The Ultimate Super Ayr Thread

[Skyline Drifter]

2 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

Good for the Accountants, not so good for the fans.

 

1 minute ago, D'Jaffo said:

I’m sure Steve Brown will be delighted.

That’s not the point though.

What is the point then?

They sold two very good players, and brought 4 in yesterday. And trousered a 7 figure sum and no doubt potential future add ons. I can't see how that makes it a worse window or deadline day than a club who did nothing.

Inverness incidentally also trousered a 6 figure sum following the sale of Ryan Christie. Didn't bring anyone in but had a good day anyway.

[diegomarahenry]

3 minutes ago, Skyline Drifter said:

Maxwell was very consistent for us last year. He's a young player and his positional play at full back wasn't always magic but I appreciate you aren't playing him there. He also got on the ball from a deeper position with us but I think he was consistently good in his play on the ball all season. I think he played every game apart from the one he was suspended for after being sent off for diving in the opening game of the season at Somerset.

Kelly never had a bad game for us but he wasn’t as good as he could be every so often. 
From what I’ve seen of Maxwell though, even when he’ll put half a shift in he will still be better than most

[Superhursty7]

The question now is how stubborn is Smith? he's a fan like us he can't be happy at the way this is going, if one of his builders had months to bring in supply's and did not do it would he's accept it? He needs to realise he's been sold a pig's ear by Hopkin and make the hard decision I just hope he does it before we are boyond saving thus season.

[diegomarahenry]

1 minute ago, Skyline Drifter said:

 

What is the point then?

They sold two very good players, and brought 4 in yesterday. And trousered a 7 figure sum and no doubt potential future add ons. I can't see how that makes it a worse window or deadline day than a club who did nothing.

Inverness incidentally also trousered a 6 figure sum following the sale of Ryan Christie. Didn't bring anyone in but had a good day anyway.

I don’t think St Johnston will get relegated but they could have lost 2 maybe 3 more yesterday.

that would have hit them hard. A couple more at Christmas maybe even the manager and they could be in serious shit. 
Ayr fans know about these things, at least St Johnston have got cash in though

[diegomarahenry]

3 minutes ago, Superhursy7 said:

The question now is how stubborn is Smith? he's a fan like us he can't be happy at the way this is going, if one of his builders had months to bring in supply's and did not do it would he's accept it? He needs to realise he's been sold a pig's ear by Hopkin and make the hard decision I just hope he does it before we are boyond saving thus season.

We don’t know what is going on behind the scenes 

Hopkin, absolutely feckless, sitting by the phone waiting for agents to call him.

Looking at dozens of profiles but none are better than what we have

Clubs wanting silly money for loans we can’t afford 

waiting until next week to sign frees to save a weeks wages

or, Smith isn’t willing to give him More money

Maybe Players had to leave to allow players to come in, despite a reported shortage of players we couldn’t offload any to senior clubs. Maybe the Covid cases caused that but I doubt it. 
 

We don’t know and the club won’t tell us so everyone has to speculate and anger builds.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, diegomarahenry said:

We don’t know what is going on behind the scenes 

Hopkin, absolutely feckless, sitting by the phone waiting for agents to call him.

Looking at dozens of profiles but none are better than what we have

Clubs wanting silly money for loans we can’t afford 

waiting until next week to sign frees to save a weeks wages

or, Smith isn’t willing to give him More money

Maybe Players had to leave to allow players to come in, despite a reported shortage of players we couldn’t offload any to senior clubs. Maybe the Covid cases caused that but I doubt it. 
 

We don’t know and the club won’t tell us so everyone has to speculate and anger builds.

I'd go with this, we actually have a pretty large pool, however the problem is it's full of mediocre fringe type players and rather top heavy in defenders.

In some respects Hopkin has been unfortunate to be stuck with Chalmers, Miller and Baird who he'd maybe not have wanted, however there's absolutely no excuse for not getting in a Central Midfielder or two on loan as he had ample time (covid or no covid) and everyone else seems to have managed it ok !!

I'd also mention the Burnley thing again as being a complete joke from a Footballing perspective and may in fact have hindered our search / lulled us into a false sense of security and then came back to bite us as it were. Let's be honest, from a fans perspective sharing costs in merchandising etc and exchanging views on training methods means absolutely nothing and has really been a huge disappointment / let down, so far.

[Thereisalight..]

