Alloa Athletic vs Ayr United

[North Terrace Gazza]

Alloa are gone. It’s all about keeping above Morton or Arbroath now

[Superhursty7]

Love to know why we cut short Cameron's loan deal, scored on his first game for us and then seemed to not get many more chances and now he's pulling up trees for Alloa.

[Trogdor]

Just now, Superhursy7 said:

Love to know why we cut short Cameron's loan deal, scored on his first game for us and then seemed to not get many more chances and now he's pulling up trees for Alloa.

I think its pretty much what Mod1967 said. Just a poor decision by an inexperienced manager. 

[D'Jaffo]

Morton fans warned us how this guy plays.  Would be bad enough if we had Ally Graham up front, but to play that way with the players we have is appalling.  

So we should start hounding him based on what Morton fans were saying. If you’d bothered to go on the Livingston forum you’d see they were full of praise of him.

We can only judge him on what he does for us and even then you have to wait until next season before complaining.

[Pick that one out Marshall]

2 minutes ago, Superhursy7 said:

Love to know why we cut short Cameron's loan deal, scored on his first game for us and then seemed to not get many more chances and now he's pulling up trees for Alloa.

He played well today and would have suited our long ball game.

[Jeff Venom]

Take the point and leave it at that.
Alloa the better team apart from maybe a 15 minute spell in the first half just after we scored.
Hopkin has a job and a half on his hands either way, if we stay up or go down.
I feel we also missed Muirhead in the middle of the park today. Double dunt losing Ndaba and having to move Muirhead to CB.

[wuffster]

1 hour ago, callum-ayr said:

What a mess Kerr has left us in. Can say what we want about Hopkins tactics, but the team is absolute gubbins.

 

6 minutes ago, Mod1967 said:

 this predicament wasn't of Hopkins making, the inexperienced duo left a strange squad

I imagine the same excuse will be trotted out after every defeat for the next 18 months? Easier than defending the team selection and tactics today though.

[Trogdor]

3 minutes ago, Jeff Venom said:

Take the point and leave it at that.
Alloa the better team apart from maybe a 15 minute spell in the first half just after we scored.
Hopkin has a job and a half on his hands either way, if we stay up or go down.
I feel we also missed Muirhead in the middle of the park today. Double dunt losing Ndaba and having to move Muirhead to CB.

Good summary.

Dont know for certainty but If Muirhead is the midfield I think that through ball for Alloa's first goal is cut out.

[Superhursty7]

So we should start hounding him based on what Morton fans were saying. If you’d bothered to go on the Livingston forum you’d see they were full of praise of him.

We can only judge him on what he does for us and even then you have to wait until next season before complaining.

Might not have been pretty but I'm pretty sure the last 2 league games after going a goal down we would never have got a point and would be staring down the barrel of a return to the seaside league, Hopkin will keep us up and we can get this season in the sea where it deserves to be and then judge him on who he brings in and how he does with his own team.

[D'Jaffo]

I imagine the same excuse will be trotted out after every defeat for the next 18 months? Easier than defending the team selection and tactics today though.

More like the next 5 matches.

I said last season that we had to give Kerr time to build his own squad before judging him. I was more patient with him than most but he has built a really really unbalanced squad. Until that is corrected then Hopkin deserves the benefit of the doubt.

[munro7]

But surely, given he can’t change the squad just now, it’s incumbent on the manager to look at what he’s got and play a style that suits the players at his disposal? Not try to shoehorn players into “his” system regardless?
Surely anyone can see there’s literally no point punting balls head height and above at Moffat? The only times we look remotely dangerous is when McCowan, Smith etc get the ball down and pass it with purpose.

[No_Problemo]

9 minutes ago, wuffster said:

 

I imagine the same excuse will be trotted out after every defeat for the next 18 months? Easier than defending the team selection and tactics today though.

Is there a reason for your constant hating towards Hopkin? It’s very strange. 

[yorkshirepud]

That was dreadful viewing from an Ayr point of view. First time they played it on the deck they scored a good goal then created 2 more excellent chances before conceding a really poor goal. Then they spent the rest of the game shelling the ball upfield with no obvious tactical plan. Very lucky to get anything as they didn't look like creating anything until the OG. If they continue to play like that they will go down and deservedly so.
Felt sorry for Alloa who played some decent stuff and scored a cracking 2nd goal. They deserved to win that but when you are at the bottom that's the type of stuff that happens to you.

[Saltire]

1 minute ago, D'Jaffo said:

More like the next 5 matches.

I said last season that we had to give Kerr time to build his own squad before judging him. I was more patient with him than most but he has built a really really unbalanced squad. Until that is corrected then Hopkin deserves the benefit of the doubt.

