St Mirren -V- Airdrie Preview

By Chris Mac
January 9 2004

Unlike the St Mirren site no cheap shots from me. Depending on your opinion we have either played St Mirren 173 times or never, either way a bad defeat is on the cards for the team sitting 7th in the Scottish First Division.

Airdrie travel to the backside of the universe to take on St Mirren in this round of the cup and Sandy Stewart has a full squad to choose from. Kevin Christie hopes to make it into the team but with the Airdrie squad hitting a bit of form it may be hard for any player to get an automatic position. Always good to see players having to perform to guarantee a position in the squad.

Mark Roberts returns to St Mirren the team he left during the closed season, whilst he was there he only managed twelve games and scored three goals, so he will be hoping to return and show the Paisley fans what he can do when teamed up with a decent attacking front line.

St Mirren have a few injuries to contend with and manager Gus MacPherson may have to shuffle his pack to the dreaded 3-5-2 formation, which can only benefit us. Craig Hinchcliff and Allan Russell are definitely out and there is a doubt concerning Kirk Broadfoot (Hobbit with his feet on the table during the first of the Lord of the Rings films).

Past meetings

	Airdrie (old) wins	draws	St Mirren wins
League	64	32	57
FA Cup	3	4	7
League Cup	1	0	5
Total	68	36	69

Biggest Airdrie Win

1917/1918
Scottish Division 1 (old)	Airdrie	1-0	St Mirren

Biggest St Mirren Win

1932/1933
Scottish Division 1 (old)	St Mirren	7-1	Airdrie

Prediction

I'm looking forward to our first game of the New Year even if it does mean a trip to Paisley, when looking at the fixture earlier I had a feeling this would end up a draw but as we get closer to the fixture I'm becoming more and more confident we will walk away from the game having beating 1st division opponents at the third attempt. Airdrie to go through to the next round whether after a replay on Tuesday night or tomorrow.