Widge

Aye I was going to say, Radford trying to confuse me on a Friday morning and succeeding!

Am I missing something about his father....? As far as I can see it's not who I assume Radford is saying, but I suspect he knows that.

Name has appeared on WAP, time for RG to go do his thing. Not as senior as I’d be hoping for though.

Right now I’d take one who can run to the halfway line, turn and not take 3 minutes to get back!

I watched it and I can see what he’s trying to do (be too clever actually) by giving the goalkeeper the eyes. However that does not excuse the fact he absolutely back passed it to the keeper. He can hit the ball cleanly, Ross County away last season shows he can and in his early years those chances were getting the laces through them. I think he’s almost gotten to the stage where he’s overthinking and trying to show “intelligence” when realistically if you smash the ball from 12 yards out and on target, you’ve a much better chance of scoring. It’s a shame that these chances aren’t yet falling to Jephcott as from what I’ve seen and what his stats say, he’s clinical at a rate of 50% or so.

Good experienced managers adapt to the players they have at their disposal, Tommy Wright for example was a master of this. Davidson and thus far MacLean have not. I’ll give MacLean a little leeway since he’s obviously still bringing guys in to play the system, but what if they get injured you need to have a plan b, c and d ready for use.

Can only echo what others have said. On one hand I feel for MacLean as injuries have forced him into the team on the pitch. On the other we should still be performing better. Wright can’t play at right back, he needs to move further forward, Considine can’t be a starter and equally the midfield has been left horribly unbalanced. A fit Phillips makes a big difference. We’re also stuck playing May (who was awful tonight) and Jephcott (not match fit and probably shouldn’t have played a second game in 4 days), but we have nobody else. That’s the negatives (or at least some of them), there were few positives, but once again Gallacher was our best outfield player. The keeper looks like he might save us points and we are looking like playing football again this year, just not enough and at the right times. Also special mention to Nick Walsh who was his typical awful self. We should have had a penalty for handball ourselves, then the Ballantyne one isn’t a penalty under the laws. His hand is supporting him as far as I can see, which isn’t a penalty.

To be fair to Carey, the one where he miskicked it out of play, it took a bobble up about 4 inches before he kicked it, not blaming him for that. The free kick aye, but I called it before he even took it. If he’s producing though you can excuse those lapses as you say, but he needs to produce.

Aye the stream is usually fine with no issues, commentary depends who they've found to do co-comms, if it's Danny Griffin turn it to mute!

SaintsTV is showing it for £12, but I suspect you’ll find a stream somewhere by other means.

No, but you’d need to pay to use the car park. Outside the stadium is pretty much all on street parking.

What about our signings so far and everything MacLean has spoken about makes you think we’d even come close to considering them?

One of the only times I’ve ever laughed out loud at a football match, that was glorious. As for Ikpeazu, he’s a handful in the same mould as Nouble is. I’d say that he’d be a decent signing for most of the teams in the league, even if he does look like Bambi on ice half the time. He’s ironically, after that clip got decent feet from what I remember. I’m sure the Hearts fans will be along soon.

No you’re getting mixed up, that award goes to Mark Robertson.

Worth noting that Chris Kane was at the game and walked past me without any sort of crutches, boot on or looking like he was injured. Think he also drove to the game, so that maybe suggests that knock or strain he picked up in pre-season isn’t too bad. Not that he’ll be anywhere near sharp or peak fitness. I think yesterday showed that we still need another midfielder. The whole dynamic of the midfield changed when Phillips came on, but it’s easy to do that when you’re 3-0 up. The fact that you’re looking at MacPherson as our only other senior midfielder is worrying. Even more so the fact that I’d have him at 5th choice currently. Plus another body allows us to get Ferguson and potentially McCrystal loans for game time. The other player who is showing up well is Taylor Steven. I’m not sure he’s the most technically gifted player of the youths, but what he lacks for there he more than makes up for in fight and determination. His attitude on the pitch is absolutely spot on every time I see him.

I know people are praising Cammy Ballantyne for his all round game today and rightly so, he was very good going forward. However, he has a lot to learn on the defensive side of things. He gets turned far too easily and lets people run off him. I hat I would say, he does work his arse off to get back and hassle, but definitely an area for improving. As it stands I’d have him ahead of MacPherson, but not sure I’d want him playing as a starter. Max is a strange one. He’s got ability of that I’ve got no doubt, but he’s inexperienced with it. He’s always looking to play out and retain the ball which is great and in time he’ll learn when it’s right to do so. He was getting caught on it quite regularly though and that lack of senior matches shows. Considine is still a huge worry. All that being said, Gallacher was my man of the match, he was excellent. He got up and down the pitch really effectively and defended about as well as any of the other other defenders. I think him and Carey are starting to gain a bit of an understanding down that left hand side which is good to see.

A bit is being kind, he’s been nothing short of atrocious. Apparently every contact by a saints player is a foul!

They also worship Graham Carey, so I think they’re a different kind of delusional! But also, it’s pleasantly nice seeing a team wish a player well and say that he’s a good player, it just wasn’t the right time it team for him. Don’t remember the last time we picked up a player at a team of a similar level who didn’t automatically see us as a step down or that the player wasn’t good enough. Fingers crossed he can get scoring right away.

The best thing about signing English League 1 players is once again the chance to read some of the truly outstanding and misguided comments they can make. My personal favourite being that a move to Perth is mad, as we're apparently in the middle of nowhere and about as far north as you can get interesting take that one. Second and only just is the ever growing list of Scottish Premiership players that they know (Carroll, Richard Tait, Liam Hughes (who?)) being used as an argument for the standard of our league, despite the fact that these are clearly poor or below average players within the league. Then to top it all off is the insistence that the Scottish league is bottom League 2 standard. It's always an absolute pleasure taking these teams best players and the rage that it induces.

Fingers crossed, that’s the plan; however we saw last year with United how not having a good goalkeeper is an issue. Sinclair is still really young for a keeper and he only has to look at what happened with Clark to know he’ll get a chance. Even if we do sign a keeper on a 2 year deal who pushes and makes Sinclair a better player by forcing him to up his game, he’d still only be 24/25 at the end of that period and then you’re into the start of your career as a keeper. But if he’s good enough he’ll play it’s as simple as that.

That was my first thought when I saw it, it would be classically simple as white and look really good. The gold makes it weird, especially since it doesn't really go with the red that well when the sponsor is so big.

I think most level headed saints fans knew this was the case and were in agreement with it, Spoony can do the chase, but he can't do the recovery any more. It's probably another reason why the likes of Crawford and Carey wouldn't be signed under MacLean.

The best thing about it, is the lack of yellow in the strip. As far as I'm concerned yellow should never appear on the home kit, blue and white only from now on please. You can just imagine a Joma trying to alternate the stripes on that kit if we were with them!

Yeah that’s about as good a home kit as we’ve had in ages, could have been a disaster but has been done really well, except for the stripes on the arms kit matching up with the main body!

Pinstripes making a return……ok now I’m intrigued!