rgreig
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Posts posted by rgreig
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48 minutes ago, Trogdor said:
Oppo research complete, findings below:
Peterhead are dross
McAllister is done
So, home win?
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1 hour ago, diegomarahenry said:
The defending at those goals was a shambles. One of them, the whole defence stands and watches while Murphy runs 40 yards past them to try and block a cross. Reading is on the right wing at one point.
I don't know how so many players can be so shit at the same time.
I firmly believe it's the coaching as I have said many times before. It is clear the players are not clear on how the formation should be implemented particularly out of possession.
The championship is full of journeyman players. A team with a good coach and just a couple of slightly higher quality forward players should do well. Last season we had an outstanding forward player and a dud coach. This season we are left with the dud and the outcome is entirely predictable.
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1 hour ago, AyrExile said:
The situation has improved for Bullen in a few areas but the elephant in the room is the standard of football and ability to compete at home. You can't really hide from this as less people will make the effort and it will hit turnover. This as t a time when cash is tight and paying for a new stand. I would certainly say he's been told to sort this out
Bullen can point to individual errors, but anyone who is a neutral would say that QP fully deserved the draw yesterday. Yet again Bullen was out-thought by another manager in the division. While other managers make substitutions or formation changes to turn games in their favour, Bullen specialises in doing the opposite.
When the opposition retains possession we are particularly ineffective and rely on individual brilliance. Take Murphy and Chalmers out our team and we cannot compete.
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1 hour ago, Thumper said:
It's more likely that he's under pressure from the dressing room. They are surely even more acutely aware than the fans that he barely has a clue what is going on.
Maybe he has failed to hit a target he was given. I think it's 8 points since the start of October.
He certainly had quite an OOT reaction to the person in the stand who took him to task about his substitutions.
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59 minutes ago, UpInTheAyr said:
He's made a point of that kinda stuff not bothering him, he's too experienced etc. But he's talking shite you can tell he can't handle it.
I saw this as I was leaving and Bullen was clearly very unhappy at the (entirely valid and fair) criticism. He's clearly rattled by people criticising him.
Poor team selection, poor substitutions, team poor out of possession again. Sums up Bullen as a coach completely.
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21 hours ago, No_Problemo said:
There are the makings of some positive signs, particularly if Senga can continue like that.
I was watching the stream so it was harder for me to see the shape clearly, but from what I could tell it seems that Senga's positional sense and discipline was far better than Young's. If he keeps that up then to me it's a no-brainer to start him over Young.
I also thought that Stanger had some good passes out of defence and I would start him over Musonda.
On Dowds, I really don't understand why Thistle let him go out on loan. I know he was impacted by injury last season but if you look at his stats for the league and Scottish Cup, he scored a goal every 135 minutes last season. That is an excellent stat, particularly considering that he wasn't getting a consistent run in the team due to injury. Maybe they think Adeloye will have an even better return than that, and who knows they might be right about that.
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9 hours ago, D'Jaffo said:
People can criticise but also have to acknowledge improvement. I think a better barometer to base it from is the Arbroath game. We had just signed our new midfielders and the personal is exactly the same (batting Dowds) as to what we have now. There has been a clear improvement from then in terms of the likes of Syla, Young and Senga bedding in.
We have two very talented players in Murphy and Chalmers who allow us to create chances going forward. I don't think anybody can dispute that (and it's great to have players who can actually take decent corners at long last).
However, we are just nowhere when out of possession. Our formation could be described as 4-WTF-2. As you rightly pointed out later in your post, the midfield is culpable in the first-half shambles. To me, this is a coaching issue since it's not something that has just been an issue since Dempsey and Murdoch were injured - it's a hallmark of Bullen's teams.
Although you could say we were unlucky not to score one of the other chances we created, I also felt that Raith could easily have gone in 3-0 up at half time and they had one very good chance in the second half as well. It is very clear to me that Raith have better coaching staff than we do.
Dowds looked good I thought and I think he's likely to start every week if he remains fit.
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48 minutes ago, AuAl said:
Aye the first half was horrendous and showed so much of the issues that we've been seeing for so long. The perfect example of how lost we look a lot of the time and how soft we are as a unit.
Second half was better, mostly because we utilised Dowds well and tried to get the ball out to Murphy or Chalmers more often.
But aye, f**k all has changed really. Our approach is way off and we are so easy to break through. When defending, the shape of the our midfield and defence never seems right.
It was the same as the Partick game. Terrible positioning and lack of discipline when out of possession, particularly in midfield. Not helped by the obvious weakness in the RB position. I would bite your hand off for 8th right now.
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51 minutes ago, No_Problemo said:
I’ll be amazed if he isn’t questioning our management team of youth coaches.
I really hope so. Last night for me it was very clear that the biggest issue was not recruitment but the coaching. We have a couple of talented players and some very average players but a decent coach could get a lot more out of the team I think by just sorting out the basics.
