Tattie36

Yeah that’s wild. Gaston has made some of the best saves I’ve ever seen in the flesh. He may not be the most graceful keeper going, and his form has dipped a little this season,but he’s made some saves for us that any keeper in the world would be proud of.

I know I’ll take heat for this but I do find it a bit off that a contracted player who won a club award wasn’t invited to the ceremony. All we’ve been told here is that Adams is a bit of a dick, a bit petulant and didn’t always do what was expected of him but is that really enough to not allow him to be there to collect his, deserved, award. Unless of course there’s more to it than us not in the know have been told.

Injury prone his whole career. Started his career at Aberdeen and was highly regarded, scored a penalty in their league cup win in 2013. Went to Dundee after and then various clubs slowly dropping down the leagues, ending up at Shire before we resuscitated his career. Cracking player for us and I like to think he would have been the difference in 21/22 if he’d staying injury free for the whole season. Sad how it ended for him with us.

Nah you’re right, a record of: P23 W2 D5 L16 F19 A59 pts11 8.5% win rate Can be completely blamed on individual player error and has nothing to do with the manager. Quite simply - every team, at every level, in every league, in every country - it’s the manager who is held responsible for results and performances. You cannot break every game and every goal down to minute individual error and use those as an excuse to defend stats like those above. Of course every team has an off day and many factors can contribute to that, including individual error but a constantly underperforming team is the managers fault. Having said all that, like Campbell before, I genuinely really do want McIntyre to turn this round. Unfortunately I just can’t see a single thing to make me think that that will happen.

Of course it’s his fault - who else do you blame for us getting pumped every week. He’s responsible for signing players, training, motivation, tactics etc etc. Of course he can’t be literally blamed for every single player error but the bigger picture yes. The buck stops with the manager, that’s universal.

This saddens me. It would have been great for the fans to have given the players a well deserved bit of appreciation for the last 5 seasons. Especially players like Gaston, Little, McKenna, ToB, Gold etc - guys who’ve given everything to the club and some of whom we’ll likely never see in maroon again. No one expected this to last forever and a hard fought relegation or one with lots of positivity for the future wouldn’t have felt too bad. Unfortunately the way that this season has gone has clouded everything and just left everyone with a feeling of “thank f**k this is (nearly) over”. You don’t realise what you have until it’s gone.

That’s a very bold statement. It’s not long ago some were confidently proclaiming that we had all the best part-time players in Scotland. Players dip in and out of form, goalscorers in particular. I do think it’s a good signing though but that doesn’t buy a guy with an 8.5% win record any credit I’m afraid. Olusanya does a good job for St Mirren but he was horrific for us. A decent player can be ruined by a poor manager.

Aye but we’ve been told for a very long time that most of our established players at the club were the best part-time players in Scotland. He didn’t inherit a bunch of duds but his signings and management has made us worse. IMO the last two years has ground us all down to the point where we can’t even see just how fucking terrible things are. I have not seen one single iota of improvement since McIntyre came in.

It’s funny how the goalposts move - I remember being heavily criticised on here last summer for showing (since vindicated) concern at how poor we were in pre-season and league cup games. “These games aren’t important, Campbell Must be judged on league performances only” was the gist of the replies. I understand the argument about being so far along with a process and having to go back to square 1 if we get a new boss but, using that same argument, can’t we also say that every week/month that we stick with McIntyre is giving a new management team less time to get it right? I think we all know how this is likely to end so can’t we just end it now instead of prolonging the agony.

I look at football managers pretty much in the same way as anyone in any other job. We’ve all worked with people, even ones with great cvs, who are obviously out of their depth or a poor fit. I’ve said this before but I can’t remember a manager ever who has gone from atrocious to even passable, and I’m not just talking about at Arbroath. More than happy to hire and fire if it means we get the right man eventually. Why not? It happens in every other walk of life. All of our most successful managers did well from the off, they weren’t eased in with months of pumpings.

