AIRDRIE UTD

St. Mirren

FIRST HALFAirdrie threatened early on when Willie McLaren got on the end of a Prunty cut-back, but the winger could only pull his shot wide of the target. St. Mirren took the lead early when McGowan was easily beat in the box by Sutton whose shot was blocked superbly by Robertson, only for van Zanten to pounce on the rebound to smash home. The lead only lasted a few minutes. Broadfoot lazily dealt with a harmless long ball and his poor back header was chased down by Bryan Prunty. The Airdrie striker rounded young Saints goalie Smith who pulled him down. Luckily for Saints, who had no back up goalie, the referee Underhill chose to administer no further punishment than the spot kick. Despite the referee’s extreme leniency he could nothing to stop McKeown from slamming the penalty kick past him with aplomb. Saints had Airdrie on the back foot on several occasions though and only a fine save by Robertson from Kean kept the scores level. McGowan in particular looked extremely shaky in that first half as Kean’s pace and Sutton’s ‘physical’ style had our defence in knots. Paul Lovering made a heroic goal line clearance near the break to the delight of the travelling Airdrieonians.

MATCH UP As mentioned, Airdrie’s defence was particularly wobbly in this game. McManus had his work cut out covering as McGowan threatened to implode under pressure. However the Airdrie midfield just about kept us in it. McKeown did a tremendous amount of work and kept the considerable threat from Charlie Adam thwarted throughout the match. Willie McLaren had the measure of Hughie Murray. Wingback Lovering and Coyle never really looked comfortable and neither provided much going forward. Saints had a good shift from the strikers but their star man was holding midfielder Reilly who seemed to win every single ‘second ball’.

SECOND HALFAirdrie moved up a gear in the second half and had a few more attempts at the Saints goal. However midway through the half, after being awarded a free kick around 25 yards from goal, skipper Docherty lost the plot. As McKeown lined up to strike the ball, Docherty seemed to be impeded as he positioned himself in front of the Saints wall. After treatment Docherty foolishly went back into the same position in the wall and got involved again. Mr. ‘See no Evil’ Underhill flashed the red-card at Docherty. McManus strode up and flashed a powerful but relatively straight shot at Smith’s goal as the Diamonds adjusted to playing with ten men and without McPhee who’d been replaced by Hardie. That change actually helped Airdrie as they finally started winning some ball in the Saints half. Prunty and McPhee got very little reward but now Hardie was holding everything up. Prunty dropped into midfield to tighten things up and despite a fair bit of possession, Airdrie didn’t look like losing thereafter.

GOING FORWARD More of the same effort please.