Mr November

Yeah the picture seems a lot clearer tonight. There’s been a few instances of the camera not keeping up with play but it’s generally very quick to catch up and we’re seeing a lot less of David Hutton. The commentary is very slightly out of sync for me too but that’s not a huge issue, particularly when the commentary itself is really good by club commentary standards. They strike a good balance between being personable, informative and unbiased. Certainly a bit more interesting than Kelty’s commentator from the other week and less embarrassing than some of the other very excitable club specific commentators (Falkirk come to mind).

Other than the first half at Kelty I think Kerr’s played in midfield in every game so far? He definitely seems to be seen as a midfielder now. Good to have options as Kerr, McKay and Ritchie all seem to be pretty versatile in covering defence and midfield.

Not even out of pre-season and we've already got a starting 11 where I've got absolutely no idea how it all fits. Football is back!

Noble and Russell were an excellent partnership. I could be remembering this wrong but we beat Alloa 6-0 away from home early in that season and I seem to remember Stuart Noble getting man of the match, it was the first time I’d seen an away player get it at our level. To be honest he’s another example of a striker who was unproven being a really good player for us. He had a great record at a low level for Gala Fairydean but I don’t think he had done much in senior football before then. Looking back that team was actually pretty good for this level. Smyth, McDougall, Lovering, Russell, Noble, McKeown, McKenna etc were all good second division players.

Yeah I think that was the case last year too. Looking at the lineups for the four cup games last year the defence was fairly settled (though I think Fordyce, Crighton, Kerr and Eckersley were the only fit defenders) but Murray seemed to change up the midfield and attack each game. The same team started the final cup game against Hamilton and the opening league game against Forfar, although obviously we were dreadful that day and the team got changed every week after that. Hopefully Murray has a better idea of what his best team is this year, as until I looked it up there I had completely forgotten that we started with James Cowan in midfield (remember him?) and Gallagher playing on the wing.

Maybe you were right after all...

I think so yeah but as you say, hard to tell exactly who each player is! Looks like Kerr's playing in midfield again which is interesting. Team seems to be this setup: Hutton Ritchie Crighton Mbayo McCann McKay Kerr O'Reilly Stokes Robert Carrick

Are you using Chrome? I got the same thing so emailed the club about it earlier, hopefully it gets sorted soon. Seems to work fine on other browsers for me though.

Yeah that's fair enough based on what we saw, he never did anything noticeably bad which is an improvement on other players we've had in the past few years but perhaps that's because he never did anything noticeable at all.

I think he only started twice, at home to Raith and Stranraer, but he struggled to make an impact in those games and was subbed early both times. As others have said, a handful of other sub appearances after that before Iain Davidson tried to kill him. He certainly wasn’t a bad player, just really struggled to make an impact. I think it seems worse due to Leon McCann coming in from Hamilton at the same time and quickly becoming one of our best players.

He was that bad he’s hard to forget!

