Mr November

I dread to think what a normal stream is like if this is "fermer" when he's quiet.

Clyde 0-1 Dumbarton Cove Rangers 2-1 Airdrieonians Falkirk 1-2 Montrose Peterhead 2-1 Forfar Athletic

Agreed. This league isn't particularly great quality but it is very competitive and despite Falkirk's lead, after the restart it always seemed like it was crying out for one team to go on a run and win it. Unfortunately our run started a bit too late but no one can deny that Thistle deserve to win it, they had a poor first half but have been excellent since beating us 4-2. We had good spells in all three games against Thistle but never did enough to win any of them and came away with no points. Much like the three Raith games last season, that's had a massive impact on Thistle being so far ahead of us. Quite relieved to see the back of them given our record against them, I'd certainly feel much more confident going up against Cove, Falkirk or one of the Championship teams in the play-offs, though whoever we play will be a tough game. At least that's us up to third now without even playing!

East Fife 2-1 Peterhead Forfar Athletic 0-2 Clyde Montrose 1-1 Cove Rangers Partick Thistle 2-0 Falkirk

Another big win tonight, fair play to the players for turning up again in a big home game. Obviously the result and performance on Saturday was disappointing but great to bounce back from that with a win. Montrose are always a tough team for us to play against and tonight was no different but that win goes a long way to securing a play-off spot. There's absolutely no reason we shouldn't be confident going into the next two games, particularly Falkirk on the final day. I thought Connell was excellent and we looked more threatening with him and Gallagher together from the start. While both goals came from Montrose mistakes it's his hard work and determination that helps to force those mistakes. Two great goals too. Given he hasn't started a game for over three months, and hasn't started in defence for even longer, Kerr strolled that tonight. Crighton's had a poor season by his standards and I think Kerr and Fordyce are our two best centre backs. A back three of McKay, Kerr and Fordyce seems really well balanced too, so I'd like to see them stay together on Saturday even if Crighton is fit again. I can understand the thinking behind playing Kerr in midfield but he's much better as a defender, so hopefully he can continue to develop there for us.

Interesting team for us tonight. I’d guess it’s a back three of McKay, Kerr and Fordyce with Walker as a right wing back and Carrick moving into the middle but it’s hard to say for sure when Kerr has mostly been used in midfield so far this season.

Airdrieonians 2-1 Montrose Clyde 1-2 East Fife Cove Rangers 1-2 Partick Thistle Dumbarton 2-0 Forfar Athletic

I thought it was interesting that we seemed to move from the back three we’ve played in the last few games to a back four yesterday. I can understand why, Carrick isn’t a wing back and it was always more of a lopsided back three with Paul McKay able to move over and McCann able to drop a bit deeper. Either way, the change didn’t seem to work as we couldn’t get a hold of the ball in there and O’Reilly and Carrick were pretty anonymous out wide. It seemed like Roy was dropping into midfield when we were defending but he’s definitely not a midfielder so that didn’t really help either. I can’t say I ever fully expected us to win yesterday, so I’m not too annoyed about it. We’ve seen over the three games that Thistle are a better team than us and the league is theirs to lose now. We’ve had spells in all three games against them where we’ve looked decent and came close to taking points but ultimately we haven’t and small margins like that are why Thistle are now so far ahead of us. It’s a bit like the games against Raith last season. Three 1-0 defeats where ultimately there wasn’t too much between the teams, especially the game up at Kirkcaldy, but Raith being able to win those games was the difference between them winning the league and us finishing third. It was good to see Currie in such great form yesterday, albeit I’d rather he didn’t have so many saves to make. The only keeper in this league who’s made more saves than Currie this year is Marc McCallum, which is quite concerning. It’s good that Currie is able to make these saves but definitely a worry that we’re allowing so many attempts on goal. Tuesday will be another very difficult game but we need to win to make sure we finish top four. Montrose have been a tricky for us for a few years now but we seemed to be the better team in the game a few weeks ago and poor finishing probably cost us all three points. I don’t think we need to make too many changes, I’d maybe bring Thomson in for Carrick or O’Reilly but I don’t think one defeat should cause us to panic and make massive changes.

That’s been coming for a while. I’d be tempted to bring Sabatini on for one of the forwards, we can’t seem to keep the ball at all and could do with an extra man in beside Paton.

