The Ultimate Super Ayr Thread

[THEHonestman1910]

8 minutes ago, rb123! said:

What did the AP say this week?

Basically just Duffy saying cliche stuff like 'We have to pull our sleeves up' and 'we shoudn't be treating Albion lightly'.

 

Not worth your £1.70

[rb123!]

7 minutes ago, THEHonestman1910 said:

Basically just Duffy saying cliche stuff like 'We have to pull our sleeves up' and 'we shoudn't be treating Albion lightly'.

 

Not worth your £1.70

£1.70 jesus... not that long ago it was about £1.20

[ComradeDiego]

1 hour ago, THEHonestman1910 said:

Basically just Duffy saying cliche stuff like 'We have to pull our sleeves up' and 'we shoudn't be treating Albion lightly'.

 

Not worth your £1.70

Rovers are 7/1, make some money with that £1.70

[Thumper]

On 24/11/2021 at 11:27, diegomarahenry said:

The media that Ayr managers have to deal with are the club propaganda which asks questions in a style of Jim Whyte asking Brian Laudrup why he's so good. Also the voice of reason who has to be in the clubs pocket to be able to get any content for the Ayrshire post at all. 

McCall more or less had his own Youtube channel where he could speak directly to fans and have them think exactly what he wanted them to. This worked well right up until he left. It helped calm situations at times or distract supporters long enough that they didn't turn on the team.

This is the same situation with any football manager. You make it sound like it's easy. It evidently isn't or people wouldn't make such a big deal of a) how good McCall is at it and b) how fucking useless a lot of other managers are.

On 24/11/2021 at 12:20, HMIP said:

People sometimes seem to have lost sight of the fact that it took McCall 2 and a half seasons to get it right at Ayr with some really bad times early on - even then the transformation of his own fortunes at Ayr was triggered by Cameron’s decision to back him with full time football. There was no quick fix.

When McCall took over there was a very real and present danger of being relegated to a tier that Ayr United F.C. had never even played in, and Stair Park was seen as a fortress of doom. Four points in twelve games. The turnaround was not immediate and it was not dramatic but it very clearly happened, and didn't completely evaporate after two months as has happened following Duffy's honeymoon period.

re: the website: these things are always going to rot if you don't have full-time staff dedicated to them. It wasn't that long ago that Ayr's was above-average. Evidently the club has better things to do right now than keep fans informed, and this is just another symptom of it.

Edited November 26, 2021 by Thumper

[No_Problemo]

16 minutes ago, Thumper said:

This is the same situation with any football manager. You make it sound like it's easy. It evidently isn't or people wouldn't make such a big deal of a) how good McCall is at it and b) how fucking useless a lot of other managers are.

When McCall took over there was a very real and present danger of being relegated to a tier that Ayr United F.C. had never even played in, and Stair Park was seen as a fortress of doom. Four points in twelve games. The turnaround was not immediate and it was not dramatic but it very clearly happened, and didn't completely evaporate after two months as has happened following Duffy's honeymoon period.

re: the website: these things are always going to rot if you don't have full-time staff dedicated to them. It wasn't that long ago that Ayr's was above-average. Evidently the club has better things to do right now than keep fans informed, and this is just another symptom of it.

It is incredibly easy, it just involves some effort - I don’t think it is asking much of a full time manager. It is probably more of an indictment of how lazy so many managers are. 

[HMIP]

47 minutes ago, Thumper said:

This is the same situation with any football manager. You make it sound like it's easy. It evidently isn't or people wouldn't make such a big deal of a) how good McCall is at it and b) how fucking useless a lot of other managers are.

When McCall took over there was a very real and present danger of being relegated to a tier that Ayr United F.C. had never even played in, and Stair Park was seen as a fortress of doom. Four points in twelve games. The turnaround was not immediate and it was not dramatic but it very clearly happened, and didn't completely evaporate after two months as has happened following Duffy's honeymoon period.

re: the website: these things are always going to rot if you don't have full-time staff dedicated to them. It wasn't that long ago that Ayr's was above-average. Evidently the club has better things to do right now than keep fans informed, and this is just another symptom of it.

Two years after McCall was appointed, we were no further forward than we were during the Brian Reid years. He built a hardworking League 1 team that was hard work to watch at times, then crashed and burned in the Championship with the likes of Cairney, El Alagui, Harkins, Meggatt and the legendary Andy O’Connell delivering one of the worst seasons I can ever remember at Ayr (watch this space).  

