Elgin City 23-24

[WeAreElgin]

Anything would be good. If you were to follow the club's press releases then Draper is still trying to sign a couple of players from the first team. If he is intending on standing down then I don't think it's much of a stretch for the fans to be made aware.

[Elgin Macca]

What an absolute mess. A squad that obviously wasn't good enough before the season started and hasn't improved any with transfers, a manager that has chucked it (according to rumours), the usual stone cold silence from the board and sponsors pulling out. I said in pre season i would be amazed if we survived the drop this year but i didn't expect such a shambolic start across the board

[starryfish]

Elgin City are delighted to announce that Barry Smith has been appointed as Manager at Elgin City Football Club.  The former Celtic, Dundee, Valur, Partick Thistle, Morton and Brechin player has managed a number of clubs during his career incuding Dundee, Alloa Athletic, Aldershot Town, East Fife, Raith Rovers and Brechin City.

Chairman Graham Tatters said, " We are delighted to have attracted Barry to Elgin City and he will take the team with immediate effect.  He has a great pedigree and brings great experience to the club.   Barry has signed a 2 year deal. "

Ross Draper recently stood down as Manager due to personal circumstances and remains at the club.

[WeAreElgin]

Laughed out loud at that statement. Here's a new manager and Tatters back without any warning or indication that either was a possibility

[cityloon]

Welcome aboard Barry all the best of luck and the rumours were right then but the board kept it tight lipped

[Jan Vojáček]

I had completely forgotten about Barry Smith full stop until I saw the post on Facebook just there.

He served as our assistant manager from early 2020 until the end of the Jim Duffy's tenure, and it coincided with us switching from being a goalscoring and relatively entertaining side, to one that conceded barely any - but scored even less.

There's plenty of odd goings on up your way, but I'd think (think) he'd be able to get your defence into some amount of order. And based on the Bonnyrigg highlights that has to be the first priority. But maybe don't expect a great deal else, as we were utterly brutal to watch that lockdown season.

I remember doing a big analysis into his impact one lockdown evening. And I've put it below.

It's all just statistics. And he was our assistant manager, not our boss. So there's probably a limited amount you could read into the over-analysed lockdown ramblings of someone who was bored to a degree he'd never experienced before. But here we go anyway.

On 29/12/2020 at 10:08, Jan Vojáček said:

I was writing up my review of the year for the paper the other day and totally forgot that it was this year that Barry Smith came in for Hagi.

Given the impact that changing assistant had on Ian Murray and Stevie Aitken, I wondered how Hagi's stats compared to Barry Smith's - and there's been a clear difference.

Now before I go on I should say that, in Smith's defence, his 20 games have included two against Falkirk, one against Dunfermline and one against Kilmarnock. In Hagi's defence, his goals against ratio includes 6-1 and 6-0 defeats to Morton and Falkirk respectively.

But here we go:

Craig McPherson as assistant

Played - 55
Won - 20 (36.4%)
Drawn - 12 (21.82%)
Scored - 83 (1.5 per game)
Conceded - 93 (1.69 per game)

Barry Smith as assistant

Played - 20
Won - 6 (30%)
Drawn - 3 (15%)
Lost - 11 (55%)
Scored - 14 (0.7 per game)
Conceded - 28 (1.4 per game)

A few things really stood out to me there. Firstly since Smith came in we now score (on average) half the number of goals of our opponents. We also now lose more than half of our games.

Under Hagi we both won and drew more matches - e/g avoided defeat more often. And based on the numbers that looks to be because we had a better balance between scoring and conceding. Now we're defensively more solid, but at a cost to our forward line.

Now. Another caveat. Hagi's stats of course include having Dom Thomas, Calum Gallagher, peak Ross Forbes and Bobby Barr. So the side that he came in to had more attacking talent than the team Smith inherited. Of course therefore his stats will be better.

I quickly deleted that first season though and looked only at last year until Hagi left. With Ryan Tierney, Isaac Layne and so on, we still managed to average 1.21 goals per game. With the same squad in seven games last season under Smith and Duffy we scored seven goals. Although we did win three of those.

