dunning1874

Obviously none of us know the exact figure or are ever going to, but us stretching to between £800 or £900 for our highest earners putting Ayr's 50% (or more) higher offer somewhere around £1200-1350 seems a reasonable guess. You can't expect us to get near that.

The outline around the badge is pretty honking, but that only lowers it from a 10/10 to 9/10 top. It's a lovely kit overall, although obviously socks should always be hooped.

This bears repeating when everyone flies into panic that losing these players means relegation is inevitable even though we're not out of May yet. Oakley had 1 goal in 18 games that season, 6 goals in 60 games over three seasons when we signed him in January as a free agent who'd been punted by another Championship club. He then scored 6 in his first 8 for us. Muirhead's career Championship record before Imrie was 1 goal in 51 games (12 for Dunfermline, 39 for Morton). Under Imrie his Championship record is 26 goals in 85 games. His total career record in all competitions pre-Imrie was exactly 200 games & 25 goals, and 8 of those were in cup ties or playoffs against lower league opposition. With Imrie it's 104 games and 34 goals. It's very easy to look at the numbers Oakley & Muirhead delivered, and say it's impossible to replace them with our budget because it means we're ending up with dregs and cast-offs from other Championship clubs, but that's exactly what Oakley and Muirhead were when Imrie got hold of them. So was Crawford, so were Gillespie, Quitongo and Baird. If we end up with centre forward options of Jordan Davies, the rumoured Jay Bird, and the wingers are Michael Garrity, Jack Bearne plus another couple from the categories of released by another Championship team, picked up from League One or a teenage loanee, we can be fatalistic about that and say they can never replicate the contribution we got from the departing players. Alternatively we can recognise that that market is exactly where we found those players who've done so well that half the division are now chasing them; while it's not a signing that would particularly excite me either, if anything Jay Bird's stock is considerably higher than Oakley in January 23 or Muirhead in January 22.

This would be great, but it's more likely the beginning of this summer's round of airing dirty laundry in public over not being happy with his budget, as in "wtf how have Ayr been able to blow us out the water?" when everyone knows the answer to that question. Obviously they had the critical factor of fucktons of money to spend on players which led to a strong start to the season, but when you look at the relentless positivity that was coming out of Raith last summer and the resultant impact on their season ticket sales, with their good season then seeing a massive increase in attendances overall, you wonder what a summer of a positive tone coming out the club could do in terms of gradually nudging the season ticket numbers up. Could do without a summer of manager and board taking implicit shots at each other which will then lead to histrionics from the support about how we're doomed, Imrie is about to resign and fan ownership will inevitably fail.

They've got a sugar daddy owner and have already been able to blow us out the water financially for several seasons, our recruitment has just been much better than theirs as they've chosen to spunk it on shite like McGinty. We have to hope Oakley appreciates the relationship with Imrie and guaranteed first team football here, he was always going to get offers from clubs who could offer more than us even with an increased budget.

Time will tell with Muirhead. Maybe his two and a half years with Imrie have permanently changed him for the better and he can consistently hit double figures at this level, maybe being managed by someone else will see him revert to the hapless figure he was for the first two and a half years with us and he'll end up in the Lowland League via Clyde, as his career trajectory was suggesting when we signed him. It's going to be an extremely hard task for Imrie to replace those goals but there's also an upside to being able to vary our attacking play rather than having to adjust to accommodate Muirhead when he has serious deficiencies wherever you put him.

Broadfoot is a known quantity in the sense that everyone knows he's blatantly not good enough for this level now, and turning 40 in August will likely be even further out of his depth come next season. There's no reason to doubt all the off-field attributes he's been praised for in terms of his attitude to training, looking after himself and influence on younger players, but he's not being given a contract as a coach. He's taking up a first team wage and everyone can see that regardless of any positive off-field influence, he's completely finished at this level on the pitch. The only possible conclusion is that Imrie's appreciation for what Broadfoot brings through the week is blinding him to how bad he is on a Saturday. No argument with any of the released players, and while I wouldn't have kept Gillespie myself I can see the argument for keeping him as cover: pleasantly surprised it's Gillespie rather than Power being retained for that role. Broadfoot is really the only decision to argue with here, but it's such a bad one as he was genuinely the first name on the obvious release list.

