Double Winning St Johnstone FC Thread

[The Real Saints]

Sorry, it was the head of recruitment’s fault that we lost Kerr and McCann? Interesting. John Oswald is clearly talking a lot of sense. I’m on his side.

Edited April 11, 2022 by The Real Saints

[Theyellowbox]

9 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

If only he had a full season of seeing we had no real back up/replacement for either, then months to prepare for Kerrs departure. Kerr made it clear he was wasnt signing a new deal, and the manager was well aware of that and agreed we'd sell him for a decent fee in the Summer.

Muller, Dendoncker then Ambrose were his attempts this Summer. Charlie Gilmour was his attempt at replacing McCann, then it was MacPherson.

It was his job for 12 months to prepare us for this season and anticipate departures and he completely failed at that despite knowing what was coming. I've zero sympathy with him about the shit squad he built that fucked us in the first half of the season.

I think part of the difficulty we had in the summer was that there was any number of players who could have left and we could not afford to cover them all based on probables. Yes, we lost McCann, which was inevitable and they dropped the ball by not properly replacing him, but we could have lost any one of, Clark, Rooney, Kerr, McCart or Gordon. Of that lot, Rooney was most likely and so we brought in Brown.

The issue was in part not identifying replacements and in part, letting g players leave without having the replacements in place.

Not being revisionist to say that up until about an hour before the window closed in the summer, we were all pretty happy with the shape of the squad.

Had we not sold McCann and Kerr last minute and lost Spoony to injury, I'm pretty sure we'd probably be looking out for a different set of post split fixtures.

What does irk me is that the club gave the backing in Jan that we should have had in the summer. 

[RandomGuy.]

11 minutes ago, Theyellowbox said:

I think part of the difficulty we had in the summer was that there was any number of players who could have left and we could not afford to cover them all based on probables. Yes, we lost McCann, which was inevitable and they dropped the ball by not properly replacing him, but we could have lost any one of, Clark, Rooney, Kerr, McCart or Gordon. Of that lot, Rooney was most likely and so we brought in Brown.

What you do there is you have a list of targets for every position you think you might need someone. That's what we had in January, lose out on one target (Deas) and you already know who's next (Mahon). Had the same for missing out on Hallberg.

Davidson tried to do that before and failed miserably because he's also a shit judge of a player. Muller and Gilmour were his planned replacements for if/when Kerr and McCann left. Neither close to it, Brown is miles from being a RWB. Butterfield is his Craig replacement. How can he think those make sense?

He didn't bother thinking about replacing Conway or Melamed, not sure why. Vertainen was a punt the HOR knew was quickly gettable as the manager had zero striking targets but wanted one in.

If he's not learned from last Summer then we're fucked. He's probably not bothered to find a GK option if Clark leaves.

Edited April 11, 2022 by RandomGuy.

[The Saintee]

16 minutes ago, The Real Saints said:

Sorry, it was the head of recruitment’s fault that we lost Kerr and McCann? Interesting. John Oswald is no clearly talking a lot of sense. I’m on his side.

Definitely! 

I was, perhaps wrongly, not a fan of Grieve considering some of the transfers in and the contracts etc but don't believe for a second he had anything to do with Kerr/McCann leaving. 

The preparation for them leaving should have been done ages ago. 

Although it does seem like Davidson fancied sicknote Gilmour initially for the McCann role. Which says it all really. Established players being replaced by inexperienced, injury prone youngsters.

[The Saintee]

8 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

What you do there is you have a list of targets for every position you think you might need someone. That's what we had in January, lose out on one target (Deas) and you already know who's next (Mahon). Had the same for missing out on Hallberg.

Davidson tried to do that before and failed miserably because he's also a shit judge of a player. Muller and Gilmour were his planned replacements for if/when Kerr and McCann left. Neither close to it, Brown is miles from being a RWB. Butterfield is his Craig replacement. How can he think those make sense?

He didn't bother thinking about replacing Conway or Melamed, not sure why. Vertainen was a punt the HOR knew was quickly gettable as the manager had zero striking targets but wanted one in.

If he's not learned from last Summer then we're fucked. He's probably not bothered to find a GK option if Clark leaves.

If he genuinely saw Muller and Gilmour as their replacements then there's some real arrogance on display in regards to his own coaching ability. 

Muller had zero experience and is expected to replace the double winning captain?

And a chronic crock to replace the drive and energy of McCann?

Christ.

[PSJ.84]

Anybody that thinks Callum Davidson should escape blame for this season is living in a different universe. 

[tree house tam]

13 minutes ago, PSJ.84 said:

Anybody that thinks Callum Davidson should escape blame for this season is living in a different universe. 

And hasn't watched any Saints games. 

