Nelson

So drop one and (hopefullyj play Bangala with Murdoch. The other can provide cover. The only real alternative we have at the moment Is Smith - I wish the lad nothing but good things, but he hasn’t done enough yet to suggest we can really depend on him if the likes of Murdoch gets injured - same goes for Hewitt and Bryden. The problem we have is that most teams are playing 3 in the middle at the moment, so Murdoch and Dempsey are often being outnumbered. On top of that, the options we’ve tried wide of a 4-4-2 have thus far proven to be pretty ineffective. Hopefully the 3-5-2 experiment from the league cup has been consigned to the tactical dustbin. As I say, I really thought the “plan” was to transition us to a 4-3-3 setup, hence the signing of JML and Dipo and the retention of O’Connor and Ashford. I take the point that I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes, but I’m not sure what would be more concerning - a) that our coaching team looked at Allan and Crawford and genuinely thought they wouldn’t improve us or b) we did go for them and lost out to Morton and Arbroath - would make the talk of signing mcinroy and Sibbald look even more unrealistic.

You could play a midfield 3 of Murdoch, Dempsey and Crawford though, which I thought was the shape of team we were heading towards I.e. 4-3-3. I guess one of those would drop out and provide cover if Bangala turns out to be a real find. If I’m honest, I think Dempsey has been very up and down this season and his use of the ball is no better than Murdoch’s, so not convinced he’d get a game ahead of Crawford.

Time will tell i suppose - if we sign Stephen Kelly then no one will be talking about Robbie Crawford. The bottom line for me is that the current team is no better than the team that hirpled to survival last season, which doesn’t reflect well on the recruitment. If anything, I would argue the team is slightly worse given we haven’t directly replaced Mcinroy, Muirhead or Maxwell.. Dipo looks excellent, but with the loss of Adeloye, we are still In the same position in that we only have one proven goal scorer on our books. I worry that teams will work that out pretty quickly and look to crowd Dipo out the game. Bangala will hopefully turn out to be an inspired signing, but as Bullen said at the vision night, he doesn’t know the player and they’ve taken a risk on him based on a recommendation from one of his Sheffield Wednesday contacts. Musonda is good on the ball but flatters to deceive when it comes to defending, which possibly isn’t a shock given the Raith fans tell us he was 3rd or even 4th choice at centre back for them last season. JML has been anonymous so far, save for a bright 10 minutes against Arbroath before they started kicking him - I think he might have more to offer as part of a front 3 rather than wide of a midfield 4. I’ve seen nothing of Kirk, so don’t know what he has to offer. I hope we have a few irons in the fire, because save that daft 45 minutes against Queens Park, we’ve looked like a hardworking team with little attacking quality in the midfield and limited firepower up front.

Disappointed we haven’t signed Crawford. Very underrated player, probably because McCall played him out of position so much. Would have been a good addition given how wafer thin our squad is - I think we’re basically betting the farm that Bangala proves to be the quality in midfield that we are current lacking, which is a concern given no one at the club has ever actually seen him play and there is apparently no guarantee when or if he will secure a visa. Bit bemused at what our signing strategy is at this point - we seemed to spend the Summer chasing players like McInroy and Sibbald who were never realistically signing for Ayr. Now we’re turning our noses up at experienced players like Allan and Crawford, which is surprising given we’re a club that has squeaked our way to survival for the last two seasons. Not only are we not signing these players, they are strengthening our immediate competitors.

Scott Allan is a cracking signing for Arbroath. Maybe we did make an offer and missed out - I’d be shocked if we didn’t even look at him given how poor our midfield options are. The squad just looks so threadbare as well - we seem to be counting youth players like Smith and Hewitt who have yet to prove they can really cut it.

That’s the thing for me. If we keep waiting for the perfect player to fall out the sky then we’ll be waiting indefinitely - we’re at a point now where we’re going to have to commit to someone. If we were willing to invest a little time in Allan (who I’m sure is fit enough, though lacking match fitness) then it could be critical over the season. I think most of us who see Ayr regularly remain really concerned about the lack of creativity in midfield. Heaven knows what we do if Dipo gets hurt.

