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The Official Airdrieonians Thread - 2019/20 and beyond


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3 hours ago, Jack Reed said:

Manager doest seem keen to add a striker, bit disappointing after all the Harry Rednap and West ham talk that has went on, yes the manger likes the goals from all over a d thanks fine but we really need a striker that will give us 20 plus, 

Not too sure how much is coming from Redknapp and the MacKays for that matter,   Thomas Robert is a MacKey client ibelieve,    Sabatini and Stokes have been recruited through a sports agency called Quorum Sports, owned by Imre Varadi (remember him).  all the information is available online, you just have to do a bit of digging, 

 We are pushing on with a high risk signing policy, hopefully we reep the rewards, we need out this league somehow,  in the coming years we will have Queens Park, Kelty Hearts breathing down our necks...  

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Passionate said:

Not too sure how much is coming from Redknapp and the MacKays for that matter,   Thomas Robert is a MacKey client ibelieve,    Sabatini and Stokes have been recruited through a sports agency called Quorum Sports, owned by Imre Varadi (remember him).  all the information is available online, you just have to do a bit of digging, 

 We are pushing on with a high risk signing policy, hopefully we reep the rewards, we need out this league somehow,  in the coming years we will have Queens Park, Kelty Hearts breathing down our necks...  

 

 

Thanks that's interesting, 

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Don't think it's necessarily fair or accurate to say that we're not signing another striker and/or the West Ham boy is no longer coming. There's still 4 weeks until competitive games and we haven't even played one friendly yet. Ordinarily we wouldn't have signed our whole squad by this point so I don't really see it as being any different in that regard. 

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13 minutes ago, airdrieman said:

Don't think it's necessarily fair or accurate to say that we're not signing another striker and/or the West Ham boy is no longer coming. There's still 4 weeks until competitive games and we haven't even played one friendly yet. Ordinarily we wouldn't have signed our whole squad by this point so I don't really see it as being any different in that regard. 

In Murray we trust🤣🤣

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2 hours ago, Tulloch Gorum said:

A 20 goal a season striker would be nice, but those aren't exactly easy to find.  Granted last season was cut short, but only four players in the country managed it, five the season before, and six the season before that.  I'm missing the L2 figures from seasons 2013-14 and 2014-15, but with that caveat since the SPFL was formed only Shankland, Goodwillie (who for well-known reasons is playing below his natural level) and McAllister (likewise, but for less repugnant reasons) have hit twenty in more than one league season (three times, two times and two times, respectively).   Goodwillie was top of the L1 scorers' charts last season, but Carrick and Gallagher scored more between them than he did and Clyde didn't really have anyone else scoring a significant number of goals -  Airdrie scored more than Clyde did over the season.

L1 has had more strikers scoring 20 in a season than all the other leagues have, I suspect because it's the only league which consistently has full time teams playing against mostly part time ones but I'd need to look at the figures more closely than I intend to to confirm that.

In sum - yeah, it'd be great to sign a striker you can confidently predict will score that many goals, but I don't know where you could reasonably expect to find one who isn't already signed up and/or way out of our budget.

Yeah I very much agree with this. I suppose it's natural to want a player like that but we're very unlikely to find a player proven to score 20 goals a season at this level. Looking at the players who've scored at that sort of rate for us in the last decade, it's only really Andy Ryan (23), Iain Russell (18) and Ryan Donnelly (21). Russell had high expectations but I don't think anyone expected Ryan or Donnelly to score as many as they did in those seasons. We might end up signing another striker who does very well but I think it's much more likely to be a striker in the Ryan/Donnelly mould, a young player who has a breakthrough season rather than someone who's proven as a great striker at this level. It was obviously a very small sample size but we saw last season that Andy Ryan never really hit the same heights as his first spell, though I would still like to have kept him. 

I think it's more sensible to try and spread the goals throughout the team rather than pinning all of our hopes on one player. Last season our main complaint was never really about the forwards, on the whole Smith, Gallagher and Carrick had really good seasons, but we really lacked goals and creativity in midfield. Hopefully the new signings can fix that which should only help us going forward. 

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3 minutes ago, Mr November said:

Yeah I very much agree with this. I suppose it's natural to want a player like that but we're very unlikely to find a player proven to score 20 goals a season at this level. Looking at the players who've scored at that sort of rate for us in the last decade, it's only really Andy Ryan (23), Iain Russell (18) and Ryan Donnelly (21). Russell had high expectations but I don't think anyone expected Ryan or Donnelly to score as many as they did in those seasons. We might end up signing another striker who does very well but I think it's much more likely to be a striker in the Ryan/Donnelly mould, a young player who has a breakthrough season rather than someone who's proven as a great striker at this level. It was obviously a very small sample size but we saw last season that Andy Ryan never really hit the same heights as his first spell, though I would still like to have kept him. 

