

[Richey Edwards]

2 minutes ago, Iain said:

We at least had the excuse of being skint.

True.

[diegomarahenry]

We had a model during McCalls time and a strategy that made us prepared months in advance. Players developed and moved up the way, although we didn’t see any money from them. There was a mix of youth and experience in the team.

These are things that could have continued under the next 3 managers and didn’t. 

It’s more than Shankland scoring goals from that time that made us successful. It was a manager knowing what he was doing and a chairman who let him for the most part. 

[AUcal]

1 hour ago, AUFC 1910 said:

I just don’t get it with Falkirk.

It seems like a protracted sequence of bad choices and appointments for a club with a healthy support and financial backing.

 

I suppose, just look at Man Utd

Aye I think they've just consistently fucked it with decisions and appointments, over and over again, to the point where they can't seem to be able to get out of the mire at all. Thought this season might be where they finally get their shit together but seems not so far.

Think they'll miss the play offs again. That's a statement, not a question.

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, diegomarahenry said:

We had a model during McCalls time and a strategy that made us prepared months in advance. Players developed and moved up the way, although we didn’t see any money from them. There was a mix of youth and experience in the team.

These are things that could have continued under the next 3 managers and didn’t. 

It’s more than Shankland scoring goals from that time that made us successful. It was a manager knowing what he was doing and a chairman who let him for the most part. 

We're in danger though of over egging the pudding here in terms of success, basically we managed one 4th place finish and didn't manage to bring in any cash or even increase our support base, so basically it didn't really achieve very much in the bigger picture.

I'd say we're now in far better situation as we're re-connecting with the local community (which won't happen overnight), we're signing players on longer contracts which will hopefully net us some good transfer fees (or at worst give us some stability and consistency in terms of player turnover) and of course we've now got a really nice social club and are about to get a brand new stand with excellent facilities built.

Over and above this, guys like Mathie are making a huge difference and Martin and the team in the commercial side are also working like trojans to bring in cash and explore new partnership opportunities etc.

From an all round fans experience, I'm much happier with where we are right now.

[AyrExile]

58 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

We're in danger though of over egging the pudding here in terms of success, basically we managed one 4th place finish and didn't manage to bring in any cash or even increase our support base, so basically it didn't really achieve very much in the bigger picture.

I'd say we're now in far better situation as we're re-connecting with the local community (which won't happen overnight), we're signing players on longer contracts which will hopefully net us some good transfer fees (or at worst give us some stability and consistency in terms of player turnover) and of course we've now got a really nice social club and are about to get a brand new stand with excellent facilities built.

Over and above this, guys like Mathie are making a huge difference and Martin and the team in the commercial side are also working like trojans to bring in cash and explore new partnership opportunities etc.

From an all round fans experience, I'm much happier with where we are right now.

That depends on what you call success. We were able to compete on the park with bigger teams on much less budget. We also went away from home to difficult hunting grounds and handed out a few lessons. I would certainly consider that a success compared to many other times following the club.  I would also reckon McCall brought back some lapsed fans and added new ones as the team were good to watch.  Right now there is a lot happening off the pitch which is good for the club. On the park the jury is still very much out and we will need a few more weeks plus signings to convince many this is better than the McCall era

[Trogdor]

A fair bit of revisionism from WATTOO here.

[diegomarahenry]

1 hour ago, WATTOO said:

We're in danger though of over egging the pudding here in terms of success, basically we managed one 4th place finish and didn't manage to bring in any cash or even increase our support base, so basically it didn't really achieve very much in the bigger picture.

I'd say we're now in far better situation as we're re-connecting with the local community (which won't happen overnight), we're signing players on longer contracts which will hopefully net us some good transfer fees (or at worst give us some stability and consistency in terms of player turnover) and of course we've now got a really nice social club and are about to get a brand new stand with excellent facilities built.

Over and above this, guys like Mathie are making a huge difference and Martin and the team in the commercial side are also working like trojans to bring in cash and explore new partnership opportunities etc.

From an all round fans experience, I'm much happier with where we are right now.

The debate was around what was achieved during McCalls time, we went from the arse end of league one to not being out the top 4 in the championship for almost two seasons. 
The whole philosophy changed from accepting yo-yo status to having us well consolidated as a Championship team and made us an attractive team to develop young players either on loan or signed as our players.

The rate of which most of that was undone was alarming. These are things that should have been maintained at a club level regardless of the manager. Most fans would agree that in that time the club took huge strides forward from appointing Mark Shanks and signing junior players, through failing to make the League one play-offs to regularly having 1-2 players in the Scotland Under 21s and being in the championship playoffs.

 

 

[itzdrk]

It's the best time ever to support the club because there is a pub you struggle to buy a drink in, right. 

