Double Winning St Johnstone FC Thread

[RossBFaeDundee]

17 minutes ago, Dick Van Dyke said:

I think a few of us MAY be very happy tomorrow 

itk central

[capt_oats]

3 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

In all seriousness, we've lost out on Declan Gallagher, Liam Polworth, and Stevie May over the past 6 months. Those three in our squad and nobody thinks about us being anywhere near relegation.

There needs to be a review about our transfer business and how it works, Motherwell have clearly had a plan of their squad for this season for about six months, have acted on that, and have made all their signings already.

Our Head of Recruitment is a Martin Foyle, he's listed as part of the staff on the OS rather than some freelance type. Alan Burrows was on Twitter giving him and Robinson the credit re: recruitment a while back.

The gist seems to be that recruitment is led by the manager, head of recruitment with support from our performance analyst. Based on stuff Robinson's said previously the contract/negotiation stuff gets handed over to Burrows to sort out after the player has been identified, which is hardly surprising.

To kind of support your point, we've 10 players through the door so far but that's with a £3.25m transfer falling through and us looking like we're getting absolutely shafted by Chris Cadden's decision to sign for an MLS side. Obviously Gallagher, Polworth, Sloth and Carroll were all pre-contracts but I'd imagine it may have been different faces through the door had the Turnbull deal gone through.

I'd guess there must have been different targets in play depending on different circumstances which would mean a fair amount of planning.

55 minutes ago, PauloPerth said:

I'm not disagreeing with you entirely.

But you're talking about a Director of Football type, potentially on the salary of a first team player. Would you prefer that?

Depends how you look at it I guess. You can either look at someone taking up a wage that could be used for a player or look at the overall value of having someone doing that job. It depends on how successful the players recruited are I guess, if the guy brings in a bunch of absolute huddies it's a problem.

I'm not sure if Marvin Johnson was one of his but Foyle was definitely involved in Moult, Heneghan, Kipré and Bowman signing all players who we've "traded" and sold on for profit, excluding Johnson that's close to £2m income via player sales from a spend of about £40k in fees. In that respect he's justified whatever salary he's on with us.

Then again if you were to sell on Matty Kennedy etc just now you'd be making cash without someone in that role. Whatever works for TW I suppose.

Edited July 29, 2019 by capt_oats

[Bankfoot Saints]

6 hours ago, Dick Van Dyke said:

I think a few of us MAY be very happy tomorrow 

Is he signing for Dundee so we can put this to bed once and for all 

[RandomGuy.]

7 hours ago, PauloPerth said:

I'm not disagreeing with you entirely.

But you're talking about a Director of Football type, potentially on the salary of a first team player. Would you prefer that?

Im not going to pretend this summer has been great, and I do fear for us defensively going to Celtic this week, but yeh I find it very one sided to go on about not getting decent players in when you look at MOH, Kennedy, Swanson and Wright. Throw in Scougall who you yourself had been shouting for for about 18 months! On paper a great signing, sadly just didn't work out.

I don't really care who represents those players, the fact is we signed them and no one else did.

Again, far from ideal preparation going into the first game, but those four players are better than anything the rest of the bottom six have attacking wise.  

Go onto st Mirren, Kilmarnock etc threads if you really want to see something to worry about.

I'd prefer someone to come on and give us some form of structure in terms of transfers. MOH and Swanson are both players we've signed three times now, and both quoted the manager as the main reason they've signed on again.

We're clearly not horrendous at making signings, but things seem to completely fall apart when the initial target isnt signed.

In January we went for a CB who can play RB, and a creative central midfielder. We ended up signing Duffy, who played well against us in a reserve game, and have now decided to run with two young players in midfield, who the manager has now decided aren't up to it. 

There never seems any planning into things. In January we were clearly needing a few positions filled. We had Swanson, Kennedy and Wotherspoon to fill the wide positions and Wright was injured. Was signing O'Halloran really the best use of funds?

We need someone to decide that, TW seems obsessed with attacking players lately, and Brown just goes along with it.

[RandomGuy.]

