rgreig

To be fair to Mathie, I think he meant he wanted players who bought into some kind of vision for the club. Not necessarily that they had always dreamed of walking onto Somerset Park but that once they understood the ambition for the club they were excited by it. I am not really convinced that is realistic though unless they are sharing something with prospective players that we fans are not aware of. I find these interviews frustrating because they dance around the key question - how will we compete against clubs with much higher budgets? How does our budget compare with other clubs in the division? We know from the published accounts that teams like partick are spending far more on their squad. But Mathie must know how we are looking compared with the rest of the division. He is right though that unless we sell more tickets we cannot expect the squad budget to rise much.

Yes, I am similar - I attended quite a few away games and streamed the rest. I think I will have paid for almost every game in some way. Economically clubs must benefit - does anyone here know how much Ayr benefited?

Is the SPFL not governed by its members? If so can clubs not propose motions for things like this? I can see advantages in a league-wide service but not if it doesn't actually exist!

To me it is a positive step - a way to optimise what we can achieve with our playing squad (irrespective of the level we may think they are at individually). Look at how some sports have been absolutely revolutionised by used of data, a very obvious example being F1. How many clubs in the championship have this capability already?

That goal against Partick is without a doubt the best I've ever seen in the flesh. I know it looks good on the video but in person it was 10x better with the pace on the ball. Even the Partick fans applauded it.

I was trying to think of a team at our level that had successfully used that formation. Am I right in saying that Tom Hendrie's St Mirren deployed it the year they won the division? I seem to remember they did but it was a while ago now.

I hire quite a lot of people who need visa sponsorship as part of my job and although the circumstances will vary, we are finding the immigration process to be incredibly slow this year - we typically allow 12 weeks for someone to start (and that is paying for the fastest process available). While individual circumstances will clearly impact this, people need to be aware that if Bangala is delayed beyond the start of the season this will absolutely not be the club's fault.

Thanks - so my guess was at least accurate. But if I may ask where did you get the figure? It would be interesting to compare the salary costs in the Championship. I know that Partick has a much higher bill that we do (since they still publish full accounts).

Yes, it makes me think their model doesn't try to factor in the potential for growth in utilisation (i.e. fanbase). I assume they make some broad assumptions based on the capacity of the stadium. It's hard to know for sure what Ayr's wage bill is since the club is small enough that it doesn't have to file full accounts, but I think we can assume somewhere between 800k and 1m per annum. I happen to know that Lincoln City - a mid table League 1 side - has a wage bill of 3.5m and they have home gates of around 10k. We have seen Ayr bring in players from lower league sides recently but to be able to start looking even at League 1 level players we would need to find ways to reduce that delta. Note that the population of Lincoln is only around 100k.

This link is the best one I have seen so far: Most Valuable & Investible Football Clubs | BetVictor

This is quite interesting. I was initially rather surprised that either Arbroath or Ayr would be considered a good investment opportunity because I always thought the relatively low ceiling on gate receipts, fans base etc would be a limiting factor. But reading some of the text, the report authors believe that increases in gate receipts (what they call utilisation) represent a major opportunity. They don't really say why though. What would represent a realistic crowd target for us? Right now 3000 home fans every week would I am sure be considered fantastic by the board. There is an interesting book called The Roar of the Crowd which contains lots of stats about football attendances in Scotland over the years and that does show that Ayr did not historically have lower gates than similar provincial clubs like our county rivals. Maybe I am wrong but I don't think that will change rapidly; we are still suffering from the effects of what Bob Crampsie many years ago described as "Ayr on a shoe string".

Interesting, I had completely forgotten that!! Now that you've jogged my memory I do remember the last day of the season very well with the late goal at Clyde sealing Kilmarnock's fate. For some reason I thought that was the following year.

It may not have meant much for Ayr, but if we interpret the question to mean generally significant goals, I think I would also add Sludden's goal against St Johnstone on the 29th of April 1989, which was the last goal scored in a competitive match at Muirton Park.

Eddie Anand, penalty against Hibs in the League Cup Semi-Final.

I think he has certainly got potential, but I would be surprised if he is in your starting eleven - at least not until he has developed further. He did very well for us last season but I don't think he was our best midfielder. Don't get me wrong though - definitely a good signing for you in my opinion in the context of what I assume is a significant overhaul of your squad.

That would be a real pity. For many of us with work commitments the streaming services (however variable the quality!) give us an opportunity to watch games live that we otherwise wouldn't have. I don't understand why the SPFL would do this - surely this just gives an additional revenue stream for clubs? It's not as if any broadcaster is looking to purchase the rights to show matches live on Saturdays. Unless the SPFL is planning to replace the current arrangements with an alternative provider this just seems to be a retrograde step for both fans and clubs.

I think his versatility was his strength but I agree that generally I think we should be aiming for better. But it would be interesting to know whether we offered him a deal that reflected the fact that he would like not be a regular starter, or whether he was actually someone that Bullen was expecting to keep and to start. That would give us a clearer view of our ambitions for next season.

I don't know about Queen's Park, but the Cove chairman gave an interview on BBC Radio Scotland after they secured promotion saying that the playing side of the club had improved more rapidly than they expected and that they would be remaining hybrid next season while they complete infrastructure projects. So I don't think they will be spending to create a promotion winning team yet. But it sounds like they have a multi-year plan and it may be that when we are also in a position to make that promotion push they will be formidable rivals.

Yes but my most vivid recollection was that complete waste of space Innes Cameron missing from approximately 3 yards out which would have put us 3-0 up, only for Morton to score their first almost immediately afterwards. We were excellent in the first half but that game shattered the confidence of both the players and Mark Kerr and I don't recall us ever recovering the form of those first 45 minutes.

I don't think CF has been the position where his contribution to the team is strongest. For Ashford, maybe he can contribute more in a wider position (I haven't been at the games where he has been played in that position so I don't have a view on that either way) but my point is that I don't think we should be looking at him as a centre forward for next season based on what I have seen and his goals return. I have seen him getting into very good positions but his finishing for whatever reason hasn't been good enough. I think we have seen enough of Tomi to know that he will easily score more than last season in a Bullen team, so the task is to find another CF who can get into double figures and we will be looking up rather than down.

I rate centre forwards on their goal scoring ability. One goal every 500 minutes might be OK for a midfielder (e.g. Maxwell has that stat) but for me I expect a lot better from someone playing in the CF position. That's not to say he can't do a job for the team in another position but for me I just don't see him as a good choice at centre forward. Clearly he'll bang in 20 goals next season for us now!!

I can only hope this is the case too since as I have said before Ashford is abysmal as a centre forward. I am looking forward to seeing who they have lined up to play alongside Tomi.

I was surprised at how many players we have offered new contracts to, but what isn't clear is how many of them are likely to be second choice in their position. We know that Albinson will be obviously, but how many of the rest? If he is planning on bringing in 4 or 5 players who are expected to be starters then that puts quite a different slant on it.

Ahh, thanks. I had not realised it was the UK visa sponsorship licence that was being referred to here. I guess not many clubs in the Championship would expect to bring players in from outside the UK, so although it isn't expensive I agree it must mean we have at least a couple of players we are looking at. Did Hamilton have any track record of bringing in overseas players?

Can someone explain what this licence is and what it means? Apologies if this is a dumb question. Without the licence we could only sign players from certain countries? How many other Championship clubs have this licence?