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So it's been a tough few years that has no one to blame and no reason for happening other than some bad luck? Do you actually think our collapse has been unavoidable? Of course football always has highs and lows, but there are also always reasons for those highs and lows. They don't just happen by some mystical natural force that no one has any control over. I think we must have very different definitions of "well run". We used to be well run, yes, but we've been a complete shambles for quite a few years now. An absentee owner, a half-hearted chairman who didn't want to be here, an incompetent head of operations, a head of communications who was more interested in communicating about Celtic, a recruitment guy the manager didn't want, a succession of badly chosen managers. Many people saw all of this coming, not least Tommy Wright who tried to tell his bosses what needed to be done to develop the club and found himself banging his head against a brick wall each time, to the point that he'd had enough and we lost our best ever manager. These things have all had an impact but you think anyone who actually mentions them is "stupid" or "needs to take a good look at themselves"?

You hit the nail on the head "Sadly football culture seems to attract idiots" If you PM me your address or a paypal account i'd like to cover the cost or send a new scarf for your laddie - many of us on this forum and 99.9% of those in the stands at home games are football folk, not the idiots who come and go .....

100% this. It seriously annoyed me the way winning a relegation play-off was suddenly treated as something we should all be celebrating, instead of recognised as the massive failure that it was. We'd gone from winning two cups and matching Galatasaray on their own pitch, to relegation candidates in less than a year. Davidson should have been firmly embarrassed by that, not running around in front of the fans like he thought he was some sort of hero. To me it's one of the cringiest things I've ever witnessed in my years watching Saints. Davidson also should have looked upon that moment as his opportunity to walk away and let someone else have a go at the job, instead of clinging on and actively making us even worse (which we're still trying to recover from two years later).

My old tech teacher once told me, ''If you ever hold the opposite opinion from approximately 99.9% of the St Johnstone fanbase, you should maybe refrain from mocking them and instead engage in a period of self-reflection regarding your own views.'' It seemed an oddly specific thing for him to say at the time, but it's starting to make some sense.

Dunno about Levein but the Barossa St Saints need to have a word with themselves. Graham Carey FFS.

Of course they are because they know to always trust the mole

Levein's been here for six months and, other than a brief flurry of decent results and performances that dragged us off the bottom of the table, we haven't improved in the slightest. He hasn't managed to implement even the most basic gameplan or system to get us functioning, and the players still look unfit. In fact I think he's now at the point of taking us backwards from where we were when he arrived. I wouldn't even have allowed him to give his latest dismal post-match interview. Our only chance of staying up as things stand is to get rid of him immediately and hope that we get enough of a short-term new manager bounce to keep us up. Put Cleland in charge for the remaining games, then start again in the summer.

We are Hamilton Accies of 2016/17-2020/21…. Circling the drain for 3 seasons just waiting to disappear while taking no decisive action to fend off the inevitable. I will never forgive Callum Davidson - ever!

That result is entirely on Levein. Yes the players missed chances, but these things happen in football. It's human error. What's not human error is to just stand there and watch and do nothing as the opposition grow more and more into the game, make their own proactive changes and start to dictate the play, while our players visibly tire and lose a grip on proceedings. Watching the game I said just before Livi scored that an equaliser was coming, and said just before they scored their winner that their winner was coming. It really was that obvious. How could some rando like me watching the thing from home on a live stream see what was happening, and yet a former Scotland manager with 25 years of experience couldn't? There's just no game management at all, no Plan B, and no attempt to read what's happening on the pitch and turn it around before the damage is done. And then when he did finally make his subs, not only were they too late, but they were an absolute mess. What's the point of bringing one on in the 75th minute and the next in the 79th minute? We only have three substitution windows, so why not make those changes at the same time? And what's the point of bringing on two more players in the 87th minute? What chance are those players going to get to even get a touch of the ball, let alone change the game? And those last two subs actually did more harm than good because they removed our two central midfielders and left a wide open path down the middle of the pitch that led straight to our goal. It's just complete Amateur Hour stuff. That's 15 points now lost from winning positions under Levein, and yet only last week he was still coming out with nonsense like "if we score, we can stop attacking." The guy's just completely clueless. Worst manager I've ever seen at St Johnstone by a long, long, long way.

