The Ultimate Super Ayr Thread

[diegomarahenry]

Reflecting on last night. I am still as angry as I was then.

The defence hadn’t conceded a goal in the group stages of the league cup. For all the flexibility it offers, Kilmarnock got their tactics spot on, overload the wings, pin Reading and Houston back meaning the weakest part of our team, the midfield, is left narrow due to the full backs being out the game.
with two mismatched forwards, one that won’t do running and wins very few aerial Battles and the other a headless chicken it meant we spent 90 minutes hitting the ball to no one. 

The annoying part is that we did nothing to change it, adding more width in O’Conner and Maxwell, more mobility up front or going to 4 at the back and being more direct.

that had the feeling of Hopkins first game in charge against Hearts where he described it as a free hit and set out to take an easy 1 or 2 goal defeat. 
 

His inability to see what’s in front of him or his stubbornness not to change will be his downfall, all the good grace he built up over the last 3 weeks went with a whimper last night in one of the most gutless displays of football I have ever seen. 

We play Arbroath on Saturday, a team that took 4 off is the last time we played. Dick Campbell is a smart guy and will know how to beat us, does Hopkin have something up his sleeve to make sure that doesn’t happen? 
 

if we lose on Saturday, even a shitfest draw and we are in for a transitional season again. My only concern is that if we do punt him, it’ll be like Neil Watt all over again where half the squad chuck it because their guy has been sacked 
 

[Iain]

18 minutes ago, HMIP said:

Missed the start of Sturgeons briefing - is that all crowd restrictions gone?

From Monday.

[AUFC 1910]

17 minutes ago, HMIP said:

Missed the start of Sturgeons briefing - is that all crowd restrictions gone?

She mentioned something about gatherings and events outdoors over 5,000 but not sure what she meant (ie gigs etc or sporting events)

[HMIP]

2 minutes ago, AUFC 1910 said:

She mentioned something about gatherings and events outdoors over 5,000 but not sure what she meant (ie gigs etc or sporting events)

Sounds like you need to apply to the council for crowds over 5000.  Poor show.

[Hawk89]

6 minutes ago, HMIP said:

Sounds like you need to apply to the council for crowds over 5000.  Poor show.

Won't really be an issue for us to be fair, our home gate will be between 1800-2500 depending on who we are playing and how it is going. Come October I'd be surprised if we couldn't have full capacity, or gutted as it would mean something has gone wrong. 

[HMIP]

1 minute ago, Hawk89 said:

Won't really be an issue for us to be fair, our home gate will be between 1800-2500 depending on who we are playing and how it is going. Come October I'd be surprised if we couldn't have full capacity, or gutted as it would mean something has gone wrong. 

True, but I’m also a Scotland fan and we have games the first week in September.  Highly unlikely that the Dundee Utd game will exceed 5,000, but the next Killie game surely will, unless we’ve all lost it with Hopkin.

[1320Lichtie]

6 minutes ago, Hawk89 said:

Won't really be an issue for us to be fair, our home gate will be between 1800-2500 depending on who we are playing and how it is going. Come October I'd be surprised if we couldn't have full capacity, or gutted as it would mean something has gone wrong. 

For the millionth time if you can’t have full capacity now in summer I’m not sure when you ever could. It’ll get worse in winter again and with today’s announcements it looks like the only way from here is backwards again.

[HMIP]

7 minutes ago, 1320Lichtie said:

For the millionth time if you can’t have full capacity now in summer I’m not sure when you ever could. It’ll get worse in winter again and with today’s announcements it looks like the only way from here is backwards again.

Intervention.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, 1320Lichtie said:

For the millionth time if you can’t have full capacity now in summer I’m not sure when you ever could. It’ll get worse in winter again and with today’s announcements it looks like the only way from here is backwards again.

I've the exact same issue about travel (as noted in the Corona thread), basically this is likely to be as good as it ever gets and if we cant / won't bin the restrictions now, then when can we ???

[AUFC 1910]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/58075021

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2021 by AUFC 1910

[Hawk89]

18 minutes ago, 1320Lichtie said:

For the millionth time if you can’t have full capacity now in summer I’m not sure when you ever could. It’ll get worse in winter again and with today’s announcements it looks like the only way from here is backwards again.

