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Season 2018-2019. How was it for you?


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Time for reflection on the last 10 months. I know some of our seasons have been extended but how has it been for you?

Regardless of how the season has panned out, we have by some distance surpassed our targets for the season. Every single one of us would have settled for eighth place at the start of the season. When you looked at the line up in the league it was frightening. However it was clear very early on, that we weren't going to be anywhere close to eighth.

For me it's great to be an Ayr fan again. From July until December we were awesome, and we were all looking out the maps for places like Aberdeen and Motherwell. The turning point was the 3-3 draw with County. Then it all went downhill, but it was never likely that we weren't going to be in the play offs.

But regardless of what has happened everyone at the club should be congratulated. We've seen some awesome football, we have the second best goals for in the league and the second best defence. That's got to be a good thing right? And Now we have the play-offs with our best chance to play top flight football since 1978. If we don't get through them, I only hope we don't go out with a whimper.

In the cups we carried on our proud league cup group record and we were rewarded with a demolition of Dundee and then a pay day at Castle Greyskull.

The Scottish Cup can go f**k itself this season :(

Overall 8.5/10

 

 

Highlight : Any play off win would top anything obviously, but the 5-0 utter humiliation of Dundee United at Tannadice. Don't think I can ever recall such a complete performance, against a team of such standing, away from home.  

Lowlight : Auchinleck fucking Talbot. I doubt I'll ever get over that. Never mind the season, that was the biggest kick in the balls in the almost 40 years of me following Ayr

Best Goal : Shankland's 35 yarder against Partick

Player of the Year : Michael Moffat

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Utter shite, obviously. 

A real footballing highlight did exist in watching the workrate, passion, fucking goals and general shithousery of one Zak "Fucking Goals" Rudden but unfortunately he faced too big an ask to do it alone. Made some fucking fist of it right enough.

Lowlights too many to mention. The performances of Leo Fasan maybe.... But a particular lowlight to me would be the run of games recently where we failed to beat (and lost to in 2 of 3 cases) Partick, Alloa and Morton at home. Prior to that it was full in our own hands and looked possible, but utterly shat the bed.

Goal of the season? Has to be Rudden away to the Pars with honourable mention to Jordan McGhee for his Arjen Robben esque finish on Saturday and his sweet AF strike against Ayr. 

Be honest Bairns, how many of you had totally forgotten Prince Buaben played for us till you read this post?

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Better than last season which is a good starting point.  We've looked far more solid since replacing the ageing Gary Warren with the excellent young Jamie McCart.  Jordan White has been good too; he's big and burly, great in the air, and his touch has gotten better every week.

On a negative note, injuries to Sean Welsh and Carl Tremarco struggling all season for fitness didn't help.  But we finished 3rd which is exactly where we should seeing as we have the 3rd best squad in the league.  So I'm happy with that.

With regards to the play offs, I have absolutely no idea how they'll go.  It's a huge ask for the 3rd or 4th team to get promoted, but I guess tomorrow night after the game at Somerset, we'll have a fair idea of where we are.

Highlight:

I've gone for beating United at Tannadice in the cup.  I didn't have much hope going into it but we put in a great performance. including a last minute winner.

Lowlight:

Not beating County in the league despite bodying them for 3 out of the 4 games.  I guess that's the sign of champions on their part.

Best Goal:

Tam Walsh's volley against Thistle live on the telly a few weeks back.  A sweet, sweet hit.  Folk may mention Chalmers' strike against United in the cup but that took a defection and Walsh's one was perfect technique-wise.

Player of the Season:

Sean Welsh.  He's been brilliant in the 'Russell Duncan role', breaking up attacks, harrying and harassing opposition players, and always looking to move the ball forward quickly.

 

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A relief that it's over. The oil tanker has certainly stopped just need some forward momentum next season.

I'm glad we managed to get Scott McDonald on board we might have been looking out the buckets and spaces otherwise.

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Positives: Scott McDonald. The emergence of Aidan Fitzpatrick. Penrice playing every minute which is good for his development. 3-0 win at Palmerston. Jack Storer’s goal vs Morton. McGinty showing signs towards the end of the season that he’s actually very good. Good recruitment in January. Bannigan playing the majority of the season when it looked like he could be finished.

Negatives: Relegation battle pretty much all season. O’Ware injured pretty much all season. The Souleymane Coulibaly saga. Ally Roy is a grass. We reduced Brice Ntwambe to tears. Brice Ntwambe. Jack Storer. Elliott at the start of the season. Kris Doolan having a surprisingly poor season. Jai Quitongo. Scudded 5-1 at Morton. Sure there’s more to add, that’s just off the top of the head.

4/10.

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An absolutely bizarre season; started off with the massive handicap of a dreadful squad full of Archibald panic buys, followed by being rock bottom in winter more than once, and then basically being saved by Scott McDonald after a very impressive winter clear-out of the non-footballers, fat goalie and other dross we'd managed to accumulate.  Plenty of surreal moments such as Doolan's goal which never was, Coulibaly's Egyptian curse being lifted (only for him not to play anyway) and the team picking themselves.  Oh, and Miles Storey contributing an assist.  Incredible.

The above sounds more fun than it was.  Most of the time it was like going for a hillwalk, quickly losing the path and ending up spending the whole day falling in muddy ditches and crawling through gorse bushes, then somehow finding a way to safety/the car park/the pub right at the end.

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I enjoyed it less than 17/18. Seeing your team out of depth in the top flight is bad enough, but to then drop a level into a Championship as poor as this one and still struggle is nothing short of disgraceful. Starting the season with a lame duck manager who should have left the second we were relegated from the Premiership set the tone, and we never properly got any kind of half-decent run going until Scott McDonald joined the club. Without him, I think there’s a very good chance we’d have finished 10th.