6pm KO on Tue according to someone ITK 

[diegomarahenry]

42 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

I'd also mention the Burnley thing again as being a complete joke from a Footballing perspective and may in fact have hindered our search / lulled us into a false sense of security and then came back to bite us as it were. Let's be honest, from a fans perspective sharing costs in merchandising etc and exchanging views on training methods means absolutely nothing and has really been a huge disappointment / let down, so far.

Almost every time Hopkin speaks it either fails to address the issue or fails to materialise.

His pre and post match interviews are often shallow platitudes where he says things he thinks fans want to hear. 

the PR from The club is rotten, it leads to wee digs like Miller saying whatever the club do, it’ll be wrong or Smith having an ill advised tweet on a Sunday morning after a game. 
Hopkins, “must win” games that we get pumped in, I want to sign a certain type of player, saying he knows what the Morton boys are capable of and then all of them to a man let him down.

he has signed 2 players in Afolabi and O’Conner he obviously doesn’t rate, yet Salkeld is called on before either of them. 
The Burnley thing looks like better PR from Burnley’s standpoint, came across as a bit patronising in the press conference and it may take a few years for Ayr to see any benefits. 
 

The whole club needs a shake or we’ll be back to part time football in league one with 600 paying fans again. 

[Hursty]

35 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

6pm KO on Tue according to someone ITK 

Now that I could get on board with.  Somerset until we concede the decisive 2nd goal with 15 mins left, quick boo then bolt into town and get in just after KO in the Scotlsnd game.   6 pints in pub for game, then come on here all drunken tears and snotters around midnight. 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Hursty

[UpInTheAyr]

His last tweet was Aug 14, not what you really expect from the commercial manager. Is there no news at all?

[Richey Edwards]

6AM kickoff on tuesday.

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, diegomarahenry said:

Almost every time Hopkin speaks it either fails to address the issue or fails to materialise.

His pre and post match interviews are often shallow platitudes where he says things he thinks fans want to hear. 

the PR from The club is rotten, it leads to wee digs like Miller saying whatever the club do, it’ll be wrong or Smith having an ill advised tweet on a Sunday morning after a game. 
Hopkins, “must win” games that we get pumped in, I want to sign a certain type of player, saying he knows what the Morton boys are capable of and then all of them to a man let him down.

he has signed 2 players in Afolabi and O’Conner he obviously doesn’t rate, yet Salkeld is called on before either of them. 
The Burnley thing looks like better PR from Burnley’s standpoint, came across as a bit patronising in the press conference and it may take a few years for Ayr to see any benefits. 
 

The whole club needs a shake or we’ll be back to part time football in league one with 600 paying fans again. 

Although I'm seen as a "happy clapper" I must admit that the signing of O'Conner has come across as a Smith signing in an attempt to appease the fans as opposed to a Hopkin signing being someone who he wants in the side. As such, I'm not sure that we'll ever get to see that much of him and if we do he'll just be completely wasted and similar goes for Moff.

Rather than get annoyed about something which hadn't actually happened, I'm now annoyed with something which has, as in no signings and believe the club must issue a statement to at least give us all a clue about what our gameplan is (if any) with regards to the rest of the season.

The Hopkin interviews don't really bother me that much as ultimately he's there to train / manage the team as opposed to smooth talking the fans / media, however the Club should be doing much much more and even the website is a joke with all last years news as "latest news".

Maybe we were just spoiled for a couple of years and we're now back to our normal existence of a bottom to mid table Championship club with a few yo yo seasons where we visit League 1, on the other hand, let's hope not !!!

[diegomarahenry]

18 minutes ago, UpInTheAyr said:

His last tweet was Aug 14, not what you really expect from the commercial manager. Is there no news at all?

His time to shine is March to August, maybe stuff in the lead up to Christmas. It wasn’t great this season and any information was like getting blood out of a stone. 

Training gear, we con only buy templates from Hummel due to the amount we buy. The kit for next year will be ordered in October if I remember correctly.

other than that, no club dinners or Burns Suppers, probably down to Covid. Same with an open day.

I don’t expect much communication just now from him to be honest.

we could have binned the away strip, or released a third and hidden the away strip, made a bit more cash for the club. 

 

[Jamie_M]

2 hours ago, WATTOO said:

I'd also mention the Burnley thing again as being a complete joke from a Footballing perspective and may in fact have hindered our search / lulled us into a false sense of security and then came back to bite us as it were. 