Its all well and good blaming everyone we can think of. The shit started with Steve Broon. He was a waste of space..

I would sack both now and let Alec Cleland and Danny Griffin take over for the last three games. Both would get a better reaction out of this squad.

19997 moans and 3 celebrating cup wins.

You’ve obviously been a long time away dude Is somebody gonna tell him

Good post! At this stage of the season the players have to take responsibility and step up and deliver. Of course CL is far from blameless, but particularly the senior player need to give the fans something to shout about and get behind the team in a nerve jangling period. As ever I’m right behind you, want Dee, Saints and united in the top flight next season! Good luck my WAP friends! X

I agree Mitov is the stand out nomination and should win this but Sidibe and Kimpioka have added a real ray of light for us going forward but neither have played a full season. I will say I think McGowan deserves a special mention - he's been steady throughout and acted like a true proffessional when Macca kicked him to the roadside.

All true, but equally I think it's important for the club to actually look at why this happened so it doesn't happen again, rather than just shrug the shoulders and have a laugh about it. It's not just luck that allowed us to benefit in a similar way in the past. It happened because we'd created an environment here where players could thrive. If the opposite is now happening (and it definitely is, and not just with Bair), then that's probably a big part of the reason why we're now a team that struggles every year.

Tbf any club could have a chairman walk away and hand the running of the entire club over to a salesman with zero experience of football clubs. These things happen. Any club could also have a manager build a squad of 30+ players that causes a £1.8m annual loss and make sure they're mostly all tied down to 2-3 year contracts. Just our turn on that roundabout really, you see it all the time.

I was hoping we would get the Levein that was manager of Dundee United. A man who was passionate, ruthless and driven. Unfortunately it appears that that version of Levein no longer exists. I appreciate he cannot do a “Terry Butcher at Hibs” and come out and publicly criticise the players and say they are not good enough, as this group of players would just hide even more than they already have done. I would have liked to have seen him be more passionate though. From his initial interviews where he was making remarks about not even being interested in the job up to his post match interview last Saturday whereby he was slumped in the dugout and almost ambivalent about our situation. It certainly dosent inspire the support and his demeanour dosent exactly seem to be inspiring our players either. I struggle to see how a man of his experience can be so tactically naive at times. We continue to play the same system over and over, expecting something different to happen, but it won’t and hasn’t done for three seasons playing this chronic style of football. Since his first game, he (along with Kirk) seem to freeze on the touchline when he comes to making a pro active substitute. I also cannot believe that he never identified the glaring need for a wide player in the January transfer window. Hes not getting to get punted between now and the end of the season and the only way he is likely to go anytime soon is if our new owner decides to make a change in the summer. I don’t claim to speak for everyone, but there seems to be very few of our supporters who have a great deal of faith in Levein. The Hibs game was the first home game that I can remember over the past three seasons where our support really turned against the team. After three seasons of the same rubbish, people are quite rightly fed up of the lack of entertainment, the player’s inability to carry out basic task and the malaise that seems to have gripped the club. I don’t see us getting out of our current situation. The players look completely done and the lack of ambition and defensive set up that our manager persists with is not going to get us out of trouble anytime soon. Relegation would be a sad way to end the Browns time at the club and what makes it even more tragic is that it’s all be so avoidable, especially from the position of strength we were in following the double. Steve Brown ran the club into the ground in the aftermath of the double due to not being interested and Geoffs appointment of Levein has not helped matters.

**** OFF.

I think this is very good news and feels like fine work from Brown finding the right investor. I'd heard this was the buyer and researched cambridge forums last week going back from inception of his investment there. The mastermind of all this is an Englishman/Cambridge fan, who made his millions in the US, Paul Berry. He's a legitimate football guy and has brought stability to Cambridge and added Webb & Green as investors. What I also like here is that Berry has built a transition / ownership structure over many years and that Webb will have this blueprint and experience to lean on. Yes, Webb is clearly a rich dude and may just looking for a 'plaything' but he invested in Cambridge 4 years ago and now hes looking for his own club. He will clearly have experience with Berry and I like that Berry (a true fan) picked him as an investor at Cambridge. Anyway, thats my early read. Its good though, that staying up or down, we have a new owner at the helm. Maybe this news will kick the players into a frenzy and we win a few.