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10 minutes ago, AyrExile said:
We have a coaching team now which should avoid the problems relying solely on a manager but is actually adding to these. Our head coach is bad but needs emptied however i think some of the others round him may also be bad and not helping matters.
There has been a lot of discussion about the recruitment but for me it's the coaching that is the most glaring deficiency in the team. I have no idea what Bullen tells the players to do when they come out - we just give the opposition a great deal of possession, and don't even do the basics of competing for the ball when the opposition gets a throw-in (e.g. lead up to first goal last night). There are acres of space between defence and midfield at times due to lack of midfield discipline and a better team than Partick would have exploited that even more. 4-0 is not going to be even close to our heaviest home defeat if things continue as they are.
I think that our only hope is that McGeady -whether you like him or not, he's not an idiot - is telling Smith and Mathie exactly how inept the coaching is.
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3 hours ago, WATTOO said:
We've only played 3 games and don't even have our team put together yet.
I think we are looking at one more player coming in?
I don't have much to add beyond what several others have said, but I think the interesting dynamic is what McGeady will be saying to Mathie. It's slightly unusual having a player with a dual role and reporting to someone other than the manager/first team coach. It will give Mathie another insight into Bullen's performance as a coach.
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11 hours ago, Finlay21 said:
The reason you did not get the link automatically is due to you have selected that you don’t want to receive emails from the club by the looks of it
If we aren't sending any emails at all to people due to the marketing preferences that must cause a lot of entirely avoidable issues. GDPR specifically distinguishes between transactional emails and marketing emails and you are allowed to send transactional emails (which are defined at a very high level as being triggered by an interaction with a business's website) irrespective of marketing preferences.
I don't know what it is like from the club's perspective but as a user of the total tickets platform to buy tickets I find it a confusing mess. I can only imagine how bad it must be for people who are not comfortable with technology. I have always found the club to be very prompt in responding to and solving the various issues I have had with tickets but the overhead in administering it must be very frustrating.
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2 hours ago, No_Problemo said:
It’s not remotely spot on to say that Mathie and Bullen should have been sacked at the end of last season - that is genuinely mental.
It is absolutely fair enough to have some reservations on Bullen, but we’ll see how that plays out over the next few weeks.
I obviously don't know what targets they were both set at this time last season, but I think it's fair to assume they both met or exceeded those targets. On that basis I think it would have been extremely unreasonable to exit them. But this year's targets will be more challenging.
The point about the starting eleven only having two changes from last season is probably something that Bullen would agree with - we know that we have missed out on several key targets already this season so it is clear that this was not the plan. Whether anyone is specifically to blame for that or whether it is just where we are financially I don't know.
I ended up being unable to go to the game yesterday which sounds like it was lucky for me!
Finally, on Ahui I would not write him off yet. I have a friend who is a Lincoln fan who told me that he is a good footballer and should do well for us (and he usually sets quite a high bar). As a point of comparison when we signed Maguire he told me he was a waste of space and would do absolutely nothing for us. I can only hope that he is as right about Ahui as he was about Maguire!
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On 31/07/2023 at 11:24, callum-ayr said:
Went online to see what the script with tickets were, but can't see any for sale. Weathers not looking great so WDE wouldn't be the best...
Does anyone know if away fans will be able to get into the stand today? (I thought that one end of the stand could be used by the away support?)
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9 minutes ago, WATTOO said:
We were apparently around 600 in the "early bird" but not heard any update recently.
I've actually not got around to buying my own yet but will probably deal early next week.
I do think our attendance is a bit odd. We seem to have a very strong core support which is translates into excellent away support (I haven't worked it out but I would imagine our away to home support ratio must be one of the best in the division). But other clubs that on the face of it should be similar to ours manage to outsell us by a significant margin.
Marketing has been very poor during this close season and I won't reopen the whole discussion about the improvement that is needed in the use of social media as a marketing tool.
I guess we should really be focussed on overall attendance though. I have said in the past that I think that a season ticket is very simplistic legacy pricing model and that with digital ticketing we should be looking at other pricing models to create incentives to attend etc. It does come down to the technology though and it's clear the club does not have service providers in that space who are up to the mark.
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6 minutes ago, Roxanne's man said:
No, your right. There was definitely two of them at one point. Pandamonium and Chaos.
Though I think after the final and the following season, Ayr hit a serious decline, in interest especially, so I guess there was no need for two.
You know your club is in a perilous financial state when they halve the number of mascots. We will only truly believe Smith is serious about this project when we have a minimum of three.
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1 hour ago, Thumper said:
Having watched that video I'm leaning far more toward him being a manager-in-waiting. Mentioned Bullen exactly once.
I noticed this too and wondered if I was overanalysing it, but since you have also immediately spotted it then perhaps not. He was clearly brought in by Mathie since he mentioned him numerous times and only mentioned "Lee" (not "gaffer" or "the manager") once.