Last seasons results weren’t important as we stayed up; our abject pre-season friendlies weren’t important; the shambolic League Cup wasn’t important and now we’ve moved onto “dead rubbers”. Can someone tell me when our games become important again.

We’ve had weeks of “must win” games where, aside from 25 minutes v Raith, we’ve barely even had a shot on target.

Simon, I know you’re the voice of reason and level headedness on here but even you must be well and truly scunnered by this. These performances haven’t been like this since the games have become “dead rubbers”, it’s been like this for months. There is not one single iota of improvement - even when we still had a chance to stay up, we were getting humiliated week in week out. I’d be interested to see if you could go back into your extensive database and find such an abject season/part of a season because I can’t remember anything this bad in 45+ years. If we didn’t have that purple patch in September we would be sitting on 11 fucking points. That’s almost Brechin level of embarrassment.

I don’t give a f**k who he signs keeping McIntyre is a one way ticket to L2. Slag me off all you like but he has to go.

Even now?

You can have if all if you like.

There was a different type of excitement back then though. I found out that Danny McGrain was our new manager while backpacking through Morocco. Phoned my mum from a payphone in Agadir just to say that I was fine and she told me just before the “pips”.

Even over 30 years later I’m still gutted that I missed that East Fife game. My brother’s flatmate’s broken down car meant we spent the evening in the pub in Aberdeen instead. Can’t remember how we found out the result but it probably involved calling my mum from the pub payphone and getting her to check the score on ceefax. Young folk don’t realise how easy things are now. Used to be quite a pain to get full time scores if you weren’t in-front of the tv. As a kid it used to involve running from Gayfield to the DER tv shop in the high street where there was always a crowd watching the results come in on the tv left on in the window display. Later it was the tiny tv in Tutties, now it’s in your pocket 24/7.

After many years of utter crap that was an exciting time to be a Lichtie. It was magic to be in the news and on the tv. McGrain wasn’t a particularly successful manager but the boost in profile it gave the club was brilliant. Don’t know what ever happened to my beard, made from a repurposed gorilla suit I believe. Still got my Danny McGrain t-shirt though as per my avatar.

One thing that’s never sat comfortably with me is this idea that half of our squad are chomping at the bit to go and join the Campbells at East Fife. I got the impression that the players were just as scunnered with Dick as the fans were towards the end. Pretty common knowledge (isn’t it?) that he was a big part of Bobby and others leaving?

Again, I completely agree with you. We have to give him more time because there is, unfortunately no other option. All I was saying was that I understood Exile’s sentiment - that “some” of our fans seem to think all is rosy because some players have re-signed and we’ve made a positive signing. Doesn’t and shouldn’t take away from the fact that McIntyre has the worst management record I’ve ever seen at Arbroath…. By a long long way. No one has ever survived anything like this and I don’t understand why he has.

I don’t think he meant literally. Probably not the best choice of words from him granted, but there definitely seems to be an “everything will be fine now” vibe after the last week. Maybe I should stop reading our social media.

I agree with every single word you say. However all Exile did was express an opinion that many of us probably share.

Easy to laugh but I kind of agree with the sentiment. A decent signing and some players re-signing and suddenly everyone seems to be happy to give McIntyre more time. Even if all of our out of contract players re-sign and we bring in a few more players that doesn’t take away from the fact that McIntyre has been a disaster for us with not one iota of noticeable improvement. He’s been incapable of getting anything out of a squad containing (allegedly) some of the best part time players in Scotland and a load of his own signings, and I fail to see how that will change. I’ve never seen a manager, any manager, turn this kind of situation around in all my years of watching football and I’d be astonished if McIntyre was the one to buck that trend.

Looking forward to a Saturday when we actually win a game. Imagine if we didn’t have that purple patch in September? Would barely have been in double figures. Sorry but I’m still very much in the McIntyre out camp.