I agree, but there's the root of the problem: Geoff Brown handing out a three-year contract to completely the wrong manager, after the club had already given a three-year contract to a different wrong manager just a few months earlier. The people running our club just lurch from one crap decision to the next. I totally get that we wanted someone with experience, but for me the St Johnstone manager should always be someone who is up-and-coming and has ambitions to move higher, whether that's with Saints or effectively by using Saints as a stepping stone. They should be hungry and determined and have bags of new ideas they're desperate to try. They should be excited to come to our club and they should recognise it for the opportunity it is; not just act as if they're here to do us a favour. I've heard a lot of people mentioning Rhys McCabe and I've no idea if he's good enough or ready to step up, but to me he ticks a lot more of the above boxes than Levein does. Did Saints even interview anyone fitting that description, and properly consider our options, or did we just look at Martindale (I mean, FFS) and then go straight to Levein? I can't help but think a half-arsed process has left us with a half-arsed manager, and Geoff Brown needs to carry the responsibility for that.

Agree with this. But perhaps most damaging is the overall mindset Davidson instilled in the team, which I think we still haven't managed to pull ourselves out of. That attitude of fear, making all the players scared to try anything creative or a bit different that might have shown some spark or got the fans on their feet. Always scared to make a substitution or a tactical change in case it made things worse instead of better. Always scared to go for it at 1-0 down in case we went 2-0 down. Telling everyone that winning a relegation play-off would be better than winning the Double. Yes we were often defensive under Tommy Wright too, but we were also brave and aggressive and adaptable to situations. I still think of the way Eetu Vertainen - at a time when he was young, living in a new country and eager to impress - was publicly shamed for trying one little flick on the halfway line against Rangers, and think that was the moment we really knew beyond any doubt what Davidson was all about. Sign players who might be good and drill every glimmer of flair out of them, and refuse to give them a game until they're fully brainwashed into playing with the same stiff, defensive mindset as everyone else. So much of all of where we are now is Callum Davidson's fault, and if we go down much of the blame for it will be on his shoulders.

I'm just completely baffled as to what Levein is actually doing. Week after week he sends us out with square pegs in round holes all over the pitch. Gallacher is barely good enough for his actual position, let alone being started each week in the wrong position. Matt Smith and Kucheriavyi seem eternally confused about which one of them is playing on the right and which one of them is playing in the middle. Why move Smith out of the middle of the park to accommodate Kucheriavyi anyway, when Max has struggled so much to make an impact? And why do we keep playing Nicky Clark so far back in midfield when it's so obviously nullifying his impact and depriving us of the things he's actually good at? And then there's the substitutions. Week after week we see Sidibeh staggering around absolutely knackered by the hour-mark, and Levein doing nothing about it until it's way too late. He brought May and Kimpioka on in the 88th minute when we'd needed that change almost half an hour earlier. Why not give these guys a chance to settle into the game, get on the end of a few chances and maybe make a difference? That's on top of last week when he bafflingly brought May on in the 93rd minute while we were trying to defend a corner. Absolute madness. I'm so bored of seeing opposition managers encourage their teams and talk to their players and make proactive substitutions and adapt their in-game tactics, while Levein and Kirk stand there chatting to each other and changing nothing. And at the end of it all he does yet another interview where he talks as if he has no idea why his plan hasn't worked, when everyone else in the stadium can see exactly why it hasn't worked. I know the squad is poor at the moment but I'm absolutely certain a good manager would be able to get us doing better than this. We just look so poorly organised, so badly coached, so unmotivated and lacking in fight, and a lot of our players don't even look fit. That's nowhere near good enough. Some of these things are just basic starting points that Levein and Kirk have just completely failed to establish. This guy has been managing football teams at all sorts of levels for over 25 years. He was the f*cking Scotland manager for three years. Is this seriously all he's picked up in that time? He really can't come up with a better plan than this? He seriously can't even just put some footballers into their best positions? It's horrific. Just horrific. Please, please, please get this guy out of our club and give us a manager who is actually hungry for the job and has some ideas and has some ambitions beyond giving management another go in-between media or "upstairs" jobs.