Probably Lachlan’s finest moment as Ayr chairman was deciding to retain McCall because he saw something in him when all logic said he should have been fired out a cannon after that season.  Crucially, McCall seems to have convinced Cameron that we needed full time football if we were ever going to escape our endless yo-yo existence.  That was the point that we suddenly had a strategy at board level and a manager capable of delivering it.  

I guess that’s what I’m looking for now - some sense that we are building forward.  Maybe there is stuff happening behind the scenes that we’re not seeing, but the overwhelming sense is that we are completely rudderless.  

[Broken Algorithms]

Two years after McCall was appointed, we were no further forward than we were during the Brian Reid years. He built a hardworking League 1 team that was hard work to watch at times, then crashed and burned in the Championship with the likes of Cairney, El Alagui, Harkins, Meggatt and the legendary Andy O’Connell delivering one of the worst seasons I can ever remember at Ayr (watch this space).  
Probably Lachlan’s finest moment as Ayr chairman was deciding to retain McCall because he saw something in him when all logic said he should have been fired out a cannon after that season.  Crucially, McCall seems to have convinced Cameron that we needed full time football if we were ever going to escape our endless yo-yo existence.  That was the point that we suddenly had a strategy at board level and a manager capable of delivering it.  
I guess that’s what I’m looking for now - some sense that we are building forward.  Maybe there is stuff happening behind the scenes that we’re not seeing, but the overwhelming sense is that we are completely rudderless.  

It's pretty incredible to think McCall could've easily been punted at the end of that that 2016/17 season. We had Locke bringing in utter haddies, loaned out Vaughan who kept Dumbarton up at our expense, and played Ryan Stevenson in goals for a game and yet still finished above Ayr. Even on the last day with ten men we looked under no pressure from Ayr.

[diegomarahenry]

McCalls comments during the first two years were always about being part time, struggling to compete to attract players because Alloa and Dumbarton were in the Championship. It was about the squad lacking in fitness and confidence and weeding out bad apples from the Roberts era. All were along the lines of, we are struggling and here are the reasons. He had a mess to clear up from Roberts and a chairman who was fairly new to Scottish football. 

Fans bought in to it and I don't remember to many people being critical of him when we went down. We were lacking goals with Moore being injured and the only player we could bring in was El Alagui But he'd brought in Rose, Boyle, Docherty and McDaid that season. It was all about budgets and player availability due to being part time. We hadn't looked like challenging under Roberts, McCall changed that and was always explaining the limitations the club and squad had. 

So there was a building process that people could see, signing the best part time players available. Watching Forrest and Harkins up front was grim. The following year he solved the lack of goals by signing Moffat on a pre-contract, Bringing him and Geggan back was seen as a big statement of intent. He knew how to please the fans and keep them happy by giving them what they wanted to a large extent or at least telling them why they weren't going to get it. 

Compare that to Daziels "rub of the green" or Kerrs permanently concerned expression or Hopkin and Duffy's silence or empty words, we were trully spoiled at the time. 

If you look at the Celtic manager, he's not been having the best of times and Celtic aren't exactly flying, but he is probably one of the most popular managers at a club just now because of the way he comes across. 

 

[HMIP]

17 minutes ago, diegomarahenry said:

McCalls comments during the first two years were always about being part time, struggling to compete to attract players because Alloa and Dumbarton were in the Championship. It was about the squad lacking in fitness and confidence and weeding out bad apples from the Roberts era. All were along the lines of, we are struggling and here are the reasons. He had a mess to clear up from Roberts and a chairman who was fairly new to Scottish football. 

Fans bought in to it and I don't remember to many people being critical of him when we went down. We were lacking goals with Moore being injured and the only player we could bring in was El Alagui But he'd brought in Rose, Boyle, Docherty and McDaid that season. It was all about budgets and player availability due to being part time. We hadn't looked like challenging under Roberts, McCall changed that and was always explaining the limitations the club and squad had. 

So there was a building process that people could see, signing the best part time players available. Watching Forrest and Harkins up front was grim. The following year he solved the lack of goals by signing Moffat on a pre-contract, Bringing him and Geggan back was seen as a big statement of intent. He knew how to please the fans and keep them happy by giving them what they wanted to a large extent or at least telling them why they weren't going to get it. 