Not necessarily. He has maybe had to adjust his expectations both financially and in terms of the level of club that might be interested. Might have realised that a step back to go forward might be needed. I doubt Christian Eriksen ever saw Brentford as an end destination.

He’s looking for something that isn’t glamorous. Rules us out..

Scott Allan seems pretty desperate to find a club. Just saying….

Ashford puts in a great shift, but as an attacking threat he has been totally ineffective all season. Will probably be a good option away from home against tougher opposition, but we really need more threat coming from the wide areas.

Don’t want to be harsh, but what is going on with the camera work on the highlights package? Used to be excellent, albeit the camera angle was always too low. Now it doesn’t seem to be tracking the play properly or focusing on the goalmouths - feels like the camera is mounted in the car park at times. Is the camera work on the stream that bad?

Accies first goal was a stunning finish. Quite ludicrous to blame the keeper. Don’t think he did much wrong at the 2nd either - it was a good delivery over a crowded box to the back post. Really poor defending from us, though it did look like there was a push on the defender. Otherwise, today just confirmed what we already knew - we need a striker with some pace and movement who can play off Dipo plus a bit more quality in the wide areas as none of the existing options look very convincing.

No more pitch invasions. I don’t care if we win the Champions League.

Somerset Boab making a comeback? What did we do to deserve that?

The championship might be Sibbald’s level…..

???? Big Ally Graham was seriously powerful in the air. Can’t think of anyone over the last 40 years who was better. He was maybe a bit limited when it came to kicking the ball, but still, you can’t have everything.

I was at the vision night and all I really remember was some chat about the flag that got pinched by the Rangers fans. There was some comment about the club not paying to replace it (not really sure why they would). Can’t really remember what else was said, apart from Mathie saying it was all before his time and he was happy to have a sit down to clear the air, but the offer at that point hadn’t been taken up. What else was going on?

The artists got nothing when music was illegally streamed through Napster. At least now they get something. That’s how it is with streaming for clubs like Ayr now. It’s going to happen whether we like it or not, so they may as well take what revenue they can. The 3pm blackout rule belongs to the pre-steaming age. Not only is it easy to illegally stream, there is now a clear expectation post covid that games will be available to watch. The genie is 1000% out of the bottle, but Scottish football will doubtless try and pretend otherwise for as long as possible. The only ones who really suffer here are the auld yins who are genuinely not tech savvy enough to realise how easy it is to access games.

That’s the thing for me - i couldn’t go to the Queens Park game as I didn’t finish work until 7 and didn’t fancy travelling up from Ayr on a Friday night anyway. But if they’d offered a reliable and legal stream for a tenner with decent commentary and graphics (Morton and Arbroath proved last season that it’s possible), I would have bought it no issue. But instead….

This just isn’t true anymore, given how super easy it is to illegally stream games. If you want to watch a 3pm game live, you can either watch it on streaming website like hesgoal or viprow or go down the road of a VPN. This all reminds me of the music industry trying to stop Napster. In the end they accepted the genie was out of the bottle and offered legitimate streaming like Spotify. But as with everything else, Scottish football will hide in the dark ages. All they are doing is denying themselves potential revenue from people like myself who are never going to do an 8 hour round trip to Inverness or folk who are elderly/infirm who would love to watch their team in the house.

This is true up to a point. However, the then chairman and board deserve huge credit for committing us to full time football - as others have said, that was a huge springboard to McCall really taking the club forward. Cameron also deserves credit for not binning McCall for the Harkins and El Alagui season. Most chairman would have and I don’t think McCall could really have complained if he did.

Shankland and Forrest up front for Hearts. What could of been…

Life becomes so much easier when you can just put your hands up and say “I got that one wrong”.

Any goalkeeper will struggle if the fans keep moving the goalposts…

Looked like a decent finish to me at the time. Can only assume some folk were watching on a wonky stream!