Mr November

Airdrie’s best games last season were with Paton sitting in front of the defence, allowing Kyle Turner to drive forward. I can see something similar working for Dumbarton, Paton as a holding midfielder, McKee being given freedom to get forward and Carswell covering the space in between. I quite like most of the signings Stevie Farrell has made so far, certainly seems like an upgrade on last season’s team. Perhaps a lack of pace but it’s always good to have a few experienced players like Geggan and Paton in your squad at this level.

Within the hour he’s signed for Dumbarton!

Fair play for signing two of our most divisive players! Roy definitely has some ability, he just didn’t show it often enough at Airdrie. He started pretty well in his first season, scoring a couple of goals in the Betfred Cup games. He missed a penalty in our second league game though and just never seemed to recover from that. He’s very much a confidence player, as any chance he got after that penalty miss he didn’t look comfortable and missed quite a lot of good chances when he was playing. The only other goal I remember him scoring that season was a great finish in a 4-0 win against East Fife but we were already 3-0 up, so he could go on and play without pressure. He had another great pre-season last summer but picked up a bad injury in the first competitive game and was out until pretty much after the restart in March. He did ok this season in his limited playing time, scored a few goals including the winner in the 1-0 win at Dumbarton that started our great run towards the end of the season. I think letting him go this summer was the correct choice for everyone though. It’s not for a lack of effort but he really does seem to be a confidence player and the slightest dent to that leaves him struggling. I thought his best move would be to drop down a level or two and have a season playing regularly, as I think he’d do well in that environment. Fair play to him if he manages that at Queens but I’m not convinced he’s good enough for that level. I think Paul McKay is a much better signing but others may disagree.

Paton made a big deal about going part-time last summer, so I'd be surprised if he gets many better offers than us, both financially and size of club. Who knows, we may well miss out on him to someone else but if he's turned down East Kilbride then it does seem pretty likely that he'll end up here.

Going by the wording I’m guessing this might be Joe McKee? I was hoping Airdrie would sign him but we’ve signed enough of your players already this summer, it wouldn’t be very fair if we started signing your transfer targets too.

Brilliant news! Certainly sounds like he’ll be used as a defender rather than in midfield. I was happy enough with the defence as it was but this really adds to that and gives us a great base to build from.

I’m not sure how well a midfield of Paton and Agnew would do, we’d definitely need a third player in there who was very energetic and good box to box. I know Rhys McCabe has been mentioned elsewhere but from the little I know of him he’s not really that kind of player. Steven Bell would be a phenomenal signing. He made a massive difference to Thistle when he came in there and him and Fordyce would be a very solid defence to build from. I think he originally left Ayr and went part-time as he didn’t feel up to Championship football anymore so perhaps our hybrid system would suit him well. I like how Murray was saying yesterday that he didn’t want to name our targets and rightly so, only for Stevie Aitken to come out the next day and name two of them He really loves the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he?

Aye it's brilliant. Goes right in to the opposition box and gets the commentary team pumped every time before he takes one. More importantly it was directly responsible in creating a whopping 0 goals all season for us. That sounds very familiar, this swap for McKay and McCabe could work out pretty well then. Paul McKay loves a long throw too, it generally doesn’t come to much unless you’re playing Falkirk. It guarantees about three goals a season against them.

Yeah that’s us at 11 now I think, excluding Robert who could be under contract but will no doubt be away anyway. It’s hard to judge these signings too much until we have a full squad. We’re pretty much building a full squad from scratch and we don’t have the budget to sign a full team of Championship level players, we’re going to have to pad it out with a fair number of League One players. We know Currie is a good keeper at this level and I think our starting defence will include Wardrop, Fordyce and Quitongo, possibly Watson too. Assuming we move back to a back four we’re probably a backup keeper and a centre back away from the defence being sorted now that Walker’s signed up. It’s not as good as the defence we started last season with but it still looks like a solid enough League One defence. Admittedly it was due to the system we played but Murray made Chris O’Neil look like a good League One centre back so I reckon we’ll be ok defensively next season with some proven League One defenders. Midfield is a bigger issue, with only Agnew and Frizzell as starters so far. I think the rest of our signings here will make or break the season. We need to bring in at least one winger and two central midfielders good enough to start for a team aiming for promotion, which won’t be easy to do. I suspect these signings might take a bit longer to come in, as we’re probably competing with bigger clubs for these sorts of players and we might have to wait until later in the month. Murray keeps stressing the importance of Turner and Paton fixing the midfield issue we’ve had for a few years now so he is at least aware of it. Given that Gallagher Is now vice captain I think he’ll be the main striker again, which I’m fine with assuming we bring in a good midfield who can create chances for him. We definitely need at least one more quality striker as I don’t think Allan or Pyott will be anything more than subs but again, we might have to wait a bit longer for this sort of player to come in.