Here’s some Airdrie players who sort of fit this from the past decade, forced into a 5-3-2 formation. Kenny Arthur - Signed after a long spell at Thistle and then five years in England, this seemed like a good signing at the time. To be honest I don’t recall much about him despite him having played for over half our relegation season in 2012/13, so he can’t have been that bad compared to some other keepers from that time. David Van Zanten - We had two decent right backs and no left backs going into 2015/16 and Gary Bollan decided to fix that by signing an experienced right back. I remember him playing a couple of games in midfield but it never worked out and he was away by February. Michael Hart - Another experienced player signed in 2012/13, he wasn’t great before leaving halfway through the season to take up a full-time job. Can’t blame him. David Lilley - Signed in 2011/12 after a good full-time career, this seemed a good signing for League One. He did ok that season but really struggled in the Championship the following season. One of the slowest players I’ve seen. Ben Richards-Everton - Signed on loan from Partick Thistle in 2014/15 after playing a lot of games in the Conference down south. He was alright but had his fair share of bombscare moments and was replaced by the much better Liam Lindsay for the second half of the season (the half we were good). Seems to be doing well now though. Garry Hay - Had a great career at Kilmarnock and played a few games for us at the start of 2013/14 but he left at the end of August to take up a full-time job with the SFA. I can’t recall anything about him playing for Airdrie at all. Kevin McBride - Had a short spell managing Airdrie before being chucked as part of Gordon Dalziel’s football review which ended with Dalziel as director of football and his pal Mark Wilson as manager. Before that, McBride played for us the previous season but struggled with injuries and never really got going. Jordan Thompson - A highly rated youngster signed on loan from Rangers. I thought he generally looked uninterested and not very good but he did score a brilliant goal up at Cowdenbeath. Now a regular in the English Championship and a Northern Ireland international. Steven Hetherington - Joined in the second half of the dismal 2012/13 season on loan from Motherwell and was ok but never stood out as being a particularly good footballer. He’s gone on to have a great career at Alloa though. Liam Buchanan - Another from the 2012/13 season (there’s a theme here). He only played six games but didn’t score and to be honest just looked finished. Nothing like the player who would go on to play for Alloa and Livingston. Bob McHugh - Signed towards the end of the 2014/15 season, he only played five games but managed to score four goals during that time. Would happily have him back but his previous spell was so short it’s very easy to forget about.

It says a lot when Jordan McGregor was comfortably the best centre back out of that lot. There were a lot of bad moments that season, particularly losing 5-0 at home to Stenhousemuir, 4-0 at home to Livingston and losing the new year derby to Albion Rovers. Despite those results I think the real nadir was the 3-0 midweek defeat at Brechin, just three days after that great 4-3 win at Albion Rovers, where Mark Wilson decided it would be a good idea to put Daniel Boateng up front.

I posted this in the Dumbarton thread when he was mentioned as a possible signing for them. I think he'll do well at Queens, though he probably still has the odd mistake in him. He has quite a lot of experience for his age given he's had two seasons of being first choice at Airdrie as well as his season at Linfield. I mentioned below about our goals conceded record under him but ultimately a lot of that can be put down to playing behind the worst full-time defence Scottish football has ever seen in his first season and a very inexperienced defence the following season.

Yeah I very much agree with this. I suppose it's natural to want a player like that but we're very unlikely to find a player proven to score 20 goals a season at this level. Looking at the players who've scored at that sort of rate for us in the last decade, it's only really Andy Ryan (23), Iain Russell (18) and Ryan Donnelly (21). Russell had high expectations but I don't think anyone expected Ryan or Donnelly to score as many as they did in those seasons. We might end up signing another striker who does very well but I think it's much more likely to be a striker in the Ryan/Donnelly mould, a young player who has a breakthrough season rather than someone who's proven as a great striker at this level. It was obviously a very small sample size but we saw last season that Andy Ryan never really hit the same heights as his first spell, though I would still like to have kept him. I think it's more sensible to try and spread the goals throughout the team rather than pinning all of our hopes on one player. Last season our main complaint was never really about the forwards, on the whole Smith, Gallagher and Carrick had really good seasons, but we really lacked goals and creativity in midfield. Hopefully the new signings can fix that which should only help us going forward.

Thomson’s an interesting one. I was surprised he got a new contract alongside the other key players midway through last season, as at that time he was out injured and before then seemed quite hit and miss. The manager must see something in him though given they were so keen to give him a new deal. He was outstanding in the 3-1 Clyde game as @ShineOnYouCrazyDiamonds says but other than that I can’t remember too many great moments, though that’s not for a lack of effort. He’s clearly a wide player but if I remember correctly he played as a left wing back in that Clyde game where he was excellent, though that didn’t work as well the following week up at East Fife. I remember him playing in midfield against Falkirk early in the season too and I guess being moved around and injuries don’t help when you’re trying to make an impact. Definitely a big season ahead for him, especially with all the other attacking options we have available.

I got a phone call today too so you must be next in line at this rate.