We do still have Mullen, Baird and Wilson as a great foundation to start from but yes, there's a balance between having the necessary turnover to upgrade the squad after our regression from 22/23 to 23/24, and losing too many players giving you a far more difficult rebuild. While Strapp and Oakley are the most important two to keep, you'd ideally not be losing any of those who've shown they're good enough to be regular starters in a top half Championship side. As two players who are in that category, I think it's worth noting where Crawford and Oakley both were in their careers when they came to us. Crawford had been released by the club who'd finished 4th, had failed to win a contract on trial with another Championship club and was still clubless in the middle of August. Oakley was brought in as cover in January having fallen out of favour at a club below us in the league. Neither were viewed as huge coups for Morton at the time who would go on to be considered among the best players in their position in the division and we just have to hope that if we do see a big exodus, Imrie can pull off that recruitment of players who have a higher ceiling than they'd shown with previous clubs again. While there are some players who've looked average (Waters) or poor (Roy, Boyd) on paper and have gone on to be exactly that, he's consistently gotten more out of players than anyone thought possible. Gillespie and Quitongo are two other great examples: while they'll probably both move on this summer, you wouldn't have foreseen getting the two seasons we have out of them when the general reaction across Scottish football to their signings was bafflement they'd found a full time club.

Good to see the club straight off the mark with season tickets as soon as the season ends, and a good scheme for under 12s as well to still both engage them and generate income while keeping the season tickets free. https://gmfc.net/team-ton/

Derek Gaston has left Arbroath. Presumably he's looking to be first choice somewhere after McIntyre had him sitting on the bench behind an obviously much poorer goalkeeper in Boruc, but if Mullen's injury record means we'll be looking to continue with an established second choice goalkeeper rather than a youngster, whether that's Murdoch or another Lawton Green type signing, then I could see worse options. He's better and likely cheaper than MacDonald.

If Muirhead has his contract offer withdrawn off the back of that behaviour he can't complain. An absolute moron.

Thing is, even with an increased budget through the profits of the last two years being reinvested back into the playing squad, we're still ultimately living within our means on average crowds of 2000 while Partick are overspending by £500K per season on average crowds of 3500 and Falkirk are overspending by £400K per season on average crowds of 4500. We can use some of the budget to put an increased offer on the table for Oakley and Strapp in the hope of keeping them here, but if clubs like that come and blow us out the water for a player then that's not anyone's fault, we can't spend money we don't have.

If Oakley gets a top flight offer it's going to be as cover, and more likely to be for a St Johnstone level side if they were to stay up than Dundee United who will be believing they should push straight for the top six (and likely failing miserably). I'm less concerned about that because Oakley seems to be really enjoying being one of the first names on the teamsheet and after how his time at Inverness ended probably isn't going to give that up lightly, unless he has stupid money thrown at him. The bigger worry is another Championship side viewing him as an upgrade on their starting XI and being able to tell him he's coming in as first choice, which Partick and Raith probably won't but everyone else could, and we're simply not going to compete with Dunfermline or Falkirk on wages.

Yeah, it's easy to get sucked into the 16 game unbeaten run and think we were actually brilliant for half a season, but in reality breaking it down to the league we were brilliant for a third of it and appalling for two thirds. You don't deserve the playoffs if you're that bad for that long, and that we were in title winning form for a third of the season and have still ended up miles off the playoffs shows how dependent we've been on a few individuals to raise the level of the players around them in that run. There are some players who've played less in the two bad runs and were nearly ever present when we were good, along with others whose performances haven't really dipped in the bad runs compared to the great December-February run, but ultimately what having a dreadful two thirds of the season means is that there are several players who've had far more bad games than good ones over the season. Last season we had more than XI players who had far more good games than bad, this time that hasn't been the case for a comfortable majority of the squad and that's why we've regressed overall. The out of contract cohort of that underperforming group should be getting moved on if we want to improve next season.

Not averse to the idea of having Bird as cover for Oakley, only 22 and 6 goals in 31 appearances (22 starts) for the worst team in the league by a mile isn't a bad return at all. What makes me wonder if it's worthwhile is that we're already bringing in Davies. I know Davies can play out wide or in behind a striker too, but we don't want to end up stockpiling attacking players and being short in other areas due to adding too many players who aren't going to improve the starting XI.