I'm not sure you can read anything into all of the above. But the stats told a story that we already knew. We're blunt going forward and, although relatively tight at the back, if you aren't scoring every single week then you'll lose more games than you win. 

 

[Jacksgranda]

Hopefully things will pick up.

[WeAreElgin]

Clearly Barry Smith was the (second) best of a bad bunch as his record isn't very exciting. 

At least we have a manager we can get behind. 

[Rossco8326]

3 hours ago, starryfish said:

Elgin City are delighted to announce that Barry Smith has been appointed as Manager at Elgin City Football Club.  The former Celtic, Dundee, Valur, Partick Thistle, Morton and Brechin player has managed a number of clubs during his career incuding Dundee, Alloa Athletic, Aldershot Town, East Fife, Raith Rovers and Brechin City.

Chairman Graham Tatters said, " We are delighted to have attracted Barry to Elgin City and he will take the team with immediate effect.  He has a great pedigree and brings great experience to the club.   Barry has signed a 2 year deal. "

Ross Draper recently stood down as Manager due to personal circumstances and remains at the club.

Good luck with him most of our decent players ended up leaving because of him hes not a good man manager. He was the start of our downfall 

[1993]

13 hours ago, WeAreElgin said:

Laughed out loud at that statement. Here's a new manager and Tatters back without any warning or indication that either was a 

[1993]

Won’t be a problem for us.

[MonTheHedge]

17 hours ago, andrew21 said:

Barry Smith's managerial record the last decade is a bit patchy isn't it?

It’s not patchy it’s fucking awful. (He had a purple patch at Raith but I stand by this)
 

The worst man manager and tactician I’ve seen at Brechin. 
 

Also lucky the window is closed because it means he can’t bring in his usual fucking dross. 

Edited September 6, 2023 by MonTheHedge

[negros y blancos]

Never liked having a joint player/ manager . It’s maybe ok in the short term but not at this level. As for Barry Smith coming in happy with that but  how much can he influence the team now we’re into the season window closed and our loan quota must be full to burst . Tatters back at helm ok but was happy with the change there would have kept that going see how that panned out . Overall it’s a good change but roll on the quiet times at BB and 3pts on a Saturday ️

[charlie king mvp]

Good luck.  He’s fucking hopeless.

[afca32]

This is extremely underwhelming. He is experienced at least and the last time we appointed a new manager with any real experience (almost 10 years ago!) we were warned how bad Jim Weir would be by countless fans of other clubs and that worked out pretty well.

[Kev8122]

On 06/09/2023 at 11:48, MonTheHedge said:

It’s not patchy it’s fucking awful. (He had a purple patch at Raith but I stand by this)
 

The worst man manager and tactician I’ve seen at Brechin. 
 

Also lucky the window is closed because it means he can’t bring in his usual fucking dross. 

Smith was the catalyst for the demise of our club - released Paul McLean, Aron Lynas, Euan Spark, Kalvin Orsi, Ryan McGeever, Euan Smith and replaced them with utter crap. Resigned after 3 league games and left Mark Wilson with nothing much to work with.

Elgin will be Club 42 and it would be Karma if we replaced them in the SPFL

[1993]

Don’t think you’ll be replacing us. Maybe meet in HL though

[Dav nan Gael]

See u lot back at PRP next season,mon the Vale 

[Dav nan Gael]

4 hours ago, Kev8122 said:

Smith was the catalyst for the demise of our club - released Paul McLean, Aron Lynas, Euan Spark, Kalvin Orsi, Ryan McGeever, Euan Smith and replaced them with utter crap. Resigned after 3 league games and left Mark Wilson with nothing much to work with.

Elgin will be Club 42 and it would be Karma if we replaced them in the SPFL

You've nae chance.........EKs season all day long  !!

[1993]

2 hours ago, Dav nan Gael said:

See u lot back at PRP next season,mon the Vale 

Will be a big day for the Vale right enough.