Arbroath 0 Albion Rovers 2

[DougLichtie]

This was an awful game to watch, people moan about the drop in crowds but if anyone was in any doubt of the reason look no further than Gayfield last night.
Albion Rovers as East Fife did came and wasted time from the kick off.
3 balls were booted into the North Sea in such quick succession that they were all recovered at the same time.
We looked disjointed, disillusioned and in some of the players on show just disinterested.
Agree Whately was by far the best player for AFC.
Why is it when Bobby Linn gets the ball everyone runs away from him, do they expect him to run rings round the defender and/or glide past them everytime.
It won't happen...go and help him.
After such a good win against Clyde I am at a loss to why we were so poor, but I am not paid to do that, Allan Moore is though!!!

[Wike61]

Have to agree with Steeplejack regarding the importance of the first goal. Last night absolutely proved the point that at the moment we can't come back from a goal down. I know some of you will say " what about Elgin" but in fairness we were absolutely shocking for 70 minutes and never looked like getting anything from the game. Ricky Little's lack of reaction after notching the second looked like that of a man who had got a consolation rather than part of a team who genuinely thought they were back in the game.

Someone mentioned earlier in the conversation about us having the bulk of possession. According to the BBC Sport pages it was 52 / 48 in favour of Albion. Even after a flying start on Saturday I thought we allowed Clyde far too much of the game. It was only the fact that they are a really poor side and could not hurt us that it didn't really matter. However I was worried what a decent side would do to us given that much encouragement and let's face it although Albion wasted as

[Nonsmokingsmokie]

Agree with most points here. Most teams do keep it tight and so even a pacy and inventive attack can't get through. Well organised defences (and a boring approach) mean you don't seem to see goalkeepers having to do that much. ... having said that, we've lost some of the offensive sharpness of earlier season

As for style of play (air vs ground), I do think the onset of winter is at least a contributory factor. It's harder to control passing on poor pitches (inc Gayfield) and some of the players that enable passing from back to front (eg the Johnstone-McBride combination) have been injury prone.

Like last season, we've also - with the exception of the Elgin comeback - not shown true title contender ability to grind out results, especially against near rivals. We were not the worst team last year and yet couldn't get the results against the other relegation rivals. Same this year

[Mr_Refhater]

We began the game with five loaned players by Christ!!!

CORRECTION:

We began the game with four, as has been stated by Skokie_bacon_crisps. I was falsely informed that Kieran Stewart was a loan deal from St.Johnstone! Hence I counted five.

It matters not however when taking into account that only one of the players, of those originally loaned to us, has been played consistently well this campaign i.e. Mark McCallum. Both Ryan McGeever and Liam Rowan are of poor standard and will almost certainly be rejected by their parent club, in the long term. Rowan I would go as far as saying is as poor as Ross Chisholm was last year! Liam Gordon is an inconsistent and inexperienced defender, who I'm pretty content to say has cost us dear. He's got no chance at Hearts. Forget about it son. Thomas Grant has done little since his arrival, with the exception of an explosive introduction from the bench, at Berwick Rangers. Dylan Carreiro is co

[lifelonglichtie]

I agree with ref-haters points.
Moore should have signed players during the January window not just to secure promotion but to start building a squad for next season.
How many of this season's squad will be at Gayfield next season? Not many!
Can't Moore be bothered to sign his own players rather than borrow other teams "hopefulls/cast-off?"
I am concerned that last season was a disaster because we had a threadbare squad. This was blamed on Sheerin's inactivity but the same is happening this year so does the blame lie elswhere?

[AFC1320]

There is NO doubt in my mind that the Managers poor signings in January has caused our downfall.
We were playing 2 not natural central defenders in Nicoll and McBride who to be fair done a good job there, then both got injured as well as both our full backs in Little and Johnstone at some point and although Big Aldin done a decent job filling in at central defence Mr Moore never properly corrected the issue.
Bringing in youth players is always a risk as I would say only 1 in 4 loan youth players in the past have been a success at AFC, imo he should have went for tried and trusted EXPERIENCE, last January Mr Sheerin done this in signing both Kevin Nicoll and Paul McManus who came in to try to save us from the drop and although this did not happen it did take us to the final game of the season and BOTH players certainly IMPROVED our team.

[Mr_Refhater]

I agree with ref-haters points.

Cheers lifelonglichtie! However, if this is in reference to the remarks made about the loan signings I deserve little credit. The issues with the loan signings have been well covered on these pages. In particular I recognise that AFC1320 has covered this subject in considerable depth!