I agree the manager needs time to build his own squad, but  he also needs to get the best out of the current squad, which to be fair he has done up until today. His tactics were baffling as was his reluctance to change things. The formation and tactics took away our strengths and exposed our weaknesses. At times we looked like a part-time team strugglig against a Premiership team we were so overrun.

I'm sure he will be refecting on today and thinking how to get the positive momentum back. Five games to go to be safe, I feel we'll do it but it won't be a comfortable ride.

[callum-ayr]

14 minutes ago, wuffster said:

 

I imagine the same excuse will be trotted out after every defeat for the next 18 months? Easier than defending the team selection and tactics today though.

The core of the team really isn’t good. Baird and Chalmers here on 2 year deals. Zanatta hardly kicked a ball, not getting the best out of 2 strikers who are now scoring freely at other clubs. Releasing them to sign a guy who hadn’t played in months who we probably won’t see again this season. The assembly of the squad has been poor. Whether we stay up or go down, it’s not really on Hopkin, he’ll be rightly judged on what he does going forward from next season. Too much is being made of the “style” of football we play. This is lower league Scottish football , there’s no tradition to how we play football. If Hopkin gets us a winning team next season, nobody will care how he does it. Also it’s the tippy tappy crap that’s got us into his position in the first place. 

[HMIP]

10 minutes ago, No_Problemo said:

Is there a reason for your constant hating towards Hopkin? It’s very strange. 

It’s a bit of a worry that after 2 years at the club, you can’t find a Morton fan with a positive thing to say about the guy.  

[itzdrk]

54 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Not seen an own goal that bad in a while. Trouten on with four minutes to go. Camera pinging about chasing shadows all game and no commentary.

I'm away to smother my screams with a pillow.

IMO the highlight of commentary today was this cliffhanger

 

 

[Guest]

I actually didn't think there was much between the teams as both were pretty poor, however I did notice that we had our best spell of the match when Grant went for broke in the last 10 mins and put on Trouten for Ray Grant. That probably says as much about us as them and even with the game opening up the final ball from Walsh in particular was nothing short of atrocious.

I agree with those that said our tactics and style today were terrible but I can't see how that is "typical Hopkin" when in the last few games we've played some decent stuff and in particular the display at Dens was excellent football at times. Raith at home was poor but Raith away was also not too bad.

For what it's worth I still don't think some of our players are working hard enough or getting involved enough, Walsh looks a shadow of the player who I saw at Inverness and thought we were getting, Smith has been pretty good mostly but lacks support and doesn't have that extra bit of pace that would be required to make him a top player. McCowan had a rather frustrating day as the ball just didn't break for him and once again our wing backs didn't link up enough with the midfield or forwards, which was probably due to the ball being lumped up the park every few minutes. Miller didn't really get involved and Murdoch was also a passenger, so Yes, all in all pretty poor.

As for Alloa, Cawley had Houston on toast (especially in the second half) and the second goal was a cracking strike but similar to us they found it difficult to get a passing rhythm going and lacked a bit of quality today.

Ultimately a draw was a fair result for me on the balance of play / chances, although without the fortunate og equaliser it's hard to believe we'd have managed a goal ourselves as we were huffing and puffing and going pretty much nowhere by that point.

Anyway, I wish Alloa all the best and would love to see them stay up (although obviously not at our expense), but I do think it will be very difficult unless they can put a wee run together and hope that Morton and Arbroath take little from their next few matches, but hopefully we'll meet again in the Championship thread next season and NOT the League 1 forum.......

[Wee wasp]

58 minutes ago, Kevchenko said:

Didn’t expect to be saying this before the game but that’s 2 points dropped today. Think that own goal goes down as one of those things that happens when you’re down at the bottom. Shame as we looked very comfortable at 2-1.

Second half was a pretty good performance, with Cawley looking really strong late on.

Williamson should be proud of his performance today, goal aside, he played very well and you could see the confidence growing in him throughout the second half.

Cameron and Connelly linked well again up top. As much stick as Peter Grant has taken this season, his decision to bring Connelly in over the last month or so has been a very good one as it’s taking a bit of pressure off how much running Cameron was having to do.

Thought Liam Dick had a very good game today, as did the rest of the defence as a whole.

Decent results for us elsewhere but that probably should have been a win today.

Grant needs to step up and drop his son. We are playing a man short with him in there now. Could justify what each of the other 10 players brought to that game today, but wholeheartedly cannot give an example of what Ray Grant is 

Surely paddy connolly has some input into team selectionsand musr see what were all seeing regarding grant, his effort to track the boy at the first goal was awful n so much so Andy graham came over and we lost a man in the box cause of it, he brings nothing to the team 

[BFTD]

11 minutes ago, itzdrk said:

IMO the highlight of commentary today was this cliffhanger

 

 

So did everyone else have commentary today? I had nothing but ground noise  

Away back to the pillow.