[D'Jaffo]

There’s no doubt we’re in a better place off the park that we were in the McCall days. Saying that it’s more enjoyable to be a supporter these days is fucking drivel unless you’re into the kinda stuff that’s being served up on the park on a semi regular basis.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:

There’s no doubt we’re in a better place off the park that we were in the McCall days. Saying that it’s more enjoyable to be a supporter these days is fucking drivel unless you’re into the kinda stuff that’s being served up on the park on a semi regular basis.

Again, totally cherry picking.

Remember the season under McCall when we were utter dross getting taught lessons by Dumbarton etc and the quality of football was total dross.

All our striking hopes resting on Fahrid El Alagui 

[D'Jaffo]

Again, totally cherry picking.
Remember the season under McCall when we were utter dross getting taught lessons by Dumbarton etc and the quality of football was total dross.
All our striking hopes resting on Fahrid El Alagui [emoji1787]

We never lost once to Dumbarton that season so no, that never happened. If you want to pick one season out of the whole time McCall was in charge then be my guess. It was still a better period to be a fan than any point since he’s left. You cannot dispute that.

[Trogdor]

2 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

Again, totally cherry picking.

Remember the season under McCall when we were utter dross getting taught lessons by Dumbarton etc and the quality of football was total dross.

All our striking hopes resting on Fahrid El Alagui 

Were we not part time then or hybrid? You're not comparing like for like there.

One of the reasons for the step change was the move to full time football in 2017-18. Its often forgotten about.

Edited August 8, 2022 by Trogdor

[AUcal]

The summer of 2017 was absolutely huge for our club. The period from then until late 2019 (except short winter collapses) was undoubtedly the best time in my time supporting Ayr. Nothing since has come close to it. I'd argue that decisions made from top down since almost jeopardised a lot of what was achieved.

You can appreciate the positive off the field steps and investment, while appreciating that other aspects were problematic and had the potential to set us back - or maybe did, depending on your view.

I still enjoy going to the football as it's always been part of my week, but I'm hoping that the kind of match day feeling I had going to the games back then can return the near future.

Some of the "on the pitch" related decisions in the last few years have been awful. Here's hoping this season is better, and moving forward we don't start the season in the Hub praying that we can avoid 9th.

Edited August 8, 2022 by AuAl

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:

We never lost once to Dumbarton that season so no, that never happened. If you want to pick one season out of the whole time McCall was in charge then be my guess. It was still a better period to be a fan than any point since he’s left. You cannot dispute that.

We had the promotion season (which we nearly screwed up and were saved by Raith / Alloa) and then we had the great football that was played when Sandy Stewart came in, however there were also many hellish days, especially between December and March. We also had the Auchinleck Talbot disaster chucked in just in case anyone forgets that one.

Don't get me wrong, the destruction of Dundee United at Tannadice and even the win at home plus many others that season will live long in the memory and were undoubtedly major high points in our recent history not just with the bare results but also the excellent Football that we played (most of the time).

The point I'm trying to make is that it certainly wasn't all plain sailing under McCall and it also wasn't always lovely attacking football either, despite what some want to seem to think.

Anyway, that's all gone and we need to look forward which I think we should all be doing with confidence rather than some of us trying to find negatives and issues around every corner.

I've no skin in the game as regards the owner, board or club employees, however it's very noticeable that some of us on here are just looking for issues and negativity which starts to become rather grating after a while.

I'm not saying we should all be happy clappers but I do think we need to give credit where it's due and acknowledge that our club is quite clearly on an upward curve and not before time.

Time for us all to get behind the team and club which should hopefully turn out to be one of the most positive and exciting times in the last 30 to 40 years of this club....

[Mod1967]

52 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

Again, totally cherry picking.

Remember the season under McCall when we were utter dross getting taught lessons by Dumbarton etc and the quality of football was total dross.

All our striking hopes resting on Fahrid El Alagui 

Remember under Bullen we got beat from Annan and horsed 3-0 at home from QOS, remember half time up at Larbet!!!

[Mod1967]

We're improving massively off the park and I think we'll get better on it, but we're not at the level we were at latterly under McCall yet and to snipe at him is petty, he was by a distance our best manager in the last 30years and to say otherwise is utter nonsense. 

[Trogdor]

10 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

We had the promotion season (which we nearly screwed up and were saved by Raith / Alloa) and then we had the great football that was played when Sandy Stewart came in,

That is incredibly disingenuous and revisionist drivel.

We scored over 100 goals in 2017/18. We had a league goal difference of +50. We won the most games in the league. We beat the DKBs in the league cup despite being two divisions below them. If that's not entertainment I don't know what is. We must be the first team to have league goal difference of +50 and not play great football.

Someone else can explain 2018/19 to you.