Reaction

Today’s win against Airdrie United was very important as the club went into the match on a run of six league games without a win, although the midweek draw and comeback against Forfar Athletic had undoubtedly given the side renewed confidence. The Wasps always looked the more likely side and could have been ahead before Stuart Noble’s opener on 27 minutes, Stuart himself had a great chance earlier in the half along with Scott Walker who each might have earlier opened the score. Ross Philp who had made his full league debut at Station Park played a great pass to put in Michael McGowan for the second goal which was always going to be so important. Allan Maitland’s side could have won this match by a bigger margin due to the fact Airdrie United offered little on the day. Their day was compounded two minutes from the end when Nathan Taggart broke clear and Stephen McGowan brought him down to deny the player a great goal scoring opportunity and was subsequently given a straight red card.

allan maitland after airdrie united victory

People will look at this today and wonder why we have managed to go so many games without a victory, because we were excellent today, but today to be fair really comes on the back of Tuesday nights game at Forfar. We played so well at Forfar on Tuesday night , took a lot of confidence out of not losing the game having gone a goal behind and we took that into our training session on Thursday night and I thought we took that into today’s game as well. Even before we scored the first goal we had created two really good chances with the Stuart Noble chance and then a chance in the box for Scott Walker, we deserved our goal, defended really well in the game and I don’t recall Airdrie United having any real clear cut chances. We dominated the game but we needed the second goal, Airdrie had started the second half better by pushing Ryan McCord in behind Scott Gemmill and that caused us a wee problem initially. The second goal helped settle the nerves and I thought we thoroughly deserved to win and played very well. Delighted for young Ross Philp who has come into the team at right back and being a young lad sometimes you worry about pushing them into the side but he had his baptism last year introducing him from the bench a few times but in his last two games he has been superb. We have freshened the team up and it has taken time to settle and hopefully today’s result will help the side – we needed that win and I am delighted we have achieved that. Tuesday night was so important for us, we went to Forfar on the back of a 3-0 home defeat and really we could have folded, we various injuries including David McClune and Mark Brown and at times of adversity like that it depends how you come out of it and as I said, I thought we actually played better on Tuesday than we did today, we played well today and controlled the game but on Tuesday we were excellent and played better which gave the players great confidence and footballs all about that. There was a spell today when we kept the ball and we haven’t done that in weeks, we were just clearing our lines and making sure we didn’t lose things, it was also great to have our goalkeeper having a shut out today. Airdrie have two great midfield players in Ryan McCord and Jamie Stevenson and it was important not to let them have time on the ball and both Kevin’s were pressing them to make sure this didn’t happen. When you are not playing well all you can ask the team to do is work very hard and I think generally we have done that and today we have probably worked harder than at any other time recently, with the work rate came the confidence and that made the difference.