I believe we offered O’Reilly a contract, he wasn’t on our initial released list and was only announced as leaving earlier this week alongside Paul McKay who seems to he away to Queen of the South. I guess O’Reilly’s left Airdrie to get regular game time, something which he got towards the end of last season but probably wasn’t guaranteed for next year. He’s very quick, raw and direct but doesn’t quite know how to put all of that together yet. I think there is a decent player in there but other than his spell at BSC he hasn’t played a great deal of first-team football. He joined Airdrie on loan in the 2019/20 season and looked alright in a few appearances early in the season but he picked up a bad injury and was out for the rest of the season. We signed him permanently last summer and he never really got much of a chance until after the restart, one of his few starts early in the season was actually the cup game at Ochilview where he was pretty poor. He came into the team for five or six games after the restart in March and looked quite promising, very quick and direct but no real end product unfortunately. He picked up another injury and didn’t play again until the play-off final against Morton where he started in central midfield. He looked really out of his depth in both games but a lot of that is probably the full team looking exhausted and O’Reilly’s skillset clearly not being suited to a central midfielder. He’ll certainly add some much need pace to a midfield containing Forbes and Wedderburn and I think with a run of games he could do pretty well in League Two. I wouldn’t expect much in the way of goals and assists but he’ll cause defenders a lot of problems with his pace. Now that I think about it, as far as wide players go he’s pretty much the opposite of Ross Forbes, so maybe they’ll actually work quite well together.

I’m shocked that he actually played 13 games for us. Admittedly most of those were off the bench but it felt like he barely played. Stokes looked pretty good in pre-season, generally playing as an attacking midfielder and he set up the only goal in a friendly win over Queen of the South. He never really got going in any competitive games though. Admittedly he didn’t get too many chances but when he did start he never showed anything to merit getting a run in the team. On a couple of occasions he was played deeper in midfield or up front but he never looked comfortable in either position. He played as a deeper midfielder in one of our defeats to Edinburgh City where he was completely anonymous. I don’t think he’s particularly strong or quick but he seemed to have a good eye for a pass in pre-season. I feel if the team is built around him he’ll do pretty well but just never got going at Airdrie. I get the feeling that there might be a decent player in there, he just needs the right environment to show it. I can’t wait for the 3-3 draws next season with Agnew, Wardrop, Quitongo and Stokes all scoring.

Talking of Max Currie, really pleased he’s signed up for next season. The defence is going to look pretty different next season after being very settled for a couple of years, so it’s important to try and keep Currie in goals given how good he was after the restart. I felt he was ok in the first half of the season, he never really cost us many goals but also never pulled out any saves I wouldn’t expect him to make. He seemed to really improve after the 4-2 defeat to Thistle though, where admittedly he was very poor, and made some big saves while on our great run. I know some of our fans still think David Hutton is better but for me Currie showed over the latter part of the season that he is at least as good, if not better than Hutton and he’ll hopefully improve with age. He’s still pretty young for a keeper but hopefully we can build with him in goals for the next couple of seasons.

The talk in the Falkirk thread is that there’s Premiership and Championship teams interested in McCann. The interview he did a month or so ago was pretty adamant that he’d only go somewhere he’ll be playing first-team football so I suppose he could still end up at Falkirk but I hope he ends up in a higher league. He’s been a great player for us over the last two years and I’d much rather he got a chance at a higher level rather than playing against us for one of our rivals. If he does move to Falkirk then while it’s always disappointing to lose someone to your rivals it’s hard to argue with him joining a bigger club on presumably a higher wage. That’s just how football works, it’s no different to us signing players from Dumbarton because we can offer them a slightly better wage. Even though Falkirk finished below us they’re still a bigger club and playing every week there isn’t any less ambitious than doing the same for Airdrie. I think he’ll end up in the Championship though if there are teams at that level trying to sign him.