I applied straight away too and still haven’t heard anything either. I wonder if they’re working backwards but if I’ve not heard by the end of the week I might just apply again.

Yeah I think the plan definitely seems to be spreading the goals around a lot more. I posted recently saying that we haven’t actually lost too many goals from last season’s team, Callum Smith managed double figures for combined goals and assists but other than that we’ve not lost much. Smith, Gallagher and Carrick all did well in terms of goals last season but the fourth player in the front four (Ryan, Roberts, Hawkshaw) seemed to struggle for consistency, hopefully that’s not an issue this season. Obviously this relies on Carrick and Gallagher continuing to score at a similar rate (I’m sceptical of Carrick given how many were penalties) but if the likes of Stokes, O‘Reilly, Robert, Thomson, Roy etc can all chip in with an average of 3 or 4 goals each that would be a massive boost. If the defence are as solid as they were from October onwards we should certainly won more than we lose, though I think it’ll be a case of nervy one goal wins most of the time.

Unless he’s very good I’ll be surprised if he plays at all but I think that’s alluded too in Sturt Millar’s comments. I’m still not sure whether signing five or six young players who will barely play is sensible compared to signing one or two first team players, especially in a shortened season, but we’ll just need to wait and see how things go.

I'm assuming they were in the advertiser too but there's a couple of short interviews with him about friendlies and next season here, nothing too exciting though.

Hutton's been a good keeper for us to be fair. He was really good in his first season, he did make a few errors but he undoubtedly saved us much more than he cost us. He didn't quite hit the same levels last season and the management team seemed particularly annoyed at his lack of presence at times with not coming off his line to collect corners/crosses. Saying that, I don't think he's even the best keeper at the club never mind the league.

To continue our favourite discussion, I noticed Stuart Millar mentioned we might have another signing "some time next month" in an interview in the Daily Record.

Big Nat’s a decent midfielder at this level and probably quite a unique player too. Very strong, great technique and scored a couple of goals for us from set pieces but he’s also painfully slow, as soon as the ball is played over the top of him he’s out the game. He looked quite unfit at times earlier in the season but he seemed much sharper from January onwards, although even at that he was still the slowest man on the pitch. He’s not a bad replacement for Kyle Hutton, just less mobile. He was quite a strange player at Airdrie, some fans regarded him as one of our worst ever players, others thought he should be in the team every week. The truth is somewhere in the middle. His best games seemed to come against poorer opposition where we had more time on the ball, unfortunately his lack of pace means he can struggle to make an impact in higher tempo games. I do think that he’s quite a likeable player and I was disappointed things never really clicked for him at Airdrie. I think Murray’s initial plan last season was to have Wedderburn sitting as the holding midfielder or in a midfield two with Kieran Millar. In theory that pairing could have worked quite well as Millar’s endless running and energy should have covered for Wedderburn’s lack of mobility but it never really translated onto the pitch. I think Carswell’s a better player though so pairing him with Wedderburn might work better.

This is something I've been a bit concerned about too but looking at who we've released, we've not actually lost too many goals from last season's team. Falkirk and Montrose have both lost their top scorers from last season too, though Falkirk do look to have recruited fairly well up front. We scored 38 in the league last season and 53 in all competitions which is alright but as you say, lower than all the other teams around us. Wedderburn (1), Roberts (1), Smith (4) and Ryan (2) scored 8 of those 38 goals but the rest were all scored by players still in the squad (mainly Gallagher and Carrick). Obviously Roberts and Smith in particular were good at creating chances but our main complaint last season was a lack of creativity from midfield. I suppose the hope is that the likes of Stokes, Robert, Sabatini and O'Reilly can all chip in with at least 3-4 goals each to replace the outgoing players and help create more chances for Gallagher and Carrick. I'd like to see another striker come in anyway as I'm not confident with Roy as the second choice striker but even he managed 5 goals last season, albeit only 2 of those were in the league. If we can be as solid defensively as we were from October onwards and add a few more goals we should do well.