Berry

Week 2: Peterhead

Week 1: Falkirk

It was difficult to tell going into this how up for it Falkirk in particular would be bearing in mind the title race was practically over, they have an important semi final and fighting to stay above Airdrie for a more favourable playoff position I can’t see being a big motivator for the players right now. My assumption would be they would be aiming to just not lose the game but the way they came out, they hammered us and deservedly took the 2-0 lead, still in disbelief how Falkirk ended the same half at 2-2, almost 2-3! That match very much sums up majority of our season, we’ve rarely blown anyone away in this league, our performances haven’t been spectacular with our first half slowness well known and talked about previously but McPakes got us grinding out results, learning not to lose, only the glitch away at Montrose which we repaid the favour on recently, that’s what has been most impressive. It will be interesting to see how we get on next season, still think we need new strikers and wingers to be more of a threat up top but defensively across the season we’ve been reasonably sound. As for Falkirk, I don’t particularly care if they come up with us or not but if I were a fan of theres I wouldn’t be too downhearted, they can still end the season likely exceeding their expectations, they can still very much get promoted and it’s not inconceivable to see Falkirk in the final. They do need to pick up some form though and quickly. Partly deflated after losing to us at EEP and probably now eyes focusing a little to much on the semi-final I would’ve thought. League will be sewn up officially next week at some point and hopefully gives us an advantage when it comes to sorting the playing squad out for next season.

I think some are reading too much into our defensive record to date. Yes to have not conceded so far this league campaign is really good going and we have certainly been more solid than in previous campaigns. If I were Airdrie though I’d be confident of scoring today. We had Alloa where we had to clear the ball off the line in the opening minutes, against Montrose Rory McCallister passed up an excellent opportunity to score, and even against Edinburgh City, we let one of their boys in one on one with the keeper. We’re not as solid at the back as on paper suggests, if you consider these teams came to frustrate rather than necessarily have a good go where we know Airdrie will come with a more attacking mentality, I think they’ll have more opportunities to score and hit the net. Offensively, don’t think we’ve been that great at all either, didn’t really deserve to beat Alloa, an absolute fluke saved us. Struggled to breakdown Montrose if it wasn’t for Todorov and we couldn’t beat Kelty Hearts…one assured performance against Edinburgh and even then there were disappointments we didn’t punt 6 or 7 in. I’m just happy that we’ve managed to grind out the results that we’ve had but it’s not sustainable until we bring reinforcements in. I think there will be a bit of a reality check today and predicting a 0-2 defeat but so hoping I’ll be proven wrong. This fixture I think is where we’ll truly see where the Pars are at I think.

Just watched the highlights and yeah not convinced the Sammon incident was a penalty. Can I ask though, for those that say we need to improve for the better teams we’ll face, who are they? Alloa looked a pretty solid outfit and looking at the results, can’t see many teams you can point at and say they’re significantly better?

O’Hara has been really poor, today he was awful, I know we are playing him out of position but practically everything he did today was mince. He does put a shift in though, can’t fault his work ethic.

Very pleased to get out of that game with a W, Alloa will be disappointed not to take anything but the game went pretty much how I thought it would. I thought we were very poor first half, Alloa had a lot of the ball and were in control for the majority, thankfully we had someone to clear the ball off the line. I would be interested to hear from fans who had a better view than me to see whether it was over the line or not, looked close. Would also like to have another look at the Sammon incident in the box as to whether a penalty or not. When you’re not playing well, when a chance presents itself you’ve got to take it and I thought Todd should’ve put the chance he had away. Second half we were better but again lacked a goal threat. I thought O’Hara was very poor and we looked more of a threat when McPake brought him and Chalmers off for Todorov and Wighton. We showed a bit of naivety to allow the Alloa players to shoot from range and almost paid the price with the belter off the bar and the good save from Mehmet. It did look like 0-0 but for what was a fluke from Todd and indecisiveness from the keeper, will take it any day. For a team that’s still incomplete and in need of multiple signings, throw in the Hamilton suspension, this was a very important victory to tide us over until next Saturday. MoM for me was Scougall, thought he cruised the game and was a right handful. If I had to pick a Par, would be Benedictus, proper defender and going to be an excellent captain for us.