Just delighted it’s over.

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Obviously, our season not being done yet, the outcome of the next few weeks will determine whether this has been a decent or dugshit season.

To date, I reckon our season is summed up but he word ‘Meh’ at very best.

From the moment the first ball was kicked against Dunfermline, we never looked like we were going to win the league and never once got a shot in the top of the league house on here which pisses me off more than most things tbf.

The mehess of our season is well summed up by the justifiable lack of inclusion of any United player from the Players Player of the Season team, showing that whilst we had some decent players, no-one really stood out. I give Safranko an exception on that, however, he was never going to get in ahead of Dobbie and Shankland this season.

Highpoint of the season for me was the January window when we really saw our new owner put his money where his mouth is and support the manager, Whilst not all of these new signings have paid off, it was great to see the new faces come in with some really exciting names in there. Regardless of what league we are playing n next year I can assume same again might ensue in the summer window, given the high level of utter dross we are gong to be able to offload.

Lowpoint was the 5 - 0 scudding at home to Ayr. Our home destruction at the hands of County at least had the positive of ensuring Czshamle’s exit, but the Ayr result brought us crashing down to earth. Robbie came in and we were showing league winning form  fron his arrival, up to that point, and at the time I felt that if we could keep that form up we would have the league tied up by February. Ayr kicked the guts out of that one.

Goal of the Season for me was Pav’s ‘pitch is Lava’ goal against Caley, closely followed by his volley against Ayr the previous week. It was something to behold, however the recognition he got worldwide for that goal may make it much harder for us to secure his services in any capacity next year.

On the whole, if we don’t go up this year I will see this as an utterly wasted opportunity. That league was there for the winning, and a bit more consistency, particularly early on, and significantly less wastefulness in front of goal would have got us there.

Still, the Playoffs will be exciting, and we at least have the comfort that should we not go up this year, our b*****d neighbours are coming down to keep us company.

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League cup: Outstanding, it's a shame we got the **** in the quarter final as I think we could have probably taken most of the other teams (other than Celtic) at that point the way we were going and a semi would have been nice. 8/10

Challenge cup: Horrific, the fact everyone cheered when there was no extra time said everything about that game, still beat on penalties, out in the first round is poor.  1/10

Scottish cup: brought about probably the worst day following Ayr that I have known, felt very out of love with Ayr United for a couple months after.  0/10

League: For all the first half of the season was brilliant, the second was hoaching, 20 points in the last 20 games.   Fourth quarter was a lot better than the third but still not particularly great, shame we couldn't get third.  7/10

Playoffs: TBC..... Prediction: defeat in final. 

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A season of 2 half’s but for a club like Ayr it’s been a fantastic season imo. A realistic target for us would’ve been 7th but a lot of credit has to go to the management and players for giving us even the tiniest chance of going up.

Obviously the run from December until now has been poor for a few different reasons but we’ve managed to hang on to that playoff spot so that’s the main thing.

I think McCall deserves a lot of credit for keeping faith with the majority of last seasons squad and not being forced into changing the way we play.

Highlight: The 5-0 at Tannadice was obviously our best result in years but I wasn’t there so I’m going for the 5-1 vs Morton. Probably the first time I actually thought we could achieve something this season. We played quite poorly for 70 odd minutes but then utterly blew them away after Doohan saved a penalty.

Lowlight: Talbot was quite shite. Part of me wants to draw them again next season to rectify it but even beating them wouldn’t make me feel better.

Best Goal: Shanklands thundercunt vs Partick.

POTY: Either Shankland or Doohan.

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Jesus, Itzdrk, you are bloody hard to please.  Seven out of ten for our League performance?  I understand a tad of disappointment after our stonking start but you need to look at the big picture mate. Also breaking down our season into the different cups just shitebaggery of the highest order, again allowing you to concentrate on the negatives.

Okay, I'm obviously not from Ayrshire - so I don't get a hard on over beating Kili nor the same level of sour puss over a loss to Talbot (losing Cup games to non-League clubs isn't that uncommon in England, I guess as there is more depth in quality there) but we have been the most professional I have seen us since I starting following Ayr back in 2006 when I moved  up here.

Overall it has to be a 9/10. Some glorious performances and the odd epic failure. A proper old fashioned season with the added spice of watching a player the national press are talking about at the same time. And the impossible dream is still alive, irrespective of how unprepared for an adventure in the Premiership we may be. 

Highlight was watching that Dundee Utd v Ayr Utd game, from their Directors Box as guests for added enjoyment.  Scoffing their very tasty (clearly Directors Box only) mini steak pies (I think I had three!) and trying not to break out laughing as the fifth went in front of a rank of grim faces was entertainment of the highest order! :lol:

 

 

Edited by Yid_in_Exiile
Added personal highlight.
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Mostly bleak, followed by relief.

The highlight for me was the 2-1 against Alloa, but had I been there it would be either the 3-0 at Queens or Fitzpatrick’s last minute winner against Dundee United.

The lowlight was literally everything before January. If I had to pick one game, the 1-0 loss to Inverness was total shite, with a missed penalty the icing on the cake.

Don’t care about the challenge cup, we got Celtic in the league cup so there’s that and the Scottish Cup was good this year as it offered some light relief from how dreadful our league campaign was.

Overall, 2/10. We’d have been relegated without a guy who’d been retired for about 8 months when we signed him. Glad it’s over with, and crisis averted.

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