Zamora Fan

This is 100% a game where we should pack the midfield with cloggers (or the closest thing we have), keep the ball in the air and stifle it as a contest — like Tommy Wright used to do after a run of defeats. A loss would be disastrous and, in best case scenario, gives Ross County the chance to leapfrog us in an incredibly important game in Dingwall. Worst case scenario (and most likely scenario to me) we could be second bottom by end of today with United breathing down our necks. With all that in mind we really need a point and it will be very worrying if Maclean goes balls out here. And perhaps a sign he's managing as someone who wants to please the fans rather than laser focused on the team's best interests. Interested to see how we line up.

Went to shit after this. Barring Kane all the players who came on are complete shite who should be nowhere near us

Really enjoying Macca ball so far.

This is an essential question for the open night. And one that has to be pressed even if they squirm and give non-answers. Was it asked at the first one?

If we lose meekly on Saturday that's the first moment where I can see him actually getting jettisoned. Things have turned much more sour compared to last year — e.g we never had the Radford Twitter openly agitating for revolution. A few months ago there was a narrow pathway to Davidson becoming a successful St Johnstone manager it looked like he could still go down. That's gone now and there's no way back. With that in mind I hope he goes full bunker and plays the back five Livi have turned over before and keeps the out of form players in there. On another note thought it was interesting to see Eric N doing some mild criticism on Sunday. Given his sourcing within elements of the dressing room and the club hierarchy you'd imagine that means the manager is under real pressure now ..

Guess it’s a small thing given everything else — and tbh I’ve not made the effort to watch us much recently — but I really hate how whiney the manager is. It’s always someone else’s fault: the ref, players not following his instructions, that former head of recruitment guy, VAR, Eetu Vertainen and now the pitch. Take some responsibility FFS

Thought Jamie Murphy very good off the bench yesterday, as he generally is when he gets minutes here and there. Still wouldn't be in my first choice team though. Tommy Wright never had the luxury of being able to use players of that quality as bit-part players. With the players and depth available to the manager, the 9th place finish we're hurtling toward is a big disappointment and shouldn't be viewed in any other way. Again, TW never finished that low.

It’s been better than last season but I’m increasingly leaning toward the idea we’ve had a lot of luck, where last season we had very little. e.g, our return of 9 wins in 29 games all season is pretty unacceptable IMO given what’s been invested. But look how lucky we’ve been to even get that. 1-2 at Motherwell - good first half, then sat back and concede inevitable late equaliser. Jammy/resilient last minute winner. 3-0 v St Mirren - good win 2-1 v Rangers - great, famous win. If I was being an arsehole I’d say it needed a James Brown screamer for it to happen … 0-2 at Dundee United - good win against a dreadful side 1-0 v Killie - pretty poor against a team who haven’t won away from home all season. VAR stopped us from going a man down. Win’s a win 1-2 at Hibs - shockingly bad until they got a player sent off from nowhere, then turned it round 1-2 at Ross County - as above 0-2 at Motherwell - played really well. Motherwell at a low ebb and sacked their manager few days later 1-2 at Dundee United - let them have all the ball, scored a good counter goal then sat off them until the inevitable equaliser. Got the win thanks to a goalkeeper brain fart.

Sportscene is an impossible watch these days. Chat after every game is just nonsense VAR calls. This quote from Steven Thompson last night shows the shit for brains he and all the pundit class have: “we were all desperate for [VAR] to come in because it was going to improve things and we thought we weren’t going to get any poor decisions” Who is the WE he’s talking about here? There was almost ZERO clamour for VAR from fans, with the exception of the straight line truther weirdos who support the old firm from their arm chairs. Once it became clear that VAR was being imposed anyway, there was a split among fans about whether this could be a good thing, something with pros and cons or an altogether bad thing. From people I know, social media and on here I reckon most split between the pros and cons and bad thing altogether category - I fucking hated the idea altogether personally. What there wasn’t though was any “we were all desperate for it to come in” because even those who could see the positives knew it was going to be a complete practical shambles in Scotland. The rest of us knew it was going to have a hugely detrimental impact on the overall match-day product and entertainment, while probably not “improving things” or meaning there are “no poor decisions”. Football pundits in Scotland are a bunch of total losers and as this shambles continues they will try to frame it this way - “everyone wanted it but right now it just isn’t working well and that’s why there’s fan anger!!!”. I watched the Killie game yesterday from home on a laptop - where you’d think VAR would be less frustrating since you can tell what’s going on. Some truly insane VAR calls went our way and boiled the piss of Killie fans, Derek McInnes etc and I didn’t even enjoy it. There used to be nothing better than when an inexplicable ref call goes your way and you can enjoy piss being boiled but there’s no spontaneous joy about these things anymore. All the things I personally love about football are being slowly ruined. Even if the people running the VAR were less incompetent I still think that would be true.