Chris Kane has a "niggling back injury" that keeps recurring, and it's exactly the type of situation you'll find has him out for months.

At least we waited until the last week in July to make a move for a striker though 

Hendry and McMillan as our only two options sounds great fun.

[steviemay17]

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Chris Kane has a "niggling back injury" that keeps recurring, and it's exactly the type of situation you'll find has him out for months.

At least we waited until the last week in July to make a move for a striker though 

Hendry and McMillan as our only two options sounds great fun.

 Even Tommy's comments are pretty much " yes hes sh*t but at least he works hard" 

[Templar]

I struggle to understand our recruitment methods and signing policy. To me one the best methods is to get a quality player to sign a pre contract, there have been a few going about. When was the last time we signed a first team player on a pre contract We seem to spend December and January getting our players to sign extensions to their contracts. When Tommy stated in May our number 1 priority was a striker, he must have had 2 or 3 identified but here we are starting the league season and no striker. If May was his first target he cannot pursue him forever to the detriment of the others. It will be interesting to see who he brings in. He has not had a good record with strikers.

Year in year out it seems we wait until the end of the window or the close to do business, yes we can get a gem that has not been picked up but it is a dangerous game to play this season with the team struggling. 

I agree with Random Guy. O'Halloran was not the best use of our funds in winter window. With a slim squad we have plenty cover out wide. But I hope MOH proves his worth with an outstanding season.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Templar

[deej]

6 minutes ago, Templar said:

I struggle to understand our recruitment methods and signing policy. To me one the best methods is to get a quality player to sign a pre contract, there have been a few going about. When was the last time we signed a first team player on a pre contract We seem to spend December and January getting our players to sign extensions to their contracts. When Tommy stated in May our number 1 priority was a striker, he must have had 2 or 3 identified but here we are starting the league season and no striker. If May was his first target he cannot pursue him forever to the detriment of the others. It will be interesting to see who he brings in. He has not had a good record with strikers.

Year in year out it seems we wait until the end of the window or the close to do business, yes we can get a gem that has not been picked up but it is a dangerous game to play this season with the team struggling. 

I agree with Random Guy. O'Halloran was not the best use of our funds in winter window. With a slim squad we have plenty cover out wide. But I hope MOH proves his worth with an outstanding season.

Might be pedantic but is this not just a stable version of pre-contracts? If no-one better is available on a free, why not sign up the players you know will give that famous 7/10 every week. 

[RandomGuy.]

7 hours ago, capt_oats said:

 

I'd guess there must have been different targets in play depending on different circumstances which would mean a fair amount of planning.

 

Just have to look at the January window for proof of how many light years you are ahead of us in this department.

By most accounts we both made approaches for O'Halloran before he was released ,he picked us, and then worked on getting released which finally happened on the 8th, it took a week after that to seal the deal due to paperwork/travelling.

Motherwell signed Ariyibi on the 7th.

One of your deals fall through you've got the next one just sitting there ready to go. We seem to wait until it's done before shuffling onto the next deal.

We're a tape deck, the majority of the league is a multi-disk CD player. We've got the money to upgrade but we're storing that money under the seats incase we puncture a tyre.

Edited July 30, 2019 by RandomGuy.

[steviemay17]

2 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Just have to look at the January window for proof of how many light years you are ahead of us in this department.

By most accounts we both made approaches for O'Halloran before he was released ,he picked us, and then worked on getting released which finally happened on the 8th, it took a week after that to seal the deal due to paperwork/travelling.

Motherwell signed Ariyibi on the 7th.

I do wonder if we are short sighted enough that Tommy was told we could implement a scouting/DOF structure but it would come out of the playing budget until it started to become a success - i.e selling players for a profit - and we opted to just have an extra senior player or two instead of adapting

[RandomGuy.]

1 minute ago, steviemay17 said:

I do wonder if we are short sighted enough that Tommy was told we could implement a scouting/DOF structure but it would come out of the playing budget until it started to become a success - i.e selling players for a profit - and we opted to just have an extra senior player or two instead of adapting

It would involve taking control away from Brown, so I'm not convinced he'd be all that keen on it either tbh.

