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The Ultimate Super Ayr Thread


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11 hours ago, Finlay21 said:

Shiny new stuff does help with the long term plans of the club and a majority of fans support it , Hub has brought in much needed income , new shop has more than doubled the sales , new hospitality going to bring in over 100% more than old suite , I would hate to think where this club would be without the funds being provided from the shiny new things 

The answer would be probably in debt and perhaps heading down a division after paying off a string of managers plus covering a transfer dept that might not have washed it's own face. Spending on infrastructure  is great and will be worth the sacrifice for pushing us up a level. Once the stand opens hopefully a lot of distraction is removed and the focus becomes mainly around the playing side.  Excluding Brown i do remember the last decent manager we hired managed to put us in a better place without all of the added luxuries.   

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11 hours ago, Finlay21 said:

Shiny new stuff does help with the long term plans of the club and a majority of fans support it , Hub has brought in much needed income , new shop has more than doubled the sales , new hospitality going to bring in over 100% more than old suite , I would hate to think where this club would be without the funds being provided from the shiny new things 

I think a good summer in terms of recruitment would to a large extent the concerns that people have expressed. It was pretty depressing last summer to see targets we had gone after end up at other clubs in the same division. It is also very clear to neutrals that we have a general lack of quality throughout the squad - when we were missing any of Murphy, Chalmers or Dowds it was never good to watch.

Budget doesn't solve these things magically (look at Falkirk for the last few years or Aberdeen now) but I don't think Smith will have succeeded in the business side of the rebuilding of the club until we have a squad that is on paper in the top three in the division. At that point whether we achieve the aim of getting promotion will depend on the manager, coaches and players since he will have done his bit.

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1 minute ago, Rb123 said:

Have a feeling we're either going to sneak a result up here today or get absolutely pumped..

Yeah i feel the same. Theres no middle ground. They'll either be out for blood, or a bit nervy and we'll nick a point. I suspect the former though.

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2 hours ago, rgreig said:

I think a good summer in terms of recruitment would to a large extent the concerns that people have expressed. It was pretty depressing last summer to see targets we had gone after end up at other clubs in the same division. It is also very clear to neutrals that we have a general lack of quality throughout the squad - when we were missing any of Murphy, Chalmers or Dowds it was never good to watch.

Budget doesn't solve these things magically (look at Falkirk for the last few years or Aberdeen now) but I don't think Smith will have succeeded in the business side of the rebuilding of the club until we have a squad that is on paper in the top three in the division. At that point whether we achieve the aim of getting promotion will depend on the manager, coaches and players since he will have done his bit.

The dream scenario is building a club which is self sustaining and resilient, so that it can thrive for the foreseeable future without relying on the contribution of any one specific coach, executive or player. I'm sure I've read that Brighton is the model they've looked at most closely and that seems a sensible choice.

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3 minutes ago, Rb123 said:

Have a feeling we're either going to sneak a result up here today or get absolutely pumped..

Someone says this every week 😄

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There aren’t many teams that buck the trend of money=success.

The more that can be generated on and outwith match day is the key to us progressing.

So the way I see Smith’s tenure so far, is laying foundations for future success.

Of course, I’d love to see it next season, or the season after - who wouldn’t? but we’ve had owners throw money at it before and it didn’t work, and set us back afterwards.

No doubt we will have bumps on the road - let’s face it, it has been a tough watch since McCall left.

Nobody loves transitional periods, they can be tough to endure, but I’m sure it will be worth it in the end - hopefully for all of us and future generations to enjoy.

Staying up this season would be a massive win for me and I would say we would need to have been really unlucky if we need to endure anything like the same next season.

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I can understand that some fans might feel frustrated that so much money is being spent on off-pitch projects while we've been staying up by the skin of our teeth in 3 out of the last 4 seasons, but it's probably been the right way to do things.   Dave Smith could easily have pumped the equivalent money into the playing budget, but there's absolutely no guarantee of a return on that and football is littered with examples of clubs spending loads in a short period of time and it blowing up in their faces when they don't get the success they are looking for. 
At least with the infrastructure mostly in place now, there should be a solid base for the club to operate on.  Hospitality should be a much more attractive product to market to casual fans/corporate sponsors, and the improvements in the retail side of things (the O'Neills products, physical and online shops) should all provide a much more stable source of long-term revenue.  

The issue for me is the transfer policies.  I'm all for exploring alternative markets, but we've become far too obsessed with signing players from within the M25.  That's not necessarily down to what money is available for on-pitch, but how it's being used.  Surely we will see that policy being massively scaled back this year - by all means scout and explore if there are potential players but we desperately need to be signing guys who are a bit more of a known quantity.  

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17 hours ago, Finlay21 said:

Shiny new stuff does help with the long term plans of the club and a majority of fans support it , Hub has brought in much needed income , new shop has more than doubled the sales , new hospitality going to bring in over 100% more than old suite , I would hate to think where this club would be without the funds being provided from the shiny new things 

To fail to plan is to plan to fail. Feel the club has a plan and feel pretty confident about the club going forward. Success might not come next season or the next. Or even the next again but some pretty substantial building blocks are in place to make sustainable success achievable. I’ve often looked around at other clubs making strides and been jealous. I dare say some clubs around us are jealous of what we are doing.

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Hard not to be encouraged with the performances Brown is delivering. Only thing preventing more optimism is that we have no way to know how recruitment will go in the summer. I'm hopeful.

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1 minute ago, Iain said:

Hard not to be encouraged with the performances Brown is delivering. Only thing preventing more optimism is that we have no way to know how recruitment will go in the summer. I'm hopeful.

Yeah but I'd still bin a good chuck of them.

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