Drey Wright is now our joint top scorer with six goals.

Lack of effort from majority of the players now, to go alongside the tactical shit show. Get him to f**k.

Swap?

That quote says so much about his approach to setting up a team. Game by game you could always tell if Tommy Wright wanted to grind it out to end a bad run or play nice football to keep a good run going!

Would you still make the case for McLennan as a decent player we should pick up in the summer or nah? I've tried to watch him with an open mind but haven't really seen anything with him at all tbh. Middleton was a bit of a nothing player for us last year — maybe 60/70% the manager's fault — but still offered more than McLennan has. And CM has at least had a bit of game time in something resembling his position. Carey is pish. Started okay but in a "this is alright, if he builds on this he could be a decent signing" sort of way. Instead that was as good as it got. He's defo not a defensive midfielder tbf to him though. With Phillips out guess who's 100% starting in defensive midfield on Saturday with MacPherson though!

Thought the pro-Theo Bair spinning today was interesting with Clark out for Killie away. https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/football/st-johnstone/4226305/st-johnstone-theo-bair-callum-davidson-training-games/ The obvious choice to go with May on Saturday would be Rudden obviously.

Enjoyed Davidson saying in his Sportscene post-match interview that we've played worse at Tynecastle and got results while he was a player or assistant manager. He had to say the second bit because we've meekly lost all three of our games at Tynecastle under Davidson. Tommy Wright's Tynecastle record: won: 3 Drawn: 2 Loss: 6 Scored: 13 Conceded: 17 Davidson's: Won: 0 Drawn: 0 Lost: 3 scored: 2 Conceded: 8

Should we be sending players off when there’s no intent to even tackle let alone cause harm? Not for me. And tbh @tree house tamI’ve never been that arsed about consistency, rather see refs and VARs judge each decision on its own merits. Consistency/ black and white rules is how you end up with every handball being a penalty and loads of red cards. Ruins games

Issue is with the rules rather than the decision as such for me, as a couple of others have said. Red cards fundamentally change games in such a way that it feels silly to chuck them out for any contact that endangers a player, even when it isn’t deliberate and is unlucky more than anything. Surely a yellow would do if the ref deems that a player accidentally caught someone? With reds reserved for nasty, deliberate leg-breaking tackles. With VAR picking up absolutely everything there are way too many red cards given out and too many games ruined, it would benefit every team if there was an agreement to implement the rules in a more lenient way and to use yellow cards as punishment for dangerous but accidental contact. Same thing applies to handballs where too many are given in the box and deciding otherwise even games. Wouldn’t be against an orange card, 5 min sin-bin system either.

It could be four at the back and a 4-3-3/4-4-1-1 with May at LW

Pretty happy with that all in all, played some nice stuff. Motherwell really played like they were trying to get their manager sacked though. Completely gave up at 2-0 too.

This formation asks so much of Montgomery and Wright out wide with no support. Surely hitting Motherwell on the flanks would be the aim here given their defense is pish and O'Donnell is playing his first game in ages out of position? Also really harsh on Connor McLennan, who's being doing well but then gets chucked out of the team at the first opportunity we get against a diddy side. Which basically seems to be so we can accommodate Hallberg plus the two CMs and the two STs. Not worth it. We're basically set up to make it a shitfest. Could grind out a 1-0 win or 0-0 draw (manager would be pleased with either) but is completely unnecessary given the talent we have within our (fucking massive) squad.

Never heard of the journo who reported it. Might just be a case of him hearing Watt is on the way out and putting 2+2 together because we're after a striker. We could do a lot worse than Watt if it is true, but feel like conditions of any loan would involve us covering a decent chunk of his crazy town wages. And if we're chucking money around, why not toss a huge contract in the direction of e.g. Connor Wickham?

I reckon dodgy decisions tend to even themselves out when it comes to us and 9 out of the other 11 clubs in the league. We had rotten luck last season but quite a lot of luck this season? James Brown was very lucky to have his red card overturned, that’s another one to add to the list. The handball that wasn’t given against Livi last season was mental. I basically don’t believe there’s a conspiracy against St Johnstone. Never evens out when it comes to the old firm tho.

Yes because it's not true. You are delusional. Plenty to be encouraged about from our performance here considering how much has went against us. Phillips and MacPherson deserve the chance to make middle of the park their own over the next few games.

Complete nuggets.