[Dee Man]

18 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Just have to look at the January window for proof of how many light years you are ahead of us in this department.

By most accounts we both made approaches for O'Halloran before he was released ,he picked us, and then worked on getting released which finally happened on the 8th, it took a week after that to seal the deal due to paperwork/travelling.

Motherwell signed Ariyibi on the 7th.

One of your deals fall through you've got the next one just sitting there ready to go. We seem to wait until it's done before shuffling onto the next deal.

We're a tape deck, the majority of the league is a multi-disk CD player. We've got the money to upgrade but we're storing that money under the seats incase we puncture a tyre.

What kind if strange tape decks do they have in Perth that have tyres?

[steviemay17]

1 minute ago, Dee Man said:

What kind if strange tape decks do they have in Perth that have tyres?

They are part of the tractor

[tree house tam]

Maybe, just maybe, instead of competing with English clubs for a striker(which we would lose), we wait till their window closes and pick up a more than adequate striker for this league. We still have a list and the only time we were coming off that is if someone popped up unexpectedly,  see the Stevie fucking May scenario. 

[Radford]

Pure speculation over the past couple of pages and I don't see how it's helpful to try and guess what is going on behind the scenes when we don't know at all. 

The manager and chairman said they weren't happy with recruitment in January 2018 but this summer spoke about how planning for this window had been going on for 12 months. Wright spoke about "our scouts" watching Vihmann, so there clearly is a structure in place. 

But at the end of the day, the biggest obstacle for Saints when it comes to recruitment is finances. 

[tree house tam]

9 minutes ago, Dee Man said:

What kind if strange tape decks do they have in Perth that have tyres?

You boys not have these in Dundee?

[RandomGuy.]

1 minute ago, tree house tam said:

Maybe, just maybe, instead of competing with English clubs for a striker(which we would lose), we wait till their window closes and pick up a more than adequate striker for this league. We still have a list and the only time we were coming off that is if someone popped up unexpectedly,  see the Stevie fucking May scenario. 

So our plan is to hope a quality striker appears in the last three weeks of the window and we'll be able to get them?

We've needed, at least one, striker for over 6 months, and lost out on, presumably, the number one target a week ago, and now you're saying we should hold off for another week? A competent club has the next target already in talks while May is in discussions, once May falls through you can finalise that.

The impression the club give off around transfers is embarrassing. If we have yet another "oh well, he'll do I suppose" striker signing this year I'll be completely seething.

[tree house tam]

8 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

So our plan is to hope a quality striker appears in the last three weeks of the window and we'll be able to get them?

We've needed, at least one, striker for over 6 months, and lost out on, presumably, the number one target a week ago, and now you're saying we should hold off for another week? A competent club has the next target already in talks while May is in discussions, once May falls through you can finalise that.

The impression the club give off around transfers is embarrassing. If we have yet another "oh well, he'll do I suppose" striker signing this year I'll be completely seething.

How many people do you think work at/for Saints? There is practically f**k all. We get 3 men and his dug at games and you expect us to be like Manchester United.

[Templar]

12 minutes ago, Radford said:

Wright spoke about "our scouts" watching Vihmann, so there clearly is a structure in place. 

I read that it was Tommy himself who spotted Vihmann in a Northern Ireland v Estonia game and marked him as a possible signing. Would we spend money sending a scout to Norway on a number of occasions or would we sign him on this one game against Northern Ireland and save the pennies.

[RandomGuy.]

10 minutes ago, Radford said:

this summer spoke about how planning for this window had been going on for 12 months. Wright spoke about "our scouts" watching Vihmann, so there clearly is a structure in place. 

If 12 months of planning has brought us Parish, Duffy, and a CB identified in March playing against our managers nation of birth, then we're worse off than imagined. 

Reaching this stage of the season with the same glaring holes in the squad as 6 months ago isnt acceptable, and theres absolutely zero chance that's all down to finances. It's a weak excuse when theres at least three clubs in this division paying less than us.