Reaction

Victory yesterday against full time side Airdrieonians was important in the fact it kept the winning momentum going and the confidence up. In truth it was a game of very few chances, Jordan Kirkpatrick returning to the side after injury had the first shot of the game which was pushed over the bar, but we have to wait until three minutes before half-time before Greig Spence tested the keeper at his near post. Airdrie had come closest to opening the scoring after Joe Gorman’s header from a corner came off the woodwork, two minutes into the second half Neil Parry made a point blank save from a Jack Leitch effort. Alloa should have went ahead with the best move of the game when Greig Spence played in Dylan Mackin, but the strikers low shot was saved by Airdrie keeper. However a poor clearance from the home keeper Rohan Ferguson was punished by the alert Jordan Kirkpatrick who fired home from 25 yards to give “The Wasps” the lead.

Airdrie tried to snatch an equaliser as they fought to try and gain the 3rd or 4th play-off position with so many clubs still with a chance to clinch a place. Indeed it was Jordan Kirkpatrick who went closest to scoring again in the closing minutes in an Alloa breakaway.

jim goodwin at airdrie

Delighted with the victory, it keeps the momentum going, keeps the confidence up and delighted with the overall performance to be honest. It would have been very easy to drop standards and everything else, before we know in our position after securing second place in the league last week, but the boys are great professionals and a great bunch and it still means an awful lot to them to go and win games, they take pride in what they do and they showed that today.

Momentum is the most important thing, we know that finishing second doesn’t guarantee you anything and nobody will remember that next year unless we do actually go up, so I keep reiterating that message time and time again “That we haven’t achieved anything yet” we take pride in finishing runners up to Livingston but at the same time our ambition and aim at the start of the season was promotion, so that is still where we need to be, but the boys were terrific today, the 1-0 today is as pleasing as the 6-1 victory last week, because of the way we defended as a team collectively today, we knew where Airdrie’s dangers would come from and our boys stuck to our game plan and denied them space in behind, defended the box really well and we looked dangerous on the break at times.

Today I had the luxury of being able to tinker with the team and the system and I was able to take three key players out from last week and put three different boys in and the level of performance never dropped and that’s a really good position for to be in