I never really got how you all ended up expecting to get to cherry pick the best of Burnley reserves and that loans from there were guaranteed.

In the announcement from Burnley right at the start they listed all the things that WILL happen as a result of the partnership.

They then said 'loans will be considered'.

Maybe Hopkin also wrongly assumed it was a given...

[BukyOHare]

1 hour ago, diegomarahenry said:

The whole club needs a shake or we’ll be back to part time football in league one with 600 paying fans again. 

That's the real worry for me. No club in Scotland can afford to keep losing fans season after season but for whatever reason our club too often slips into the radio silence state that we're going through at the moment.

Then wonder later down the line where it went wrong. They've got to stay on the front foot all the time, the odd "imminent" tweet just doesn't cut it in 2021.

I've said on here too many times things are way too reactive within the club, it has been this way for as long as I've known it.

There's no drive, enthusiasm, positivity or a general drive to get year on year growth and development. 

Davie Smith surely wouldn't run his own business like that, I don't get how things become that much different in approach just because it's a football club. 

For too long I've felt the club take the remaining hardcore of fans for granted with an attitude of they'll keep turning up through blind loyalty regardless. It's a dangerous game to play. 

What I perceive to be lethargy from within the club is often mirrored in that of the behaviour of the community and general fanbase in return. Nobody wins. 

 

 

[diegomarahenry]

St Johnston finished runners up to us in 87-88.

Livingstone were formed out of Meadowfuckingbank

Gretna are a bad exemplar of what I am trying to prove here

Inverness and Ross County weren’t in the league in 87-88.

the reason I mention 87-88 is that the club were rocking, kicked on with full time football and McLeod spent a fortune on mediocre players. We built the family stand. We then had Burley……Stainrod, Bill Barr comes along and moves the club on on the park and apart from the hospitality suite, not much off it. The academy is created around that time as well. Barr spends millions on some mercenaries and we get to a league cup final, against other opposition we might have won. 
Slump back down, go part time, have a series of dreadful managers, Cameron was awful in the early days. McCall comes in and with Cameron, lifts us out of a dark spell with the potential of something to build on.

Smith takes over, wants to take the club forward off the park and keep us ticking over on it. We are in a good position to build on the last 5 years.

St Johnston - 2 Scottish cups and a league cup, European qualification premier league football

Livingston - league cup, European qualification, premier league football 

Inverness and Ross county - Scottish cup and European qualification, premier league football

Gretna - European qualification, premier league football. 
 

all have overtaken us in the last 30 years and have achieved more than we have with similar or smaller sized clubs through being well run(not Gretna) and well managed. So it annoys me when people say Ayr have no Devine right to that kind of success. It is achievable but we just don’t. The more people who just accept what they are getting, the worse we will become

Telling fans to buy season tickets and donate to the AU500 or we’ll lose Shankland v. We’ll keep it all a secret and then make out it was the fans fault for assuming stuff and then sign proven failures isn’t progress. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Jamie_M said:

I never really got how you all ended up expecting to get to cherry pick the best of Burnley reserves and that loans from there were guaranteed.

In the announcement from Burnley right at the start they listed all the things that WILL happen as a result of the partnership.

They then said 'loans will be considered'.

Maybe Hopkin also wrongly assumed it was a given...

I'd think most would have put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4 plus the extreme likelihood that "loans" would indeed be forthcoming.

As you say, it wasn't "guaranteed", however it kind of makes a mockery of their U23's coming up to play us and the direct quote of "allowing hopkin to run the rule over them", if we were never likely to get any of them.

Take Ipswich, we DON'T have a partnership with them, yet have had a couple of players on loan from them and up to train with us over the past couple of seasons so from a supporters perspective I've got much more interest / and thanks directed towards Ipswich than our supposed "partners" of Burnley.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, diegomarahenry said:

St Johnston finished runners up to us in 87-88.

Livingstone were formed out of Meadowfuckingbank

Gretna are a bad exemplar of what I am trying to prove here

Inverness and Ross County weren’t in the league in 87-88.

the reason I mention 87-88 is that the club were rocking, kicked on with full time football and McLeod spent a fortune on mediocre players. We built the family stand. We then had Burley……Stainrod, Bill Barr comes along and moves the club on on the park and apart from the hospitality suite, not much off it. The academy is created around that time as well. Barr spends millions on some mercenaries and we get to a league cup final, against other opposition we might have won. 
Slump back down, go part time, have a series of dreadful managers, Cameron was awful in the early days. McCall comes in and with Cameron, lifts us out of a dark spell with the potential of something to build on.

