Sainthearted

Ouch. It seems the biggest critic of Ali Crawford is no longer your avg. St Johnstone fan. Most of what I was going to say has already been said, however one question springs to mind: has last night's performance made Saints fans more inclined to lay blame at the feet of the players than CD for the recent run of poor performances? In other words, were some of our established players feeling indifferent or exceedingly lazy due to the lack of competition for places?

It would be the wrong decision, but I have a sneaky suspicion he's going to play Sang in the middle of the park and leave Brown at RWB. I hope I'm wrong. I think Bair is unavailable so I suspect May will start. I'd rather we started with E2 (I don't think the deal with Linfield went through), but CD seems to have some sort of aversion to the guy. I hope Mahon gives us a little more tenaciousness.

Apparently we’ve agreed to pay $135,000 (£100,000) for Bair.

The stats don't exactly fill me with confidence, but they look a little better when you consider he's been deployed as a right- and left-winger too. He's scored 5 goals in 20 appearances as a CF and 7 goals in 57 appearances across all positions. Could be a case of Thierry Henry syndrome.

The best thing I can say about that game is neither side will have any problems adjusting to life in the bottom half of the Scottish Championship.

There are three St Johnstone teams out there: defence, midfield and attack. They all seem to be playing their own game. Why does Cleary keep venturing forward? He found himself making runs towards the corner flag at one point. Distribution has been poor. There were countless misplaced passes in the first half; I'd like to attribute it to the wind, but even short passes continually miss the mark. No one on that pitch wants to hold onto the ball for more than a second or two. Booth seems incapable of taking on the last man whereas Brown has been largely anonymous after an energetic start. Ciftci's injury is a worry. Kane has shown glimpses of quality, but that's all they are.

I agree with this. It's fairly easy to fall into the trap of evaluating players individually, however I think MacPherson could improve, even flourish, in the right formation and with the right players around him. I say improve, but it's possibly worth noting that of our existing midfielders MacPherson tops the table for total assists (2) and chances created (15), despite playing fewer games than almost everyone else (the assists figure is for all competitions). I'd likely have a different opinion if we were talking low six figures, but I feel £50k is worth a punt.

Sadly, I think that ship sailed the moment the full time whistle blew at Kelty. Henceforth, any reference made to the cup double winning side of 20/21 will be accompanied by "...but you remember what happened a few months later, right?". When football historians of the future compile lists we'll be a lot more likely to feature on the list titled "rapid decline" than "source of inspiration".

Our place in Europe hinged on defeating Dundee in the final game of 98/99. Paul Kane scored and we won 1-0. As our survival pretty much hinges on beating Dundee, I'm going to be optimistic and say we'll win 1-0 and Chris Kane will score the winner.

I'm not sure. Steve Brown issued a statement directly after the transfer to clarify why the club accepted the offers (McCann wanted to leave and it was too much money to turn down). I'm inclined to lay the lion's share of blame at his feet, not Davidson's, which is why I said I disagree with some of the reasons people cite for dismissing Davidson. There was one thing in Brown's statement that made me question his version of events: "would we stand in the way of a player's development and prohibit him from being set up financially for life?". It's an extremely odd statement considering: McCann is at the start of his career (he was 21 at the time), has plenty of time to make money and was inevitably going to leave anyway It wouldn't have taken much to persuade him to stay until January or the following summer and give us time to line up replacements In other words, it sounded like a spurious rationale for what he recognises, in hindsight, was an extremely poor decision. I think he panicked once he saw seven figures and a deadline. I also think we could have sold him for £2M+ in Jan/June 2022. That said, despite the fact the club has seemingly gone out of its way to make Davidson's job difficult, established players have played one season too many and we've been unlucky with injuries, in my view Davidson has been tactically naive. He's also signed substandard players, but I think that's due more to expediency, the difficulties we've created for ourselves and possibly the HoR than his incompetence as a manager (ie, we needed players, it's a lot harder to find players in the January window and even when we find players our form is likely to dissuade them from signing). If I had to distribute responsibility for how things have turned out, I'd say about 40% of it belongs at Davidson's feet. The remainder falls at the feet of the club and misfortune.

Just my opinion, but Kane obviously scored eight goals across all competitions last season, so I don't think it's a completely unrealistic expectation. Also, many of his appearances were as a lone forward or from the bench. I think he'd score more goals as part of a front two and with two good playmakers behind him (either on the flanks or in the middle of the park). Granted, he was part of an exceptional team last season, but McCann, Kerr, Wotherspoon and Clark are a big part of what made that team exceptional. McCann is a brilliant player, his work ethic, distribution and ball winning/retention are all fantastic, but I wouldn't expect him to lead the table for assists come the end of a season. If we solve the creativity issue I think our attacking options are of a reasonable enough standard to solve (well, abate or improve) the goalscoring issue.

The thing some people seem to miss: yes, the cup double was a truly extraordinary event, but so is everything the happened after it. We're one game away from beating the club record for losses in a row. We were founded in 1884. That isn't just a bad run of form, it's an extraordinarily bad run of form. We sold two of the best players we've produced in the last decade on deadline day (ie, we gave ourselves no time to replace them). To make matters worse, we sold our best player for a lot less than he's worth and when we were under no pressure to sell him. That wasn't just a bad decision, it was an extraordinarily bad decision. We were the cup holders and failed to defend our title against a side three leagues below us. That isn't just a bad outcome, it's an extraordinarily bad outcome. I say all of this as someone who's on the fence about whether Davidson should be fired, or at the very least disagrees with some of the reasons people cite for why Davidson should be fired.

I wouldn't say I don't think he should be sacked, but I do feel there are mitigating circumstances that aren't acknowledged as often as they should be. I don't believe the heart of this problem (12th in the league) was losing Kerr and McCann but losing Kerr, McCann AND Wotherspoon. Whether we blame Callum for that or not, I think there's a possibility we'd be above Dundee if Spoony wasn't injured. In our case, three good players made a few substandard players look significantly better than they are. Unfortunately, our problems have been compounded by a few established players arriving at a point where they've not longer got the legs to play at this level. It's often difficult to predict when a player will reach that point, but it's apparent that some of these players, who have brought a significant amount of success to the club and earned its loyalty, are playing one season too many. In some respects we've misdiagnosed the problem. It's easy to conclude a lack of goals is the product of a poor strikeforce, but the bigger problem is the lack of creativity. That's where Spoony comes in. He alone wouldn't be enough to reverse our fortunes (we were at the wrong end of the table even when he was in the team), but I'm confident we could get 8-10 goals a season out of Kane, and probably more out of Ciftci, if we had a couple of decent playmakers behind them and a ball winning midfielder. I think Davidson has failed tactically (that's an understatement), but we also have a head of recruitment tasked with identifying targets, so if there's a problem with transfer policy (there is) then blame must be distributed equally. Also, the timing of the sales made it next to impossible for Davidson to recover his losses. He was placed in a position where he had to rebuild the nucleus of the team and he was given a non-existent timeframe to do so (ie, McCann and Kerr were sold on deadline day). To whatever extent the club underestimated the influence of Kerr and McCann, I believe that's the fault of the club. Kerr was in the final year of his contract, but so is Souttar and look at Hearts. They've turned down an offer of £300k because they know he's vital to their prospects this year. They might capitulate following a higher bid, but even if they do they'll have capitulated nearly four months after we did.