I doubt Kerr will be ready to start given he’s not played since January but I’m certainly more confident having him on the bench as a defensive option than Mbayo, Walker or Jack McKay. I can see Connell perhaps coming in given he’s made a big impact coming on in the last two games but other than that I think the team will be unchanged.

Partick Thistle 2-2 Airdrieonians Falkirk 0-1 Cove Rangers East Fife 1-1 Dumbarton Peterhead 1-1 Clyde

I’m not a Falkirk fan!

I can see Ian Murray being a contender for this. He’s out of contract at the end of the season and certainly seems to know Falkirk’s weaknesses which is a start! A lot of Airdrie fans wouldn’t be too bothered to see him leave (indeed, a fair amount would be very happy) but if he can get us in the top four again that has to go down as a fairly successful season. If there aren’t any bigger names available then I could definitely see them going for Murray. Of the other managers in this league I certainly think he’s more likely to get it than Stewart Petrie or Darren Young, albeit in Petrie’s case that’s because I don’t think he’d want to go full-time at Falkirk.

I started laughing when it was a triple sub anyway but even more so when I realised he'd chucked on Stokes, Ritchie and Walker. Darren Young had a very good record at Airdrie when he was Albion Rovers manager, I don't think he lost once at Airdrie, albeit we won all the games in Coatbridge. It's been near enough the opposite during his time as East Fife manager, other than one win in 2017 he hasn't won a game in Airdrie since. A shame he wasn't able to trip anyone up tonight.

Four points off top Remember when we thought we might be in a relegation battle? Fair play to Ian Murray and the team, their attitude and performances since then have been fantastic. It would have been very easy for the season to fade away but they dug in at Dumbarton, were the better team against Falkirk, deservedly got a late draw against Montrose and good wins at home to Forfar and East Fife, neither of which were easy games and indeed those are the sort of games we usually drop points in. Really pleased for them. A few weeks ago I just wanted the season to end, here I am really looking forward to the last four games. Not too much between the teams tonight before the goal, it was a dreadful game really, but after that we seemed to kick into gear and were by far the better team. Paul Paton looked really good, definitely made us a bit more solid defensively. Kyle Turner had his quietest game so far but even then he was outstanding in the last half an hour, what a player. If anyone can drag us through these next few games then it's him. Who knows where we'd be if he hadn't basically missed the first three games?

Airdrieonians 2-1 East Fife Dumbarton 0-2 Partick Thistle Forfar Athletic 2-2 Clyde Montrose 1-2 Cove Rangers Peterhead 1-1 Falkirk

There’s a good interview with Euan O’Reilly here. It’s good that he seems to finally be getting over his injury issues, he’s certainly been an important player for us since the restart. Good to see he’s enjoying his time at the club. I quite liked him in the few games he played last season but he wasn’t great in his few appearances earlier this season, you could tell he had some good attributes but he struggled to put everything together and his crossing was especially poor. It certainly wasn’t a lack of effort, he just didn’t seem to know what he was doing when he got the ball. He reminded me of when Raith fans said Mark Stewart was like a speedboat with no driver. He’s been much better since the restart though and seems to be improving with a run of games. He’s still very raw but his pace and directness provide a similar threat to what Callum Smith did for us last season, though not on the same level. Even on Smith’s poorer days his pace and work rate always caused the opposition problems and I hope O’Reilly can have a similar sort of impact if he continues to improve.

This is a nice listen, Crighton touches on the season so far and talks a bit about his role at the club. Seems like he helps out with coaching set pieces and opposition analysis while Murray takes most of the day to day coaching. I've been critical of his performances this season but he certainly comes across as a good guy and he's a good ambassador for the club. Interesting results elsewhere tonight, probably results that suit us too. Seems like Thistle are hitting form at the right time, it takes them a few points ahead of us but good to still have a gap over Montrose. A win next week would go a long way to getting top four, really important we manage to at least make the top half from here.

Enjoyed that Leon McCann interview, certainly seems like he’s got the right idea in terms of playing first team football. I always thought he’d move on to a bigger team than Kyle MacDonald and it certainly sounds like there’s a decent chance of him moving on this summer. It would be a shame to see him go but it’s another great example of young players being given time to develop and progress at Airdrie before moving on to a bigger team. Obviously we need to try and keep our best players but that’s not always possible in the position we’re in, so showing ourselves as a club who can develop young players can only be a good thing in terms of attracting new players. As others have said, he didn’t have a great start to this season but he’s been much better since the restart and probably our best defender overall this season. Playing alongside two experienced defenders in Crighton and Fordyce must be great experience for him. The manager has put a lot of faith in him given Eckersley was barely seen for most of last season and we didn’t bother signing any other left backs this season but he’s certainly showed why. There’s a few decent left backs in this league but McCann is right up there in terms of the best, certainly in terms of potential anyway.

