Bridie Vision

Woo! Team of the Week for Stef. While Slater is obviously the star man for Forfar this season, Stef is probably up there. 2nd best outfield player at the club?

Always enjoy a Boxing Day fixture, and the New Year's Game! Having a crowd of 500 is a slight disappointment as I imagine Forfar would have hoped for maybe 700 people to attend but 500 is still enough for some atmosphere and is thankfully around our season average as the post @nofixedability linked to. For Stenny fans thinking of travelling up will have to get to Forfar early on Saturday and pick up tickets at 11:30. However, for away fans mainly, the fact we don't have the facility to buy tickets online as a few other clubs can do is maybe something the board can look at in the future.

Highlights.

What a game the boys are having! Wish I had made the journey down!

Looks like Grant Anderson is missing due to injury or illness so Slater is playing out wide, at least according to BBC Sport.

Will be an interesting game. We know Thomson and Ness will be out but unsure who else is ruled out. Forfar might line up like this: McCallum Meechan, Munro, S. Anderson, Strachan McCluskey, Slater, Moore, G. Anderson Aitken, Shepherd

Boring football? Stuart Malcolm was boring football. We've played some nice stuff under Gary Irvine. Yes the performances over the last few weeks have been grinding out results, which we are getting, but we shouldn't be overly surprised by that, for a few reasons. Coatbridge last week was a dreadful pitch, you have to grind a result. It's winter, so the weather is cold, wet and dark, which affects games. We're comfortably 2nd, every team we meet (except Kelty) will be more defensive because they know how good we are. Me personally, I'm enjoying going to Station Park at the moment and long may that continue, it's a heck of a difference to last season when all we had was livestreams and losing every Saturday!

Looking at the highlights, it's still tricky, but I think the referee disallowed Bikey's goal for handball. It appears the ball hit his arm before he kicked it in, but was his arm in an unnatural position? Probably not. I'll let all you lads decide.

Relatively comfortable for us. Was a little on edge part way through the 2nd half as Stirling looked to attack. I also don't know the reason why the goal was disallowed. Don't know why Strachan was absent but if he is injured, along with Fisher getting injured just makes the Travis loan look worse as he'd be needed now. (Also, he scored for Berwick today) Don't fancy Yussef as LB for the next however long.

3 points, Forfar home win, surely! When we lost to Stirling last time it was a bit of a disappointment but Stirling were right up with us in the table at that point, however, the Binos have fallen off a cliff so we should have more than enough. Be nice to pick up a clean sheet.

Bit sketchy after Albion equalised but we regained ourselves and got the winner.

Haha well done to whoever sent that in to the announcer!

Looks like we will have a few players missing through injury. However, we should still have enough to pick up a win at Coatbridge.

@Loon From Outta Toon doesn't want Hilson, I'm fine for him to have his 7th spell at the club though. More realistically, however, if Irvine does look for a striker in January it'll most likely be an Premier league youngster from Aberdeen or Dundee or somewhere like that on loan.

Anyone know of strikers who might be open to a loan move in January that would be an upgrade on Matty?

4-3-3 is how we played against Cowdenbeath. I agree with the various comments, I am a big fan of Matty but he appears to be bereft of confidence, the issue is Shepherd has been poor all season, Doris would get a hernia if he played more than 15 minutes, leaving only Stef, so you could play a lineup like this: McCallum Meechs, Munro, Anderson, Strachan Ness, Slater, Thomas Thomson, Stef, PJ/Grant That's not bad but is Stef a lone striker? How likely does a Hilson loan move sound?

DIABOLICAL PERFORMANCE

Take care all who are travelling, I'll be going via Brechin as the Froickheim Road is closed. This better be a good game for me to be freezing for!

As long as it is decided we'll before the match. Either postpone it around 12ish or we play the full match. I don't want to arrive at Gayfield, get frozen waiting for officials to decide what to do, or worse the game kicks off but then gets abandoned after 15 minutes. If the game is postponed, when would it be rescheduled? The coming Tuesday or next Saturday?

That's right! I had forgotten Munro is suspended for Saturday. Will Gary play himself or Fisher alongside Anderson then? Everyone is asking for Gary to sign a striker in January! If Hilly did come back to the club, hopefully he wouldn't be a Steven Doris 2.0 - his injury ruining his career and returning 4x the size he was previously, if that's the case then we'll never sign a striker again from Arbroath!

In truth I thought Travis might start alongside Munro for the cup, but he hasn't been in the team so he deserves playing time, and can understand the loan move. I just hope it doesn't end up ending his Forfar career (by getting released at the end of the season). We aren't light in the CB area, we still have Fisher and Hussain on loan, although I doubt their loans will get extended in January. Does anyone know how Whyte is getting on? Any nearer to resuming training?

Andy Munro is in Team of the Week, he's had a cracking few weeks. But come on lads! Arbroath at the weekend who's excited?

Highlights!

Probably, however, just imagine if Gary finds a bang in form striker for us in January and Kelty pick up a couple injuries to key players? Won't happen but it's nice to dream.

I said we'd win a would like it to be by a comfortable margin, and if you only looked at the score then that would appear true, it just took us until nearly the 80th minute to get a goal. We started in a 4-3-3 which looks to be forced rather than tactical with Stef & Thomson injured. I think Grant Anderson was the turning point. Shep was as effective on the wing as he is up front, i.e. not very. Forfar controlled possession but it was all sideways (much like Cowdenbeath), that was probably because Slater was playing just in front of our defense, and sadly Archie and Gallagher couldn't make those driving runs, however, when we returned to 4-4-2 it helped us a lot. After the 1st goal Cowden's heads dropped and from then I knew we wouldn't lose, so it was nice for us to grab 3. We are a real threat from set pieces - well big Andy is - which is good. Lovely movement for our second, and that is what we are seeing more often under Gary Irvine, he seems to put a lot of time into build-ups. The third was odd, scoring from a direct FK is usually awesome to watch but Matty's kick seemed to just go in fairly slowly, Cowden obviously had totally lost concentration to allow what wasn't that great a free kick to go into the net, still that's nice for Matty and hopefully gives him some confidence, was surprised to see him step up and take it, ordinarily I would've expected Slater or Strachan to take it. With Stirling losing that gives us more breathing space in 2nd place.