[RandomGuy.]

33 minutes ago, The Saintee said:

If he genuinely saw Muller and Gilmour as their replacements then there's some real arrogance on display in regards to his own coaching ability. 

Muller had zero experience and is expected to replace the double winning captain?

And a chronic crock to replace the drive and energy of McCann?

Christ.

He never even watched Dendoncker before we signed him either, just took Davie Weirs word for it.

He'd be doing himself a huge favour by handing that burden over to someone else and focusing on what he's good at/spending all his time trying to improve tactically. He took control of our set plays in the Summer too, gone from one of the most dangerous set play sides in the league to one of the worst, but I guess that's not his fault either.

[Theyellowbox]

26 minutes ago, PSJ.84 said:

Anybody that thinks Callum Davidson should escape blame for this season is living in a different universe. 

Don't think anyone would be thinking Davidson should escape blame. Ultimately, it is him that picks the team to put on the park and compared to previous managers, he has been given much much more resources to do that. But, there is blame to lie at the door of the chairman and HOR too. Summer signings were poor and while Jan was better, still not good enough. Letting players go on the cheap at the last minute was criminal, regardless of who was at fault, which I suspect was a bit of all of them. 

[Kyle]

Comes back to his judgment on whether a player is good enough or not too.

His comments about Ciftci, and continuing to persist with him even though he's been shite since a promising first half display against Hearts, sums it up. 

Crawford has improved and has contributed reasonably well since January, but the player we had between August and January didn't deserve a 2 and a half year permanent contract

MacPherson the same, he's barely been fit since coming in and we ended up paying a decent fee for him and giving him a long contract

He's written off Vertainen without giving him a run in the position he was signed to play in (off the left, coming onto his right foot)

We've paid £200k roughly for 2 players, neither of whom have started a single game 3 months later.

Dendoncker, Muller, Devine - 3 young loanees who were all clearly not good enough. The latter 2 were signed early in the window so clearly high up his list of targets. What was the basis for those signings? 

2 year deal from Brown who looks ok, but nothing more. I can understand why we've taken the gamble but I really can't understand why we're starting a right back at centre back when we've signed 2 relatively high profile CB options and they're both sitting on the bench.

Butterfield, Ambrose, VSO - all signed outside the window. Butterfield has been ok, but the other two have been/were expensive flops. They all have links to Rowett so I'd suggest those signings have come from the manager rather than the HOR. 

Don't mean to be down on Davidson, but I don't see any particular managerial skill that he excels at. Maybe the case of a good coach/deputy but not a good manager.

No one can ever take the cup double and 5th place finish away from him. A terrific achievement and what he should always be remembered for and associated with. Everything before that incredible run after the come back at Kilmarnock and this season hasn't been good though, and I don't really see any evidence he's learning from his mistakes, which I'd expect him to make given he's still a new manager. 

If he's still here in the summer, I think he needs to show some contrition and look to improve things on the park. The quality of football is really poor and the results match the quality on display for the most part.

 

[Theyellowbox]

13 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

He never even watched Dendoncker before we signed him either, just took Davie Weirs word for it.

He'd be doing himself a huge favour by handing that burden over to someone else and focusing on what he's good at/spending all his time trying to improve tactically. He took control of our set plays in the Summer too, gone from one of the most dangerous set play sides in the league to one of the worst, but I guess that's not his fault either.

Christ, never knew Davie Weir was involved. Explains a lot.

I worry that if we revert to Davidson being responsible for bringing in players, we will get guys he knows (so either old guys or young Millwall guys) or recommendations from mates, who obviously will have a vested interest.

Impression too is that Davidson feels more comfortable with domestic (scot/eng) players or guys who have been here before. A lot of the guys from down south are way over rated and priced and if there is a former player from Scotland like Ciftci available and willing to come to saints, then frankly, they have really slumped. Cleary, Mahon, E2 and Bair are the sort of pkayer we should be looking at TBH, although bar Cleary, cannot really judge yet. 

[PSJ.84]

Hopefully Saturday has finally shown to him that we’re far too reliant on his system working - something we’ve all been able to see for some time. The fact we changed to a back four and only have one ‘fit’ winger in the squad shows the sorry state the squad is in. Far too one dimensional, which is a recipe for disaster when teams have figured us out. 

[RandomGuy.]

6 minutes ago, Theyellowbox said:

Impression too is that Davidson feels more comfortable with domestic (scot/eng) players or guys who have been here before. 

See I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. If you want to go for players 24-30 with experience of UK football then that's fine, they'll likely be able to adapt almost instantly with both the league and team mates. That type of player should make up the bulk of your squad IMO. The signings there don't even have to be great, someone like James Brown is a good signing if he's back up RB in a back 4, but he's a shite signing if you expect him to be a starter in a back 5.

