Falkirk FC season in review 2019-20: Missed opportunities

For all the recent changes to the world, what Falkirk are staring at is bleakly familiar.

What faces the Bairns – whenever it may be – is another year in League One, trips to Peterhead, Forfar, Airdrie and Cumbernauld and the feeling of what might have been.

A season which promised refreshment, if nothing else, after two difficult years at the bottom end of the Championship should have brought victories, another squad overhaul - for the long haul too - and a team designed to challenge for a place in the Premiership was how it was sold.

It didn’t transpire. What is there now is a sense of loss. Of missed opportunity, and anger.

How Falkirk shape up for the next season, in League One again after last week’s SPFL reconstruction collapse, is different from a year ago. Gone is star summer signing Michael Tidser, released to join Lowland League champions Kelty Hearts in January after a disappointing stint in navy blue.

Gone too Ray McKinnon, building a team for two years time and an assault on the Scottish Premiership, his tenure ended on the way home from Dumbarton in November after a 1-1 draw that turned the tide on Falkirk’s season.

To that point the Bairns had been under-whelming, yet still bigger and better than the rest of the league beneath them – though the issue has been, and continued to be, the inability to defeat the sides around them at the top end of the league.

Lee Miller and David McCracken, McKinnon’s popular replacements, finally succeeded with a win over East Fife in mid-February but that aside, matches with Raith Rovers and Airdrie brought little reward. Likewise defeats to Clyde proved costly.

The Betfred Cup campaign and then early season matches set the tone. Passable maybe, hopeful but not quite exhilarating. Quite the opposite of eventual league winners’ Raith’s stuttering and concerning Betfred group performances and defeat at Stranraer.

Even Falkirk thumping Dumbarton 6-0 on the second day of the League One campaign was underwhelming despite the goals, a hat-trick for Declan McManus and one apiece for Conor Sammon and Charlie Telfer all came in the first half then even a second for Sammon couldn’t lift the second 45.

Perhaps they were victims of their own success in that first home match of the league season, raising expectation of half-dozen or more scores against the third-tier opposition. But more often than not Falkirk failed to lift themselves above the opposition and it was McManus’s goals that stood them apart.

Edging past Montrose and progress in the Tunnock’s Cup past Celtic’s under-20s was followed by three consecutive disappointments with defeats at Clyde and in the cup at Kirkcaldy and a draw at Airdrie

On the subject of disappointments, Tidser fell out of the first team picture quickly, while Gary Miller and Aidan Connolly were barely given a sniff of the first team before establishing themselves as first-picks in the second half of the season. Robbie Mutch too seized his chance in goals and was another high point of a frustrating season.

Peaks and troughs littered the Bairns’ form. Consecutive 3-0 wins with some eye-catching football and passages were followed by dull draws where a lack of cutting edge cost them against the Fife sides.

The highs though, were not enough to balance out the lows and consecutive home defeats to Clyde and Airdrie, both by late sucker-punches, were head in the hands moments.

Two and a half years earlier Peter Houston had a side hit by a similar sucker-punch but at the end of a play-off semi-final that Falkirk looked capable of sealing a return to the Premiership in.

What followed in Dumbarton was as far removed from those jubilant scenes.

A vocal proportion of the away end was spitting fury and chanting protest even at half-time – players were booed back onto the park by some. After more ups and downs a late penalty from Declan McManus salvaged a point at the same Sons side that had been vanquished 6-0 earlier in the season and those angry scenes throughout prompted action from the Bairns by the time many had arrived home.

Ray McKinnon was relieved of duties and replaced days later by former players Miller and McCracken who invigorated the place and the team and kicked off an unbeaten run and a start to management that has – thus far – only sampled defeat twice in more than six months.

But those six months have also encountered plenty more than most managerial careers with the unprecedented ending to the season, furlough, and the unknown over their contracts and future despite the likeliehood of them being offered longer on their deals.

The Falkirk they inherited was without the boardroom circus of the failed Mark Campbell takeover bid. Never cited as a distraction but form noticably improved once it had been removed from the equation in November. Coincidence it may have been but whatever manner or means they brought about an upturn in fortunes, and slowly but surely instilled their gameplan on the players in training and in matches.

It was a side which too often looked jaded, despite plenty of the players insisting the work was being put in on the training pitch, particularly on fitness. Were they working too hard to iron out the obvious kinks, leaving them short on a Saturday? Whatever it was 
that changed with the new management, worked – the M&M deal was a sweet one. The Bairns immediately embarked on an unbeaten run - in the league it stretched to the last day of February and only Premiership Hearts at the start of the same month defeated the double-act – and even that awful night, in true Falkirk fashion, they went down fighting as the better team.

That couldn’t really be said for the league campaign though. Improved as the form has become in recent months the Bairns have been downed despite, on paper, being a stronger squad than most in the division, but in reality they failed to deliver – and at crucial times too.

Above them, Raith Rovers have stuttered since new year and when chances to over-take have presented themselves, the Bairns have failed to take them - the end of the league unbeaten streak at Clyde the prime example.

Another, the recent top of the table clash at Raith Rovers, saw the Bairns cautious in the first half before being let off the leash in the second half – only in their early attacking intent they left the backdoor open and Steven MacLean scored for the Rovers. When Declan McManus silenced Stark’s Park later on – it should have been the signal to move to the summit, instead it just brought them level on the night.

They’d still not defeated the Rovers all season, though indications of form suggested that was very much a possibility on the final day of term, had football progressed to that point and the top two continued to tussle.

Instead Rovers clung on to that top spot, and Falkirk were left to rue their missed opportunities to move above them.

Defeat at bogey side Clyde ultimately cost them the step up, with Rovers losing at Dumbarton even a draw would have sent Falkirk top by their conspicuous goal difference.

Seeing the league title and promotion be voted through based on a single point - or 0.04 as an average - with eight games to go exacerbated the frustrations and sense of an opportunity missed.

That extends to off the field as well. The Bairns went all in on league reconstruction and have been left with nothing, despite the promise that the possibilities held. It was another opportunity missed - though not for the want of trying.

When football returns is still uncertain, but the Bairns know what and who they will be facing – in League One.

The stages of dealing with that loss of opportunity will soon return to acceptance having already passed through the bargaining phases and many remain in the anger category.

The plan had always been to go for a league title next year – only it was off the back of a league victory this year. It came close, but not close enough.

Ray McKinnon and his two-year deals did indeed build a team for a title assault next season – but it’s the wrong title they’re still gunning for.

With the spine of the side intact – Robbie Mutch, Paul Dixon, Gregor Buchanan, Mo Gomis and Aidan Connolly signed to another year, there’s an option on Gary Miller extending his deal and hopes high Declan McManus can be tempted to add to his 24 goals – there’s enough to atone for this missed opportunity, and for a fresh and so far successful management duo to supplement a squad.

What they bring and when they bring it, who knows, but there will be a sense of injustice burning already on what might have been, and what should have been this season, and they’ll know what they’re facing too - familiar foes from this season, but another opportunity not to be missed.