Airdrieonians 0 Vs. 1 Partick Thistle
By Stomp Admin
July 15 2016
So Airdrie faced Scottish Premier Leagues Partick Thistle in the new look League Cup and to be honest we held our own and I hope the team did enough for at least some of the 1600+ crowd to decide they will be back.
Airdrie stuck to the mantra of trying to play the ball on the deck, however comments from Monday's meeting at Cue Here wrang in my ears, do we have a plan B if plan A doesn't work? Well Thistle were quick to close us down and man marked our defence making it difficult to play the ball on the ground at times and it was trying to maintain the mantra and one mistake that cost us the goal.
It's too early in the season to start blaming players so I'm going to say this there were far more positives to take from todays game than negatives, we had our chances and against teams in our own league we will score goals.
So on to Queen of the South on Tuesday.
Airdrie's line up tonight was:-
Ferguson, Stewart, McIntosh, Gorman, MacDonald, Conroy, Brown, Fitzpatrick, Ryan, McLaughlin, Russell
Subs: Faria, Daly, Schmidt, Higgins, Kerr, Truesdale, Cairns
Partick Thistle:-
Crawford, Booth, Welsh, Lindsay, Doolan, Erskine, Lawless, Devine, Wilson, McDaid, Gordon
Subs: Cullen, Azeez, Edwards, Syme, Nisbet, Penrice, Pogba
Highlights of last nights match can be found on the official site
http://airdriefc.com/diamondstv/16/07/15
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However roll on the next game.....the future looks bright!!
The problem areas are right back, central defence and central midfield. We do need a central defender and a strong centre mid to dictate play in there. But we also desperately need a right back. Scott Stewart is good going forward but a liability defensively. I can't understand why we got rid of two right backs at the end of last season and now think we don't need one! I do hope I'm wrong and that Stewart will grow into that role, but if he doesn't it wont be long before teams get wise to it and exploit the space.
That said, I heard McBride on the radio afterwards stating that there's a couple of positions where he's still looking to strengthen. So on the whole things are looking up and I'm confident that this season we'll put in a strong challenge for the league.
However when defending the formation turns into a 4-5-1 and that relies on the wingers- wing/backs getting back and defending if that doesn't happen then the right back in this case is left exposed.
We're also trying hard to stop play through the middle of the defense that means our right or left back is being dragged inside leaving space on the wing if our wingers/wing backs aren't tracking back.
When Iain Russel switched position and played on the right Scott got the protection he needed.
What I would say is that if there is an athletics coach at Ravenscraig then a few of our players need taught how to sprint.