[johnoswald2712]

1 hour ago, The Real Saints said:

Sorry, it was the head of recruitment’s fault that we lost Kerr and McCann? Interesting. John Oswald is no clearly talking a lot of sense. I’m on his side.

Who said that? I certainly didn’t. I said it was his job to replace them

[RandomGuy.]

1 minute ago, PSJ.84 said:

Hopefully Saturday has finally shown to him that we’re far too reliant on his system working - something we’ve all been able to see for some time. The fact we changed to a back four and only have one ‘fit’ winger in the squad shows the sorry state the squad is in. Far too one dimensional, which is a recipe for disaster when teams have figured us out. 

We played a back 4 against Rangers too after the game was done, and then went straight back to a back 5.

It's just the same as chucking Bair on when the games dead, just an attempt to be seen trying something different without actually committing to it.

[RandomGuy.]

8 minutes ago, johnoswald2712 said:

Who said that? I certainly didn’t. I said it was his job to replace them

Davidson had already pre-emptively replaced Kerr with Muller and Dendoncker. Do you think Brown was going to let them spend 6 figures on Cleary in the Summer when Davidson had told him those two were good enough?

McCann was a mistake by everyone at the club, I still don't agree with that and the timing was horrendous.

[PSJ.84]

16 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

We played a back 4 against Rangers too after the game was done, and then went straight back to a back 5.

It's just the same as chucking Bair on when the games dead, just an attempt to be seen trying something different without actually committing to it.

Same thing Fir Park, by which point we were already 2-0 down. You’d expect Junior clubs to have a plan B, so it’s ridiculous a top-flight club are welded to one system. The chairman and HoR cannot be to blame for that…

[johnoswald2712]

4 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Davidson had already pre-emptively replaced Kerr with Muller and Dendoncker. Do you think Brown was going to let them spend 6 figures on Cleary in the Summer when Davidson had told him those two were good enough?

McCann was a mistake by everyone at the club, I still don't agree with that and the timing was horrendous.

Do I think Muller and Dendoncker were Kerr’s replacements? No. I think Muller was cover for the right side of the back 4 and Dendoncker was only signed after Kerr was away. They might have been seen as short term stop gap replacements but not anything more than that. Millwall had said they wanted Muller back and there is no way we can afford an EPL player, even one as far down the pecking order as Dendoncker was.

I do agree about McCann however. He had at least a couple of years left on his contract and should not have been sold for less than £2m. Pretty sure it was Brown who was responsible for that though. Davidson came out in the media with some half-hearted acceptance but it was clearly forced on him and the team is still paying the price for that.

[RandomGuy.]

15 minutes ago, johnoswald2712 said:

Do I think Muller and Dendoncker were Kerr’s replacements? No. I think Muller was cover for the right side of the back 4.

What?

We played a back four once last season, and didnt start it once when Muller was here, where have you plucked that idea from?

[Theyellowbox]

36 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

See I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. If you want to go for players 24-30 with experience of UK football then that's fine, they'll likely be able to adapt almost instantly with both the league and team mates. That type of player should make up the bulk of your squad IMO. The signings there don't even have to be great, someone like James Brown is a good signing if he's back up RB in a back 4, but he's a shite signing if you expect him to be a starter in a back 5.

I don't necessarily think there is anything too wrong with it either, but where it falls down is with the likes of Ciftci who since he went to Celtic about 7-8 years ago hasn't really produced much of note. His spell at Motherwell should have been a warning sign that he wasn't the player we maybe all had in our minds.

Fine bringing in guys who know the league in most positions, but probably not a striker who hadn't be prolific for 8 years or so.

You are spot on re James Brown. I see him a bit like Tanser. Brought in as a squad guy who can do a job and you hope he can develop to be a starter, but he isn't there yet.

I do wonder if Bair and E2 had arrived earlier and when we were in less trouble things might have been different. E2 was here early enough, but the whole time to adapt thing was nonsense.

I think Davidson could be a fine manager, but needs to be able to adapt. Also needs to read the room better. Today, he should be finding the right ballance between slating players for getting beat 7-0 and how it is unacceptable and not wanting to totally kill any momentum, yet I'm pretty certain he will be too soft.

Equally, the praise of Ciftci last time out baffles me. If that was acceptable levels for a forward, then we are doomed.

The players aren't stupid. They know it is poor player management and they will know that the manager is loosing the fans. Even if we did stay up and offer 'acceptable' contracts to the likes of Clark and Rooney, would they want to play for a manager who is maybe going to bring down their reputations by keeping on playing team mates they know aren't up to the job.