PauloPerth

Michael O’Halloran - became one of the stand out attacking non-OF players in the league when with us in 2015 before signing for rangers for £1/2m, re-joined on loan for a few months in 2017-18 ish and tore it up to start with then picked up a few knocks and ended up back at rangers then Australia. Signed back with us for a third spell and apart from occasional glimpses it didn’t work out. First spell great, second spell very good, third spell no. Stevie May - a club legend in 2014, a phenomenon. I didn’t want us to re-sign him after Aberdeen as it could never be the same. Scored only 2 league goals less in one season with us first time around than he has in the 4 seasons combined second spell. Danny Swanson - outstanding the first two spells, third was nowhere near the same. Callum Davidson - Young hard tackling left back that came through our youth programme and remains to this day our record transfer fee received at £1.9m. Came back at the end of his career and still did a good job for us. But first spell the standout. Then got into coaching and I lost track of his career thereafter.. Liam Craig - great the first time, inspirational double winner second time. Both spells a big success. There are many more; Lee Croft for one, but other Saints fans can discuss them..

I was the same with Holt at the time, would have liked to keep him. I think he probably slipped through the net with the change of manager. Nothing spectacular, just a reliable consistent presence in centre mid.

Yes, but apart from all those it must be the only one in the world

Not as a youth player, but we developed him as a first team player. He played for a few years in our development squad and I don’t think had played a single first team game for Hearts. Similar with Hendry for me. That’s the biggest jump by a mile in a young players’ development; from age group/ reserve level to a first team player. Agree about that team Tommy left behind, often wondered if he wishes he’d just waited another year, though obviously Covid was a big factor. We also had that decent centre midfielder from down south on loan, Butcher?

* Apart from Saudi Arabia, obviously.

Is there any other league in the world where 30% of the clubs start with the letter A ? A fantastic, yet often downplayed achievement by the Scottish Championship.

Yeh agree with most of that Ludo. Though the double cup winning side was a different mould, with a lot of talented young players supplemented by a few experienced ones. I think there were a lot of St Johnstone players other sides would have loved to have in their team at that time. Obviously Tommy Wright built that team and Callum Davidson shaped it and guided it to an incredible achievement, but one thing I don’t think Saints got enough credit for was how many of those players were homegrown: Clark, Gordon, Kerr, McCann, May, Kane. Then add in players that had made their name at Saints and were long serving: Davidson, Craig, Wotherspoon. Two great young signings from lower leagues in Rooney and McCart… I’m now just reminiscing on how good a squad that was before being dismantled.

Looking at the long list of defenders we have, you feel Brown and Olufunwa will be eased out. Brown up until this season I’ve always been okay with as a squad player to keep within our budget, but he’s a more experienced player now yet has been a liability several times this season. Olufunwa - certainly think we can do better. Regarding the defence, out of that list are there any that are under contract after the summer? We have always carried a few journeymen pros in our squad and tended to be more about the sum of the parts; For Rosenborg at home we started Tam Scobbie and Gary McDonald, whilst for Lucerne at home Gary Miller and Scott Brown started, with Caddis and Scobbie coming on off the bench. The bench for the Rosenborg game makes ‘interesting’ reading; Did we focus our resources far more on a tighter group of quality starters back then, whereas the last few years we’ve spread the cash amongst a bigger playing pool but seen a reduction in quality?

We should tell Wigan no. He was decent for us and I’d like to see him back here; but let’s be honest, Wigan were happy to take him back early and f**k us over, and you should never ever miss out on the opportunity to be petty and small minded in situations like this.

Yes it’s mostly a P&B thing though. Most Saints fans you speak to are extremely grateful for what he delivered, as a player, a coach and especially as a manager, and have a lot of time for the guy. He’ll always get a warm welcome back at McDiarmid. It was the right time for him to go from us as things weren’t improving, showed no signs of improving any time in the near future and our signings had been poor with money wasted. He just got stuck in that managerial black hole of stubbornly sticking to what had worked well for him in the past. He’s a very good coach, and I’d be very surprised if you don’t climb the table this season. The big test will be over the medium term; if there’s someone brought in alongside that Callum trusts and is prepared to work closely with to identify and sign players, then it’ll show he’s learnt from his time with us, and could be a very successful manager with Queens Park. Wish him all the best.

