The Lee Bullen Derby - Ayr vs Pars 5/2/22

[DAFC.]

Results elsewhere making this a poor day for us.

[Chubbychops]

I'll take a point.

We have Morton, Queens and Ayr at home in the final run of fixtures.

[D'Jaffo]

Overall thoughts are,

Work rate was much better and our midfield was actually trying to make things work going forward. I cannot fathom why Bullen didn’t make more changes though as some players looked absolutely knackered. Dunfermline were also there for the taking and guys like Gondoh, Adeloye or Rowe could’ve really punished them.

McKenzie offers zilch going forward, McGinty is still a w**k and Muirhead isn’t great but from now on he should be used alongside Baird at CB.

[Acrapplied]

Thought Muirhead was very solid at the back. That's where he must stay. McGinty, as usual, was a fucking bombscare. Get him so far to f**k out of that lineup, and get Baird back in there.

Same old pish otherwise. McKenzie out of his depth at this level and does nothing going forward.  We wasted 2 glorious opportunities where it was harder to miss and another game goes by where we don't score a goal. Thank God Dunfermline helped us with that.

I can get the 4-1-4-1 in certain games, but against Dunfermline, Morton, QOTS where it the "proverbial 6-pointer" and we need to win....I would really like to see 2 up front because yet again 1 isn't working out for us. Our best players are at the top end of the pitch.

One shining light though was definitely McInroy, he definitely looks the part in midfield.

[No_Problemo]

19 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:

Overall thoughts are,

Work rate was much better and our midfield was actually trying to make things work going forward. I cannot fathom why Bullen didn’t make more changes though as some players looked absolutely knackered. Dunfermline were also there for the taking and guys like Gondoh, Adeloye or Rowe could’ve really punished them.

McKenzie offers zilch going forward, McGinty is still a w**k and Muirhead isn’t great but from now on he should be used alongside Baird at CB.

I think this is an excellent summary. 

If we had a right hand side capable of attacking, that game was there for the taking.

[Ayr23]

I actually thought we were much better today, and it's obvious we are making progress going forward. Slow progress, but progress. We should have won, but at the same time Dunfermline could have won it too with some close calls.

[Cardle is Magic]

59 minutes ago, DAFC. said:

Results elsewhere making this a poor day for us.

Disagree.

[101]

1 hour ago, DAFC. said:

We’ll lose this. Put your mortgage on it. We’re one of these teams that just can’t deal with poor weather and shit the bed.

Brighten up lad!

[Islay]

We hit the woodwork twice, quite unlucky with those chances. We didn’t use the wind to our advantage as much in the second half as Ayr managed in the first which was disappointing.

[DA Baracus]

Really disappointed with that today. Thought we were really poor. We failed to get Lawless, Dorrans and Dow involved. McCann simply isn't good enough up top. 

[Cardle is Magic]

1 minute ago, DA Baracus said:

Really disappointed with that today. Thought we were really poor. We failed to get Lawless, Dorrans and Dow involved. McCann simply isn't good enough up top. 

In fairness, you didn’t rate McCann last week and he was excellent in holding up the ball and linking up play.

[D'Jaffo]

Really disappointed with that today. Thought we were really poor. We failed to get Lawless, Dorrans and Dow involved. McCann simply isn't good enough up top. 

In fairness to McCann he spent the entire game in a headlock from McGinty.

[Stoo61]

Happy enough. Shite conditions. Motorway a shambles

[diegomarahenry]

Good game to watch, there was a chance that it would be ruined by the wind.

Neither team looked like scoring, Ayr seemed to have the bulk of possession but did nothing with it, had Dunfermlines defence on the back foot a few times but ultimately made an arse of it. Most of Dunfermlines chances also came from Ayr making an arse of it.

Dorrans ran the midfield, Dunfermline looked solid enough at the back but had very little out wide. McCann looked more up for a square go than a shot at goal the whole game.

Draw was probably a fair result, Ayr had the majority of possession but I don’t think we made the keeper work once, Dunfermline had very little going forward but hit the woodwork twice.

Dunfermline look harder to beat now than the start of the season where as Ayr look like they might be prepared to think about the possibility of a shot at goal. 

[Stoo61]

Queens might just be completely fucked. 

8th Place Pars, has a certain ring to it. 

[ryanayr1987]

9 minutes ago, Stoo61 said:

Queens might just be completely fucked. 

8th Place Pars, has a certain ring to it. 

9th sounds better to me BBZ

[DA Baracus]

2 hours ago, Cardle is Magic said:

In fairness, you didn’t rate McCann last week and he was excellent in holding up the ball and linking up play.

 

2 hours ago, D'Jaffo said:

In fairness to McCann he spent the entire game in a headlock from McGinty.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of him. 

I hope he scores in every game he plays, but I don't rate him because of how many chances he misses.

[No_Problemo]

One thing I’ve not noticed being discussed: the Dunfermline goalkeeper blatantly picking the ball up outside his box in the opening minutes, as the linesman watched on!

[Cardle is Magic]

Just seen the own goal. Obviously a ridiculous way to concede but could have tried that another 99 times and it wouldn’t have looped over the keeper and in.

[CallumPar]

Strange game, in nightmare conditions. We started the much better team and deserved our goal. Then the own goal happened (I’d put it into the ‘freak incident’ category) and Ayr got a lift. Then we rode our luck a bit and were possibly lucky to go into HT at 1-1, but I also don’t think the keeper had a save to make.

Second half was a scrappy affair and I think both sets of fans will probably feel they could/should have won it. We hit the post twice and Ayr had the horrendous miss from 2 yards out, after the keeper spilled a shot that then seemed to get stuck in the mud.

Overall, probably about as good a game as you could expect in the conditions. Dorrans was our best player and we looked significantly weaker going forward once we took Pybus off and Dorrans played deeper. Our defending at set pieces worried me and Ayr seemed to work out early on that Lewis Martin was a bit of a nervous wreck and targeted him, a tactic that a lot of their good/dangerous play came through.

Didn’t think McCann was as bad as suggested above. Given the conditions, it wasn’t a day for high balls. First half, every ball was getting caught in the wind and ended up way behind him and second half every high ball was ending up 5-10 yards ahead of him. When he got the ball to feet, he looked alright most of the time. However, there’s absolutely no doubt that a confident striker would have won the game for us late on, when he won the ball off the defender and ran in on goal. As soon as another defender got close, he started moving away from goal and moved the ball onto his weaker foot.

McInroy seemed to play well for Ayr and a lot of their play went through him. That seemed obvious from the terracing, but we didn’t do anything to try and make things difficult for him. Reminded me of his performance against Hearts last season. Shame he was anonymous in every other appearance for us.