I agree, I think that the manager has been out of the game for too long. Does he man manage like he used to in the 90s. Won't wash now. Does he communicate with the players, is he approachable. does he goes through what ifs with the squad, does he know how to rotate and get the best out of the players, so that they are motivated and invested in the team and outcomes?, does he have 1 2 1 with the players and give them targets. When Carey is throwing his dummy out every opportunity he gets week after week, it shows weakness on the part of the management to not have dealt with it. I really thought that he might have been an answer to the problem and have been a wily old fox with man management skills in tow with young modern coach but alas he is out of his depth as is the coach who has jumped several leagues up in a massive jump. I think CL has dined out on past glories. I don't think that it's his fault that he has taken the role on, it must have looked easy when McLean was bedding in a squad and they had a big loss to say a anybody could do better than that. I would personally put Considine and Cleland in charge of the last 2 games of the season. Considine is very intelligent from his past analysis of games and then look to bring a young forward thinking manager into the fold next season whatever league St Johnstone are in. The new owners might have a more global take on this as they are on the outside looking in. Everyone might say players should be self motivated but management is not just about game day training sessions and off you go, its the whole week and managing the players to get the best out of them.

Ouch! Sorry Callum!

I think the Cambridge link is largely irrelevant as our new owner only has a small stake in them. He's not the one making the decisions there. It also needs to be recognised that a club like Cambridge would need a gigantic injection of cash in order to become a successful, "marquee" club in England. Saints don't need that. We're already a top flight club and we've proven we can be successful in Scotland simply by living within our means. What I'm excited about our club getting an injection of isn't cash, but fresh ideas. We've been stagnating for a while and desperately need modernising. We need someone who will understand the importance of marketing, and who has an actual plan for growing the support, and will try some new things instead of just shrugging their shoulders and saying they've tried everything and none of it works. I really, really hope that is what this change will bring. Obviously still very early days but the fact that they're already talking about "improving the fan experience" is a big tick in the right box for me. And as tempting as it is to say they need to completely clear the decks and get rid of everyone and start again, the fact that they're keeping someone like Stan Harris on to enable a smooth transition is probably a good sign too. It shows a level of thoughtfulness, a willingness to listen and hopefully indicates that they're not going to be the type to make knee-jerk decisions with the club's future.

Saints lost 1-0 to Queen's Park (who are champions of the division and looked a really strong side), but put on a performance to be proud of and were unlucky not to get anything from the game. Brilliant crowd with nearly 500 people showing up and generating a great atmosphere. That was the most I've enjoyed a game at McDiarmid in a long, long time and so refreshing to see a Saints team absolutely busting a gut to chase after every ball and get stuck into every tackle. You could tell it really meant something to the players. Real pity the men's team weren't there to watch it as I think they might have learned something. Oh and the lack of VAR really helped as well. Remember when games just used to carry on without endless baffling stoppages? Really hope Saints will view last night as a big success and be encouraged to do more of these in the future. Felt to me like there was a real opportunity to build the crowds for these if they were to become a semi-regular thing (although I appreciate the pitch issue is always going to be an obstacle).

It would be naïve to think Saints are concerned they are losing their fanbase and are looking at sites such as this one. The apathy from contributors matches the desire shown by the team. In years past there was a lot of debate, interest but many have given up as they can see no change coming. Levein will be supported despite our concerns. Would changing to Cleland to finish the season help? I don't know. I would point to his cameo roles and say, he had the players on the front foot from the very beginning. He at least gave the players the chance to express themselves, play in forward areas, with forward passes. I feel Levein is so defensive minded, he's created mind fog for the players and they are struggling to show their skills. Like Davidson, errors are over inflated, players take fewer risks. Trust is a two way streak. To my mind Levein doesn't trust the players and they're reacting now. We have four games to save our season. How we do that parked on our eighteen yard line I don't know.

Certainly in modern memory, I've never seen a Saints team as well coached or drilled as the double-winning squad. Callum Davidson deserves endless credit for that. The performance at Ibrox in the cup quarter-final was exceptional. But he was a dreadful manager of men.