Wednesday certainly manipulated the sale to Preston to avoid the sell on clause. Steve Brown discussed it way back in the first fan forum (the same day May finally signed back at Saints from Aberdeen funnily enough). It went along the lines that Preston paid Wednesday a sum (around £1m I think) which triggered a sell-on clause for May. But Wednesday also threw in some wee haddy youth team player and claimed he was costing £50k or whatever so the fee for May didn’t hit the sell on trigger, as they’d only been paid £950k (or whatever the sum was, for May). Presumably Preston go along with it as they benefit from paying slightly less. Brown reckoned we were stitched up, but were now wiser to the fact, and future sell on clauses wouldn’t allow players thrown in etc to enable this to happen.

The irony of a coagie using water based gifs to show livi’s plight is not lost!!

Doesn’t quite work does it? .. but nice try all the same. We’re (one of) the teams that finish above you every season, remember?

Dundee fans acting billy big baws over fans of a part-time championship side… sounds about right.

It’s a beautiful sunny day through here

I’d laugh too

They waited till a minute after the train left the b*****ds !!!

Yep. Get this utter shambles out the league and back to the seaside where they belong

Any ITK Dundee fans with contacts at Dens on here? Is it likely off with the pitch inspection merely formalising it, or genuine chance it’s on? Trains a coming soon

Just when you think you’ve seen it all.. Theo Bair, who looked to be as hopeless a professional footballer as you could ever see, scores a wonder goal for Motherwell that Mbappe would be proud of. Then a player who had an absolute stinker against Dundee, and has yet to play a good game for us, leaves and rocks up at Dundee the same day. He’s bound to score or have a telling contribution tomorrow, nothing surer.

That actually looks a stronger line up on paper than I remember it looking in reality! Robinson and Costelloe looked completely out of their depth that match, with few others performing at anywhere near a decent level. I do remember us having a huge gap up to May with us unable to get any possession upfield. We then changed it at HT with our defence pushing 20 yards further up but we were picked off at will on the counter attack due to the complete lack of pace in McClelland and Considine and a huge amount of space in behind them. If Dundee could finish they’d have been out of sight. It was crazy the way they allowed us back into it in the last 10 minutes, though fair play to our squad for keeping going.

Don’t particularly like Halliday, but if he comes in as a solid presence at left back then fair enough. I imagine in Levein’s eyes it’s a fairly safe signing in that he knows exactly what he’ll be getting. Halliday does weigh in with the occasional goal as well. We are mostly looking more solid in defence, with a competitive midfield so I’ll trust him with Halliday as long as we see significant improvement in our creative/ attacking output. Have to say, other than occasional periods of play in some matches, it feels like about 5 years since we looked like an exciting team that created a decent number of chances, back when Drey Wright, Matt Kennedy and Tony Watt were playing great for us in the October-December of 18-19 I think it was? The double season we were brilliant, but still didn’t create much, relying on great organisation, hard work and a very good defence. Don’t mind shitfesting occasional tough away matches/ OF games, but I’d like us to work towards improving the entertainment on offer whilst still being competitive. I realise it won’t happen overnight, but I want to look forward to going to matches again, rather than simply doing it out of habit.

I haven’t paid close attention but I thought you’d been scoring quite a few and mostly playing decent? We are a team well suited to a 0-0 so it’s not a bad shout. The Dees midfield dominated ours in the previous encounter at McDiarmid, but we look far better there now so we should put up a far greater fight, in theory at least.

I think similar, that Aberdeen are bound to pull away, but a quick look at their fixtures immediately after the break and you realise it might not be that easy: St Johnstone (A) Hearts (A) Celtic (H) Rangers (A) Hibs (H) Kilmarnock (A) If Saints can take something out of that first game back, the Dons then have arguably the 5 toughest matches possible and could easily be going into March still in the dogfight.

Tuesday is a massive game for us in terms of league position going into the split. Really need a draw, whilst a win would be huge. Could end up anywhere from level with Dundee in 7th to second bottom potentially only 4 points above Livingston should they somehow sneak a win at Hibs.