Stranraer 1 v. Airdrie1 - 13/12/05

AIRDRIE UTD

Stranraer

FIRST HALFAirdrie had the better of the first half. Willie McLaren had the best chance when he got in behind the Stranraer defence. He had a yard on his marker as he approached the penalty area but he chose to shoot too quickly when he should have took the ball on another yard. Corr easily blocked and although Prunty got onto the rebound at the edge of the box, he was rapidly thwarted. Airdrie took the lead when Prunty’s legs were swept away from him in the box. Stephen McKeown grabbed the ball and sent Corr the wrong way. In fact he sent us all the wrong way. In baseball a pitcher needs to vary his pitches to keep the batter ‘true’. St. Mirren’s Smith almost guessed right last week as McKeown followed his regular pattern of going to the goalie’s right. Now he’s kept the other goalies in the league ‘true’ by varying it this time.

MATCH UP Both sides went with three in the midfield again. As always, McKeown was given the task of looking after the dangerman, this time Jenkins. Defensively Airdrie looked a lot more solid with McGowan making a return to form after his recent slump. McLaren was again dangled behind the front two, but frustratingly Airdrie tried too often to throw long balls over the top for McPhee to turn the defence with. It didn’t work all afternoon.

SECOND HALFStranraer made a tactical change for the second half by taking off defensive midfielder Higgins and replacing him with forward Paul Walker. Stranraer took the initiative as Airdrie’s game lengthened and to be frank, Airdrie never adjusted. The main turning point though was the harsh looking sending off of Hardie. The big midfielder threw himself into a slide tackle on Hamilton but looked from my view as a clean tackle, even though Hamilton flew to the ground head long. He wasn’t any where near the last man, so the ref’s straight red card looked extremely unjustified. Again, this is one for the Scotsport camera to clear up. Annoyingly, I seem to recall Sandy Stewart yell at him to refrain from diving into challenges last week. Will Hardie ever listen? Even if the ref was right, why did Hardie have to make that challenge? It wasn’t exactly a goal scoring situation. Ironically Stephen McKeown was the victim of a Stranraer player’s straight leg block as he pulled the trigger in the first half, but of course the officials missed that one. Sharp took the free kick from the edge of the box and beat Robertson all ends up with a delightfully executed free kick. Jenkins had a clear chance for the home side late on, and Airdrie had a double effort at the other but the ball was cleared off the line.

GOING FORWARD The big question of course will be who replaces Hardie? Docherty has his own two game ban now, so it will either be Dunn, who is defensively weak and unpredictable going forward, Barkey who hasn’t featured for weeks, or Holmes who is totally untried. My money would be on Dunn to get first chance with McKeown having to remain even deeper to cover Dunn’s weaknesses. However Dunn could bring something that Airdrie really miss. Dunn can of course really pass the ball through the midfield, he can carry the ball from back to front, and he can be a goal threat from midfield. He’s been moaning that he doesn’t get his chance in his “best position”. Well Dunny, this could be your big chance, let’s see what you’ve got. Can you do it in this league? One thing we do need to do is vary our approach more. When we get the ball into the last third we don’t do enough with it. Too often we lose possession immediately as we’re trying to get in behind the defence too predictably. Some games it seems like the game is bypassing Prunty and McPhee. Can we vary it more? We become too predictable at times. One more thing: Wot no Dougall?