More and more people are double jabbed and there is talk of a winter booster as well. My hope is we have the correct direction of travel at present and can maintain that. As I pointed out in my post if we aren't at full capacity by the time we make it to October something is clearly going wrong. Pandemics are cyclical with waves traditionally around 3-6 months apart over a span of 3-5 years. We have hopefully peaked the latest wave at the start of July and are moving to safer territory.  We have the added bonus that no pandemic has ever had the sheer resource thrown at it that this one has. So pardon me for trying to be optimistic, but yes I accept there is every chance of a winter uptick. 

[Thereisalight..]

Trying to move on to thinking about Saturdays game. Have arbroath got weaker/stronger since they pumped us? I know they lost the boy Williamson who was pretty good. Just hope we dont sit back like we did last night and make them look like Man City

[AUFC 1910]

Just now, Thereisalight.. said:

Trying to move on to thinking about Saturdays game. Have arbroath got weaker/stronger since they pumped us? I know they lost the boy Williamson who was pretty good. Just hope we dont sit back like we did last night and make them look like Man City

Can’t see that happening.

Hopkin kept faith in the success at Hamilton and it didn’t work out.

And I can understand that.

Just don’t see us going with the exact same 11 on Saturday.

I think we will look a lot more like the style of play we played against Edinburgh City.

[Thereisalight..]

1 minute ago, AUFC 1910 said:

Can’t see that happening.

Hopkin kept faith in the success at Hamilton and it didn’t work out.

And I can understand that.

Just don’t see us going with the exact same 11 on Saturday.

I think we will look a lot more like the style of play we played against Edinburgh City.

Hope you're right. The style of play during the Edinburgh city game was a joy to watch compared to what we saw the last 10 or so games of last season. 

[AUFC 1910]

2 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

Hope you're right. The style of play during the Edinburgh city game was a joy to watch compared to what we saw the last 10 or so games of last season. 

I might be wrong, but Hopkin comes across as the “win your home games” type, and “shitfest your way to anything you can get away from home”

If true, we are in for a bumpy, but hopefully overall successful season

[Thumper]

7 minutes ago, AUFC 1910 said:

I might be wrong, but Hopkin comes across as the “win your home games” type, and “shitfest your way to anything you can get away from home"

Edinburgh City is Hopkin's only competitive win at Somerset. A fairer assessment would be that his approach is "draw every game", and that he isn't very good at that either.

[1320Lichtie]

35 minutes ago, Hawk89 said:

More and more people are double jabbed and there is talk of a winter booster as well. My hope is we have the correct direction of travel at present and can maintain that. As I pointed out in my post if we aren't at full capacity by the time we make it to October something is clearly going wrong. Pandemics are cyclical with waves traditionally around 3-6 months apart over a span of 3-5 years. We have hopefully peaked the latest wave at the start of July and are moving to safer territory.  We have the added bonus that no pandemic has ever had the sheer resource thrown at it that this one has. So pardon me for trying to be optimistic, but yes I accept there is every chance of a winter uptick. 

There’s not every chance, the uptick is happening, this year and every year until the end of time. And I suppose we will have to wait and see just how effective the vaccines are when winter comes around, if it doesn’t actually stop it spreading and we are still as obsessed with cases as we have been this whole time then what’s changing. And I think this booster will also be something that you will ‘need’ to get every year. 

[Dauntless]

16 minutes ago, Thumper said:

Edinburgh City is Hopkin's only competitive win at Somerset. A fairer assessment would be that his approach is "draw every game", and that he isn't very good at that either

Too much mate .

[Trogdor]

Is the thread safe yet?

[rgreig]

3 hours ago, WATTOO said:

It's just unacceptable that we failed to have any real shots on goal and no shots on target. This also happened a couple of times last season under both Kerr and Hopkin but even in our darkest days of the Brian Bilslands and Ronnie Yuills I honestly can never remember it previously. 

The official match stats were interesting - apparently we had three shots on target (I don't remember any apart from the powder puff free kick later in the game) and Killie only 5. Given we were under constant pressure, I think it shows how well our defence did and I have no complaints about how McGinty has done. That part of the squad is night and day from last season and you can't ask much more than that at our level.

However as others have said, Hopkin needs to rethink midfield for Saturday and I think he has got players to do that. If he doesn't, then I have no hope for him making any kind of success of this season.