Coventry Saint

I'm on a wind-down day at work so I've been kinda refreshing twitter. No sign of anything yet.

I very much hope this Covid outbreak is the mild, symptomless kind - for the individuals, obviously, but also for the team. Remember how long it seemed to take our entire squad to shake off the medium-term effects of 'Rona last season? Players playing shite for months before it emerged that they too had been struggling with the after-effects of Covid. Regardless of who we have available for the Celtic and Rangers games, we know the best we can hope for is minimal GD damage. I hope the players affected get a decent rest and can shake off any illness asap.

The weird thing is, I'd probably agree with that. You're currently marginally worse, but equally have more potential.

Saints' pre-match press conference was delayed, then cancelled altogether. Smart money is on us pushing for the 3-0 forfeit as being the best outcome we could possibly hope for here...

The biggest shame about it all was the timing. It'd be nice to say we took that money and used it to fund a promotion challenge, but we spent it on Cameron Howieson, bagging Ian Murray, and then funded Alex Rae's summer transfer window.

I strongly suspect we'd be pushing for postponements if we were due to play pretty much any other two clubs. Probably see these as a free hit; get them out the way, pray the -GD doesn't take a complete battering, and move on with our season.

I just wish we had a manager and players who all were all boyhood supporters of our club, a bit like they've got at Dundee. Ah well. Our guys can at least buy their green and white underwear at the shop before the game. 0-2 h/t, 0-2 f/t.

Jesus guys.

We're not, but if you read the St Johnstone thread, they are suffering identical problems to us. No surprise given we copied their set-up from last season pretty much exactly. Problem is, they've got previous for turning it right round in the 2nd half of the season. I hope they don't manage it this year because then we could really be in trouble.

Yeah, it's been quite the comedown from even a few months ago.

Such a shame for him, and I have probably been more patient than most, but he's going to rock up on loan somewhere like Morton or Partick, IMO.

My thoughts precisely. I'm just glad the transfer chat has started already - increases our chances of getting something decent in return, cash or player, in January.

We've had a number of positive Covid cases reported. Games still going ahead, apprently.

I don't know the guy, but from what little I've seen, I've got animal pegged in the 'roaster' category. That said, I think it's reasonable that we may need to cut back because crowds have been disappointing this season.

I mean, we're playing plenty of guys put of position already so it really can't make that much difference. On the squad reduction thing, we certainly don't need four strikers, and definitely not when none of them can score.

Weirdly, we did transition to it in 2018 after the Ross leaving/Stubbs debacle, with the rationale that it would bestow more consistency upon our recruitment strategy. We stayed up thanks in no small part to some of the players that arrived immediately after Gus McPherson was made DoF. As a club, it seemed like a wholly sensible move - Jack Ross left the squad in a bit of a state, and then Alan Stubbs fucked it up even more - so a DoF would mean we weren't left in the lurch/without plans in place if a manager left at short notice... ...and then we sacked Gus and didn't replace him so f**k knows what's going on.

Reports at the time suggested he was going to be on 350k p/a (~£6,730 p/w)at Sunderland, and suggested that was five times what we had been paying him (£1,346 p/w). So you'd assume Hibs would be somewhere between those two figures.

So John Nelms was actually playing a genius long-game when he flew across Europe in 2017 to stalk Jack Ross on holiday. Fair play.

Ah yeah, decent finish that. Not undermining your result here, but fucking hell Morton are bad. They are in serious trouble.

How good are we talking? I've never actually seen him play. Couldn't even tell you what style of striker he is. Reckon he could play in the top flight?

I didn't say that, tbf. Jim wants to be Ireland manager and I'm comfortable with that: I hope he makes it. I more took issue with the fact that Jack Ross was so aggressively seeking a move - as it turns out, before we had even secured the title. Was it not Barnsley he went to talk to before the season was finished? I have no doubt that the fact Ross was already plotting his next move had a major impact on the poor planning he had in place for the next season. He knew he wasn't going to be in charge of St Mirren so he did very little to help*. The club has admitted its culpability in that respect and took on Gus to deliver transfer consistency, but Gus is away and wasn't replaced so I assume we'll be fucked when Jim moves on as well. Anyway, look, this is going over very old ground. I don't actually hate Jack Ross, he was within his rights to move on, but I'm within my rights not to feel any sympathy now his long-term career strategy has gone Pete Tong, arguably because he left us so quickly. * TBF he did sign Paul McGinn, but he also signed Jim Kellerman, so they cancel each other out.

By rights we should be absolutely cacking ourselves about the prospect of Hibs pinching Jim Goodwin but I'm happy to predict there is zero chance of it happening. An indicator that his star might not have fallen but it's certainly having a bit of a wobble.

Fixed. Nothing but decline since 2017, IMO.

Jack Ross was a wonderful moment in time for St Mirren. Lots of factors came together to make it seem all the more magical: from bawhair survival to dynamic league winners in the space of a year was fantastic, and I'll never forget that. However, he made it very, very fucking clear that his ambitions lay elsewhere, and he left our squad in a proper state (Stubbs takes some blame, but Jack had failed to lay foundations as well). His transfer policy was actually fairly hit and miss, too. Plus we had Mallan and Morgan absolutely ripping the piss out of that league. So I neither want to see him back at Saints, nor will he want to come back, nor could we afford him.

He scored five goals last season from limited game time. I'd suggest you're being a little harsh.