Smith takes over, wants to take the club forward off the park and keep us ticking over on it. We are in a good position to build on the last 5 years.

St Johnston - 2 Scottish cups and a league cup, European qualification premier league football

Livingston - league cup, European qualification, premier league football 

Inverness and Ross county - Scottish cup and European qualification, premier league football

Gretna - European qualification, premier league football. 
 

all have overtaken us in the last 30 years and have achieved more than we have with similar or smaller sized clubs through being well run(not Gretna) and well managed. So it annoys me when people say Ayr have no Devine right to that kind of success. It is achievable but we just don’t. The more people who just accept what they are getting, the worse we will become

Telling fans to buy season tickets and donate to the AU500 or we’ll lose Shankland v. We’ll keep it all a secret and then make out it was the fans fault for assuming stuff and then sign proven failures isn’t progress. 

The sale of Muirton to Asda and the gifting of the land by Farmer McDiarmid set the Saints right up, Livingston are a basket case who've had a string of Admins but keep producing a "crook" character to look after them, Ross County have been bank rolled by Uncle Roy and Inverness I'm not too sure about but agree they have been a shining light.

For every success there's an Airdrie or a Dumbarton or Falkirk of recent years, then we have the demise of Partick and Dunfermline who were both close to extinction but escaped, unlike Clydebank and Gretna then Morton who were in a bad way and of course our county neighbours who were also sailing very close to the wind. Motherwell were also another admin case and of course Sevco.

I do agree though, we could and probably should have done better but the cards just didn't fall for us with regards the stadium and that Dickhead Sam Galbraith.

Who knows ? if that had gone through we might have been playing in the Europa last week as well.........

Edited September 1, 2021 by WATTOO

[diegomarahenry]

3 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

The sale of Muirton to Asda and the gifting of the land by Farmer McDiarmid set the Saints right up, Livingston are a basket case who've had a string of Admins but keep producing a "crook" character to look after them, Ross County have been bank rolled by Uncle Roy and Inverness I'm not too sure about but agree they have been a shining light.

For every success there's an Airdrie or a Dumbarton or Falkirk of recent years, then we have the demise of Partick and Dunfermline who were both close to extinction but escaped, unlike Clydebank and Gretna then Morton who were in a bad way and of course our county neighbours who were also sailing very close to the wind. Motherwell were also another admin case and of course Sevco.

I do agree though, we could and probably should have done better but the cards just didn't fall for us with regards the stadium and that Dickhead Sam Galbraith.

Who knows ? if that had gone through we might have been playing in the Europa last week as well.........

The stadium issue never held us back though. If stopped Falkirk getting promoted but we were never in that position, there was plans to groundshare if it did. We are a Dumbarton, Airdrie and Falkirk, we need to move up a level. 

[Skyline Drifter]

11 minutes ago, WATTOO said:

The sale of Muirton to Asda and the gifting of the land by Farmer McDiarmid set the Saints right up, Livingston are a basket case who've had a string of Admins but keep producing a "crook" character to look after them, Ross County have been bank rolled by Uncle Roy and Inverness I'm not too sure about but agree they have been a shining light.

For every success there's an Airdrie or a Dumbarton or Falkirk of recent years, then we have the demise of Partick and Dunfermline who were both close to extinction but escaped, unlike Clydebank and Gretna then Morton who were in a bad way and of course our county neighbours who were also sailing very close to the wind. Motherwell were also another admin case and of course Sevco.

I do agree though, we could and probably should have done better but the cards just didn't fall for us with regards the stadium and that Dickhead Sam Galbraith.

Who knows ? if that had gone through we might have been playing in the Europa last week as well.........

Yeah, this, 100%.

St Johnstone are pretty much a model smaller club, fantastically well run but they got enormously lucky with the McDiarmid deal to set them on their way. Anyone holding up Livingston as an example to other clubs wants their head looked at. And whilst Ross County have done a great job, there's no doubt it's entirely at the funding of Roy McGregor and co. Inverness too were in horrible debt problems a year or two back. They've had some success but they've also had plenty of problems to deal with.