Delighted with that win. I'm normally quite reserved watching our games on streams but proper celebrations when Gallagher scored, I always felt a winner was coming but what a relief when it finally went in. I thought we played pretty well tonight and deserved to win by a couple of goals. We certainly created plenty of chances but our finishing was really wasteful, I'm still baffled at Gallagher's miss at 1-1. It's good that we are creating these chances though, that's two games in a row where we've looking really exciting going forward rather than being stodgy and hoping for a set piece. While we've wasted a lot of chances in the last two games we're bound to start scoring more of them if we continue to attack teams in the way we have. I was really pleased for Gallagher to properly score, he's a very good striker at this level but hasn't really got going yet this season. It's good for Connell to score too, hopefully all our strikers are coming into form at the right time. I think the 3-3-2-2 system that we've moved to certainly helps with that, as we always have two strikers as well as O'Reilly and Carrick pushing forward with support from McCann and whoever replaces Jack McKay after an hour. It does leave our midfield a bit isolated, it was just Turner on his own for large parts of tonight's game, but he's clearly capable of running things himself in there. I do worry about that set-up against better teams should we make the top 5 but it's certainly making us a much better team going forward. Bringing Paton back into the team for O'Reilly or Carrick might make us a bit more solid for bigger games and allow Turner to get further forward and I reckon Murray might go with something like that. Defensively we still seem to be vulnerable to quick counter attacks. It's a concern as we're not necessarily a slow team, we just seem to be a bit all over the place defensively in those situations. Jack McKay was useless once again. I'm not Thomson's biggest fan but he clearly made an impact when coming on against Dumbarton, Montrose and again tonight. Thomson contributed more within ten seconds of being on the park than McKay did the full game. I'd certainly be looking to start Thomson next week as he offers so much more out there.

Ian Murray will have a contract waiting for Forfar's number 14 to sign after this game based on those long throws.

Airdrieonians 2-0 Forfar Athletic Partick Thistle 2-1 Clyde Clyde 1-1 Dumbarton Partick Thistle 1-1 Montrose Cove Rangers 1-1 Falkirk East Fife 2-1 Peterhead

I mentioned this after the sending off a couple of weeks ago but he’s been a liability at times this season and is probably one of the reasons why we’ve been much worse defensively this year. Fordyce and Kerr were very solid in the few games they played together last year, would be pretty happy with them as the starting centre backs next season assuming we’re still in this league.

Enjoyed this. On the point of signing proven, experienced players, I suspect that has become quite difficult for us and is going to continue to be so for us over the next few years. We’re the smallest full-time team, Falkirk, Thistle and Queen’s Park will always be able to outbid us for any players nevermind Championship teams. We should be well placed to attract the best part-time players but Arbroath and Alloa have the advantage of Championship football and we’ve also seen teams like Darvel, Kelty and even Stirling Albion in the case of Andy Ryan outbid clubs at our level and above for part-time players. I think the club is in quite a difficult position, do we continue with a hybrid system that in theory allows the best of both worlds but in practice probably isn’t a huge benefit or revert back to being completely part-time, even if that doesn’t guarantee being able to offer the best part-time wages. I’ve posted about this before but the club’s recruitment strategies over the last five years have been a shambles. Trying each different strategy is fair enough but as none of them have worked out, we’re left with very little continuity over that time period. We’ve tried going completely full-time with a squad full of young guys which never worked out as the team lacked quality and experience, as well as a good manager. We then went in completely the opposite direction with Findlay’s experienced League One jobbers, who were really dull, slow and ultimately nothing more than a bang average League One team at best. Any successful team needs a mix of youth and experience and I had hoped we were moving towards that but last summers recruitment was almost entirely focused on bringing in younger players. That’s fine when we already have guys like Carrick, Crighton, Fordyce and Gallagher around but when they’re having poor games it means we’re very reliant on an inexperienced group of players. Ultimately, I think the club has a big decision this summer in terms of whether we stay as a hybrid or not. If the suggestion of us only training Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday before the restart is correct then that would suggest we might be moving back towards a part-time system. Either way, I think there’s always going to be a few clubs who can offer more than us for the better players at this level.