That must be the first time we've announced someone wearing a Tupac top.

Airdrie have a hybrid system where we have a mix of full-time and part-time. Just a guess but of the three players we’re supposedly signing I reckon Wardrop will be part-time and the others probably full-time.

Between Murray, Agnew, Prunty, Gallagher, Wardrop, Quitongo and Frizzell we’re fairly quickly becoming very Dumbarton orientated. I know Dumbarton fans had HiberniSons a few years ago, this time it’s AirdrieoniSons. Plenty of people for their fans to wave to at least.

I’m quite happy with Sam Wardrop, we spent the second half of last season without a proper right back until Scott Walker came in there and I’m not convinced he’s ready to start every week yet. I think I mentioned Wardrop earlier in this thread as someone I’d quite like to see us sign this summer. Signing three players from Dumbarton and two from East Fife certainly doesn’t scream title challenge but we’re going to end up with about five or six of last season’s team staying on for next season and on our budget it’s not realistic to sign a full team of guys from the league above. If they can provide a solid base for us to build on and we can add a few quality players on top of that then I think we’ll do alright. I guess we won’t be able to bring in anyone like that until later in the summer though.

Paul McKay and Euan O’Reilly are away. I wouldn’t be surprised if McKay ended up at a Championship team, though I don’t think he’s quite ready for that yet. I’m sure his dad will get him in somewhere though. O’Reilly is a strange one. Murray certainly seemed keen on him and I don’t think he’s done enough to justify a bigger club but fair play to him if he’s found a better deal elsewhere. There’s definitely potential there but he needs a regular run of games somewhere. I suppose that’s possibly why he’s left if Murray wasn’t able to guarantee him that. Another two players to replace but neither player is irreplaceable, so not too upset about this. It just makes Murray and Agnew’s recruitment even more important.

If we’ve signed Quitongo then I guess McCann’s away? That seems like a bit of a downgrade but perhaps full-time training might help Quitongo develop. I could be wrong but I think he was doing quite well in 2019/20 until the season finished early but hasn’t progressed too much since then. Could be a lot worse though.

The news we’ve all been waiting for

If McCann leaves I could definitely see us going for Quitongo. It seems like he already has another offer somewhere though, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Alloa or East Fife rather than us as we’re presumably still trying to keep McCann. Hard to read into things too much but hopefully this means he’s staying for another year:

Delighted to have Fordyce and Gallagher signed. I've posted about Fordyce recently but he's been our most consistent and arguably best player over the last two years, barely missing a minute. He's a very easy choice for our new captain too. There's not many, if any, centre backs I'd swap him for at this level so really pleased he's signed up again. Gallagher had a slow start this season he turned up in some big moments after the restart and is a proven scorer at this level, another very easy choice to keep on for next season. I never had him down as a captain but he's a good professional and fairly experienced at this point. With the amount of games Fordyce plays I suppose he won't be wearing the armband too much anyway!

Adam Frizzell and Robbie Leitch were the first names I thought of. Of those I’d prefer Frizzell but as you say, neither will be exciting enough for the facebook mob. Interesting that the Queen of the South fan who mentions Kerr going to them says they were also in for Craig Watson. It could be that our part-time wage alongside his day job works out better than Queens full-time wage or perhaps more chance of regular football but either way, it’s good we’re able to compete with sides in the league above for players if it’s true. Kerr would be a massive loss but I can understand him wanting to test himself at a higher level. He hasn’t played that many games at centre back for us but when he has he’s looked excellent since coming back into the team against Clyde just before the season finished last year. I think he’s definitely capable of playing in the Championship, it’s just unfortunate we weren’t able to make it through the play-offs to have a better chance of keeping players like him.

I’ve just had a look at Watson’s twitter and his latest tweet is him applauding Matthijs de Ligt being an anti-vaxxer

I hope this goes better than the last time we signed several East Fife players. I think that’s a decent signing if he’s Crighton’s replacement but hopefully we’re able to keep Kerr and Fordyce as I think they’re both a level above Watson from what I’ve seen.