I think it's more sensible to try and spread the goals throughout the team rather than pinning all of our hopes on one player. Last season our main complaint was never really about the forwards, on the whole Smith, Gallagher and Carrick had really good seasons, but we really lacked goals and creativity in midfield. Hopefully the new signings can fix that which should only help us going forward. 

Who knows, that striker having a breakthrough season might be a certain Mr Ally Roy. New season, new start! ♦️

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2 hours ago, airdrieman said:

Don't think it's necessarily fair or accurate to say that we're not signing another striker and/or the West Ham boy is no longer coming. There's still 4 weeks until competitive games and we haven't even played one friendly yet. Ordinarily we wouldn't have signed our whole squad by this point so I don't really see it as being any different in that regard. 

Yeah but there has been a whole 24 hours since we last speculated on the subject on here, and the lack of any news in the intervening timeframe is obvious proof that it's not happening.

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31 minutes ago, stuartcraig said:

Yeah but there has been a whole 24 hours since we last speculated on the subject on here, and the lack of any news in the intervening timeframe is obvious proof that it's not happening.

Only asked if any one had heard anything , he would probably be about 18 year old anyway, can't see the reason or sense of signing young players as no reserve team, journey men got to be what's needed in this league. 

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7 minutes ago, 19QOS19 said:

How was Rohan Ferguson for you guys?

Struggled,Played behind a shit defence and was thrown in the deep end a 19 year old playing week in week out struggling and couldn’t be took out the firing line,His confidence was shattered,But when he played in the game against Dundee United in the cup shows there’s a top goalie in there and has a load a potential and would probably took him over Max Currie 

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1 hour ago, 19QOS19 said:

How was Rohan Ferguson for you guys?

I posted this in the Dumbarton thread when he was mentioned as a possible signing for them. I think he'll do well at Queens, though he probably still has the odd mistake in him. He has quite a lot of experience for his age given he's had two seasons of being first choice at Airdrie as well as his season at Linfield. I mentioned below about our goals conceded record under him but ultimately a lot of that can be put down to playing behind the worst full-time defence Scottish football has ever seen in his first season and a very inexperienced defence the following season. 

On 31/07/2020 at 12:26, Mr November said:

Rohan Ferguson would be a very good signing and I’d say an upgrade on Brennan. He’s player a lot of games for his age and I would assume he’s only improved after a year at Linfield. I know he was training with Livingston and I was expecting him to get a full-time deal at a lower end Championship team.

He seemed to do quite well working with Neil Parry and then became first choice when we went full-time with a very young squad. He never really had a settled or even competent defence in front of him in his time at Airdrie (we conceded 66 goals in his first full season despite being full-time) and after Parry left he never had any experienced keepers to challenge him which didn’t help. There were definitely times when he made a few mistakes and his confidence was low but overall he was a decent keeper at this level. He wasn’t the most commanding and seemed to struggle with high balls and coming off his line but that might have improved with experience.

 

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1 hour ago, 19QOS19 said:

7th signing.  

Eta. He isn't actually our 7th, so I have no idea. He is wearing no. 7 shorts in the picture so it's probably a joke in reference to that.

 

 

Fair enough. 

I would have to agree with everything the above posters have said. He was always highly rated as a youngster and the occasional times he played before becoming first choice he performed well and you could see he was a talent. He became first choice when he was 18 and he definitely wasn't ready to be playing full-time football week in week out. He made mistakes, which is to be expected of a goalie of that age, but he was not helped whatsoever by playing behind the worst defence that's ever graced the third tier (an over the hill Simon Mensing, a comically bad Daniel Boateng and the useless Joe Gorman) that conceded almost 70 goals in the league despite finishing 3rd, and having no other goalie that could come in and replace him/give him a rest. He wasn't great at coming out for crosses or commanding his box and you could see his confidence drain after every mistake. The more mistakes he made the less confident he got and less confident he got the more mistakes he made etc. Very good shot stopper though. I would assume he's a much better goalie than he was when he left us with a few years of full-time coaching at Motherwell under his belt and (I think) a full season of games at a decent level with Linfield, including in Europe. Certainly more experienced anyway. Going by their social media he was pretty popular with the Linfield fans, club and management so I'm a bit surprised they never signed him permanently, unless it was to do with his personal circumstances. Think he'll be decent enough for QOS. 

 

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