Compare that to Daziels "rub of the green" or Kerrs permanently concerned expression or Hopkin and Duffy's silence or empty words, we were trully spoiled at the time. 

If you look at the Celtic manager, he's not been having the best of times and Celtic aren't exactly flying, but he is probably one of the most popular managers at a club just now because of the way he comes across. 

 

You don’t remember fans being critical when we went down?  Are you sure you’re an Ayr United supporter!!  Cameron had been chairman for about a decade when McCall was appointed, so he had surely learned a few lessons that Smith is yet to.  The weeding out the bad apples from the Roberts era was achieved pretty quickly in fairness, with the likes of Boyle and Docherty signed when we were in League 1.  For all of Roberts shortcomings, he did leave Forrest, Crawford, Devlin and Peter Murphy.  Even Michael Donald was an honest trier.  But we were woefully underprepared for life in the Championship and it showed.  

[wullieaufc]

Wonder if we’ll get a match preview this week?

[Hursty]

15 hours ago, ComradeDiego said:

Rovers are 7/1, make some money with that £1.70

Fiver on Albion Rovers and Talbot beating us and Hamilton pays £150.   

[malkyshotton]

Rovers are 7/1, make some money with that £1.70

14/1 on Coral

[AUcal]

1 hour ago, malkyshotton said:

14/1 on Coral

Damn I went with odds of 10/1. Should've looked about a bit.

[Thumper]

8 hours ago, HMIP said:

Two years after McCall was appointed, we were no further forward than we were during the Brian Reid years. He built a hardworking League 1 team that was hard work to watch at times, then crashed and burned in the Championship with the likes of Cairney, El Alagui, Harkins, Meggatt and the legendary Andy O’Connell delivering one of the worst seasons I can ever remember at Ayr (watch this space). 

Reid is the only other manager of any competence Ayr have had in the last 15 years. I didn't agree with his being punted even after an utterly miserable relegation because he'd shown the ability to recover. The result of that punting was Roberts. There are worse fates than yo-yoing between the second and third tiers. One of those is Lolkirk's current purgatory even though they have 112,000 fans. The other is relegation to the fourth tier, which now more than ever can mean oblivion.

Like Reid, McCall learned from relegation. Admittedly it was still an absolute fluke that he didn't have to go through the playoffs on the way back up (and if Ayr hadn't won the league then I reckon they'd have fucked the playoffs as well) but the side that came up was better and he built on that. Full time was his demand for staying in the job and full credit to Lachlan for giving him it. Otherwise the current shitfest would have happened earlier.

[diegomarahenry]

4 hours ago, HMIP said:

You don’t remember fans being critical when we went down?

 Not no even half the scale that Roberts of Hopkin got. Duffy is getting more than McCall got when we went down.

over the next year he raised the level we should be competing at massively. When he took over, our aim was to avoid relegation from League one.

when he left, the expectation was at least the play-offs in the Championship. That should still be the aim and anything else should be seen as a failure when we are investing and spending at the level we are

[Trogdor]

1 hour ago, Thumper said:

Like Reid, McCall learned from relegation. Admittedly it was still an absolute fluke that he didn't have to go through the playoffs on the way back up (and if Ayr hadn't won the league then I reckon they'd have fucked the playoffs as well) but the side that came up was better and he built on that. Full time was his demand for staying in the job and full credit to Lachlan for giving him it. Otherwise the current shitfest would have happened earlier.

As I recall in 2016-17, McCall opted for us to stay part time. The board were ready to go full time but deferred to McCall's judgement. 

[Richey Edwards]

What's happening?

[HMIP]

2 minutes ago, Richey Edwards said:

What's happening?

Big things.

[Finlay21]

3 hours ago, Thumper said:

and if Ayr hadn't won the league then I reckon they'd have fucked the playoffs as well)

That’s a very strange comment , we won the league , yet you are moaning saying we would not have won the play offs ,being Champions showed we were the best team in the league over a full season , 

[HMIP]

1 hour ago, Finlay21 said:

That’s a very strange comment , we won the league , yet you are moaning saying we would not have won the play offs ,being Champions showed we were the best team in the league over a full season , 

Not that strange.  I remember Paddy Boyle doing a podcast interview where he said  that he didn’t think we’d have got through the playoffs as the mental impact of blowing the title in the last 2 games would have been too much.