They may have had the skill to compete with Caledonian Thistle in Inverness on Saturday. What they didn't have, after only a week's serious training together, was the strength.

Yet there were sufficient signs on the terraces to suggest that the Lanarkshire club's supporters approve of Senor Archee's decision to turn The Diamonds into Los Diamentes.

Several marked the auspicious occasion by wearing Barcelona shirts with Archibald's name on the back. Almost all had their domes encased by sombreros, giving the impression it was Daft Hat Day up there in the Highland capital.

Could this have been the beginning of something big for Airdrie, then? Manana will tell. Just let it be noted that Archibald was in no way discouraged by the result as they opened the season under his stewardship.

'It would have been asking a tad too much of the lads to win,' he said after a match in which Ross Tokely and Davide Xausa scored for the home side. 'But their effort was fantastic. They tried to play football. I'm not at all dispirited by what I've seen.'

Archibald had sweated increasingly until the previous evening over the possibility that he would be unable to field any sort of team, never mind one which finally included just two Scots, Joseph McAlpine and Eddie Forrest.

Only when he was ready to switch off the fax machine at the New Broomfield on Friday did a late splurge of clearance papers from abroad allow him to surround them with seven Spaniards, one Argentinian and a Frenchman.

'We were sitting on a time bomb,' Archibald confirmed with a pained expression on his face. Had it exploded, Airdrie's new proprietor and potential saviour would have had a job piecing together his credibility.

The former Scotland player assuredly has put it under scrutiny, first by rescuing a football club that no bargee on the Monkland canal would touch with his pole, then by stocking it with so many foreigners.

His second act was interpreted as yet another threat to the hopes and aspirations of the indigenous footballer, who is being seen as not good enough to play in his own country.

But, assuredly, Archibald had to do something radical, if not revolutionary, if Airdrie are to have a chance of prospering. The success, or otherwise, of his bold venture will be measured in the months ahead by the number of seats filled at the erstwhile Shyberry stadium.

Of course, we should feel more than a mite of sympathy for those made to suffer as a result of his arrival and the signing policy he has put in place. Whither now all those players forced out the door, along with manager Gary Mackay, after enduring the financial trauma to which Airdrie had been subjected?

This question begs another: was there a reasonable alternative? Airdrie could have gone the way of Third Lanark. Out of business, their long tradition consigned to the bin of history. Diamonds dumped along with the garbage.

The fans who have stuck with them must cherish the notion that Airdrie are in the throes of resurrection. They might just have spotted several promising signs of such at Caledonian Park.

Goalkeeper Javier Sanchez Broto looked the part with a string of good saves which Archibald implied afterwards were enforced as much by the fatigue amongst his players as the good play of the opposition.

Little Fabrice Moreau was no less eyecatching in the midfield, although it was a direct result of a faux pas by him that Xausa scored in the 71st minute, thereby adding to Tokely's splendid goal of the eighth.

Airdrie's other imports all seemed decent but who the hell were they? The team list issued to the media had to be corrected several times over. No, that's not Salvador Capin at No2. It's Miguel Alfonso.

For Alfonso at five, read Mariano Aguilar. Switch Martin Prest and David Fernandez, Nos 9 and 11 respectively. Oh, and score out Capin completely and bring in Salva at No7. All very confusing. Airdrie fans had no way of knowing who they were cheering. But cheer they did - for as long as the first half lasted, that is.

Antonio Calderon might have equalised during that period, with a nicely-weighted shot which veered just past. So, too, might Fernandez, goalkeeper Les Fridge contriving to turn his effort round the post.

Airdrie just didn't have the legs to do much more in an attacking sense until Moreau passed to substitute Gareth Evans (or was it Stuart Taylor as the team-sheet suggested?) who drove the ball against Fridge.

Archibald, awaiting the arrival of a head coach, was forced to look on from the technical area, smiling at times and scowling at others. Had he enjoyed the experience?

'It's a nightmare job,' he confessed, having to think back four years when he was at East Fife to remember last having fulfilled it.

At least, he didn't have to watch alone. He had the newly-appointed Alan Sneddon, his former assistant at Bayview, for company. So Donald Mackay, Airdrie's director of football, must have been up in the stand somewhere, taking the loftier view? No, he was at his son's wedding. Archibald also appreciated the support of the hundred or so fans who had made the long trek north, a couple of them displaying a Union Jack with Viva el Airdrie emblazoned across it.

'I think we have generated a mood of optimism,' he said. 'People are looking to us to do something, and rightly so.'

He just wished the result had been reversed; that Airdrie had made the spectacular start which Dundee, with all their Italians, had done the previous Saturday when the SPL got under way. But, realistically, it wasn't on.