Mr Heliums

Think you're getting confused with your Albion Rovers games. The one you're referring to was in our promotion season of 1989-90 and it took place at Coatbridge.

Of course he'll stay;worse than that, the media will even use him as a poster boy for the benefits of sticking with managers. Look at Dundee and Hibs and Aberdeen, they'll say. The only way Davidson goes is if we go down.

Feels that way to me. When you're at the match, you might rail against a dozen contentious decisions without being sure if you're right or wrong. And you forget about them after the match other than to use them as an excuse for not winning. It's all part of the game I know. But TV - Sportscene is a great example nowadays - has become an exercise in did-the-referee-get-this-one right analysis that sucks the joy out of the game. Still, if you're an armchair fan and that's all you see, it's no surprise that you think the game needs VAR.

I don't, or at least I can't remember the last time I watched a non-Scottish domestic game. I don't watch football because it's a sport; I watch it because I have an emotional attachment to St Johnstone, or Scotland. If I valued football purely as a sporting spectacle, I sure as f*** wouldn't be going up to McDiarmid every other week.

For six months you've returned to this incident and its potential ramifications as if it single-handedly justifies VAR. (You've always skated over the awkward argument that VAR could legitimately have ruled out our winner in the same game.) You are at least consistent in your beliefs: that football is 'too hard' to referee in real time' and that, rather than fans celebrating when the ball hits the net, they should hold their excitement until the VAR check is complete. According to you, VAR adds to fans' excitement, an opinion you've reached without ever having been to a game with VAR. Your idea of football is one I couldn't live with - or at least couldn't pay to watch live. To me, our game, already a hostage to TV analysis as the push for VAR continues, will be fundamentally degraded as a spectator sport. I'll lose forever the rush of excitement that follows a goal or a even a controversial decision, and for what? Some utopian, impossible ambition for correctness, or a more nuanced and calculated interpretation? I don't want that, because I don't watch my team rationally. Who does, apart from the disinterested pundit, or the armchair supporter?

That sentence gets more tragic each time I read it.

James Dunne.

Terrifying, but not surprising to anyone who actually pays to watch St Johnstone. Professional pundits, though, have a different view.

Everything makes more sense once you accept the random fortune that edged us past Dunfermline on pens in the League Cup, that it was a million-to-one shot that Xander would score a last-minute goal at Ibrox in the Scottish Cup to put us through to the lottery of penalties; and that someone was looking down on us for Hamilton to equalise in the last minute against St Mirren, which put us into the top six on goal difference. Luck is a part of football that no-one really likes to acknowledge because we want a narrative that makes sense, but if we'd had a fraction less luck in 2021 we could have been out of both cups and finished bottom six. We'd have ended the year cup-less and probably managerless.

Simplistically the success or otherwise of the January window will be best measured by whether we stay up or not. There might long-term implications too: our January spending and our resultant bloated squad will have a knock-on effect on our summer plans and therefore next season. But if we have to judge at this moment I can't see January as successful. Cleary is the standout, but our priorities, surely, were to build a decent midfield and sign a striker who'd score goals. We did neither. Just look at Saturday: our standout midfielder has been with us over a decade; the big-name striker signing still hasn't scored; the one we now pin our hopes on is a player Davidson has been trying to get rid of for the best part of two seasons and one who – let's not kid ourselves – would never have been a first choice pick if Chris Kane hadn't had a season-ending injury. Three of our January signings have hardly touched the ball – surprising given the manager's stated priorities at the time were to only sign players who'd improve the first team.

Yeah, I had sympathy with Cifti to an extent on Saturday because all he was feeding on was daft high balls. But it's a stretch and a half to say he did well. It's this sort of shite that Davidson comes out with that makes me lose faith with him. You want to support him if he recognise where things are going wrong. But that's nearly a season of dire football and it's quite clear he can't - or won't - see what others see.

Football is fucked.

Yeah, I just can't doubt that I'll make the 90-mile round trip every other week to watch my team's critical moments determined after the event by some wee guy with a TV. It isn't what football's about (or at least it isn't what it's about to me)

But you know we'll just sit in and play for the draw against Raith Rovers or whoever we meet in the play offs. For that reason alone I'm far from confident we're staying up.

Giro van Bronckhorst

Awful game of football, although the blame lies with Saints; Livingston were the side trying to play football yesterday and we stole that. I really can't see much improvement since the last time we played Livingston at McDiarmid, other than Hendry is clearly twice or three times the striker Kane is and we no longer have anyone quite as calamitous as Ambrose in defence (although Cleary threatened a couple of times). Cifti, once more, did nothing and you have to sympathise with younger players like Bair or Vertainen before him who have been given nothing like this sort of leeway. I suppose you have to sympathise with the level of service he and Hendry were getting – hoofed balls from the back that they could only knock down. On the plus side, Clark had three or four great saves and Davidson did well enough in midfield. Other than that, not much to support the optimistic view that we'll be safe from automatic relegation by our own hands. Thought Soto for Livingston looked really good and first time I've seen Nouble. He has a good touch for someone so tall. Forrest tried to do a bit too much on occasion, but I was jealous of how he always seemed able to get a decent cross in. Referee was a joke, but fans of both clubs surely factored that in already.

Seriously, many other clubs let kids in for free, and have done for years? Or do you ignore that because it doesn't fit your cynical argument?

Nat proven, shurely?

There is when the Palestinian / Israeli flag waving was only ever a thing with two clubs both based in Glasgow. St Johnstone were fined for it by UEFA.

This is something that's clearly been coached into the team - play the safe ball, keep possession. It's totally stifled us as an attacking force. Suspect Vertainen's unwillingness to follow this instruction was the reason he was singled out for criticism and punted to Linfield. Really struggling to remember us playing through ball for someone to run on to.

Ach well, fingers crossed.

This is the thing that troubled me this evening. What if we stay up? Really it's relegation is a lottery now. What I"m looking for is hope for the future, or lessons learned, or something. I desperately want Davidson to succeed or at least acknowledge where it's going wrong. But I've been saying it for months and I just don't see any improvement, week after week. If we somehow manage to stay up, what's the next step?

MacPherson stays on the park. Hibs getting all the decisions.

We had, what, one shot on target the whole night? Rangers were shit, that's it.

Hanlon's* Razor applies. * Not Paul Hanlon, thankfully.