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6 minutes ago, Finlay21 said:
Believe it’s a lot more than that
That's great to hear. I think this will be the real test of Mathie and Glendinning - can we now genuinely strengthen the overall squad addressing the positions we have all said need significant improvement. If we end up getting 150k or whatever it is, and then end up finishing 6th then I think then is when people can genuinely ask questions about the strategy and their part in it.
On the topic of the season ticket fiasco, I am still on holiday so haven't been concerned about attending games but the lack of communication is quite odd and is rightly being called out as unacceptable. I would suspect that they had much stronger demand than expected but didn't have much technology or automation to support the administration of it and are now up against it trying to sort it out in a period when staff will be on holiday. It looks like their ticket provider is perhaps not the finest solution in the market either. If what I have written is close to accurate then this is where they should have held their hands up and perhaps asked for some volunteers in the support to provide some help - many of us who are employed in IT deal with these kinds of things all the time.
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7 hours ago, Aliayr76 said:
could thay have went to the college or university and got 3-4 folk doing media course and then gave them a chance at 1 game each then the fans could have voted on who was the best,
I think you could be onto something here. I don't think it would be a cheap option - if you turn some media students loose on this you would in all likelihood end up with a disaster however if it was done as a partnership between a further education institute it could fit into Smith's stated desire to support community initiatives. It would need experienced professionals to underpin and support it but if done well it could give long term benefits to both the club and the institutions (as well as the students obviously).
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7 hours ago, RedEd said:
Not aware of any changes to legislation - that's not to say it hasn't happened though. It would difficult to police and right pain for employers to administer.
I agree. It would be entirely pointless to try to force companies to interview externally - it would just waste everyone's time since if you have an internal candidate lined up you can always just give them the job in the end.
If there is a good internal candidate it is nearly always preferable to looking externally since it reduces risk. There are things that are difficult to assess in a few hours of interview whereas you will have years of feedback on some internal candidates.
I think it is very positive that the club is able to give new opportunities to volunteers or existing staff and hopefully that can continue as the club grows.
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1 hour ago, D'Jaffo said:
My theory is that the club will have been quite open with him about letting him leave but a clubs needs to meet our valuation of him. Someone will meet that within the next week I’m sure.
I don't see why the club would rush at all. Whatever people say about the level of the Scottish Championship, we are selling a player who was comfortably the top scorer in the division last season and also the player of the year. That is a scarce resource and the club's directors have a duty to maximise the value they receive.
For every one of us who is clamouring to get the money for him, there are also fans and directors of other clubs who know they need a proven goalscorer. We just need to hold our nerve and trust that we have people negotiating who understand the true market value.
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3 minutes ago, rb123! said:
Will be some laugh when Ashford is given a 2 year deal
Surely you mean 3.
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3 hours ago, edinburghhonestman said:
Looking at Dunfermline's home league crowds, your figures look a bit light. I have their average as 4776 and given they only had 6 home games with less than 4000 that seems legit. That's where my £700-900k came from.
Irrespective of exact figures, it's clear we've had a very good season financially compared to other clubs around us and that should allow us to build for next season.
You are absolutely right, I can't count! That 700k is significant. Fortunately, Dunfermline only made £82,780 above their minimum income from prize money. But still, if they can keep a good number of those supporters for next season they will have a very healthy budget.
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3 hours ago, PB1994 said:
Is it just prize money you are looking at here? As you can add on at least £1.2 million onto The Caleys total just from ticket revenue from the Scottish Cup Semi and Final.
Yes, it was just prize money. I hadn't actually considered that the gate receipts would be worth so much but of course they will be, especially since the semi-final receipts are the aggregate split four ways.
I don't know if ICT have debts that urgently need to be paid off but if not then it should be a really interesting season ahead for them. I think Dodds is a good manager so if he recruits well they should be serious title contenders.
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The Ultimate Super Ayr Thread
in Scottish Championship General Chatter
Posted
Hard to imagine anyone appreciating yesterday's performance. The only thing you could say in our favour was that we were unlucky to concede due to an error but overall I thought we looked poor particularly in the first half. Dundee Utd weren't great - so maybe the quote above is actually referring to the reaction of Raith fans thinking about their title chances.
In the first three minutes, Dundee Utd had three corners and a goal chalked off for offside. That set the tone for the first half really, and although I hate to see anyone get injured I was relieved when he went off. After a worrying five minute spell, Ahui did settle down and I think was better than McAllister.
Bullen's subs are very strange and guaranteed to rile the fans. I don't understand how he thought we would get an equaliser with the changes he made, and I would really like Callum to ask him that question instead of the usual "tough one to take, Lee".
I thought despite poor service that Dowds did ok - if he had hit his chance harder after Docherty slipped I reckon it wouldn't have been cleared off the line. In contrast I had forgotten Bryden was even on the pitch most of the time.