He was there today apparently! What must he be thinking?! An absolutely spineless performance from us today. Understandably people are venting their anger at Levein, which I agree with, but the players need to take a share of the blame as well. Happy to pick up a wage, but can’t be bothered to do the basics like tracking runners, playing simple passes or beating the first man at corners. The only player in this current squad I would be sorry to leave is Mitov. Our captain has been miles off it for along time now. Absolutely no leadership throughout the team. Im at the stage now where relegation wouldn’t bother me. It might be a chance to clear the decks and try and get a group of players on who look like they want to play for us. If Airdrie don’t go up, we should be trying to get Rhys McCabe in. A young manager who has his side playing good football, they are well structured and he will have some ambition and hunger about him. Leveins usual boring interviews and snidey wee jokes are beyond boring now.

Flaherty and Steve Brown (who became bored unless he could get a golf jolly) are just as culpable.

Thanks a lot for this offer, really kind of you, but honestly no need. We absolutely understand that yesterday wasn’t representative of your support. And the messages we’ve received since posting have underlined this. Sincerely hope your post split games are successful and we get the chance to do battle again next season.

Keeping this absolute grifter in a job because it was mistakenly thought he was in some way saving us from relegation is going to go down as the sole biggest mistake of the Brown era. It's been obvious for weeks now, if not months, that the only direction he's taking us in is down. We had bags of time to get rid of him and we've sat on our hands and wasted it. If there's one thing I find more disappointing than anything else, it's the club's cowardly head-in-the-sand attitude to this whole mess. They've done literally nothing to turn it around. The incredible thing is there's actually still time to do something about this, and our snoozing, hiding board will continue to do nothing. I honestly don't think we'd be any worse off right now if we'd just stuck with Macca.

Going back a few posts here but the Browns are not the innocent party here. We are no longer a well run club. Geoff did well for us, albeit a bit too risk averse at times. However his son is another matter. Not fit to lace his fathers boots and I hold him up as the main reason we are where we are

Nail head, Brown walked away, Flax so far out of his depth, Davidson not got a clue about signing apart from the ageing has been market and dross like Crawford and MacPherson. But surely old Brown must have been looking at it, doesn’t come across as some shrinking violet that would let Steve over rule him! To hear Davidson on the TV/Radio giving his pounds worth now still grates me, he destroyed the club to where we are and to me that is his legacy no a cup double which he won with a Tommy Wright team, should have been emptied at Kelty

If we keep this management team and enough of the shitebag squad I’d be concerned about our ability to stay up in the championship.

‘So Craig, a disappointing result today?’ ’Well yes but Celtic park is a tough place to go.’

I think Alex Cleland would do a better at the moment than CL

Next Wednesday 1st May St Johnstone Women have their first match on the main pitch at McDiarmid, a 7.45 kick off against Queen's Park - who have just been crowned champions of that league. After the proposed match in November 2022 was cancelled four days prior, this will be the first time the side have played on the main pitch. Main stand only, with season ticket holders getting in free and a cash only gate otherwise of £5 adult and £1 concessions. It would mean a considerable amount to the players if they were to get a decent support in that night.

Dont think anyone would question the broad difference between current and new, completely different animals. I think its more a question of: a) Stay with broons, and carry on as is, something they stated they didnt want, so a no there b) find another saints supporter - im sure they tried but scratched out c) go fan ownership model - no one stepped up with a plan, no saints supporter club driving this etc, so no d) sell the club to the best they could find..... I believe we got as good as we could expect or hope for. What other alternatives were there? I guess hold out longer for a better owner? But with club in limbo for months, and Id say we're better off today than yesterday. Jeff however needs a statue in his honor at the least. We should do a fan 'go fund me' to buy him a special leaving present/thankyou.

I welcome this. A fresh set of eyes on the club infrastructure, squad, community links and overall business model needs thoroughly assessed. The club has been on the slide since the cup double. Time to evaluate and look to see where we need the club to be in the next 5, 10 and 20 years. Football has changed dramatically recently and we have not kept up with some aspects. Time to loosen the grip of many with nostalgia and move forward.

That bullshit about only being at the Kilmarnock game to watch Kucheriavyi (and how he was about to leave but decided just to hang around - for the full 90 minutes) was a bad start for Levein. When you start off lying because it creates a good soundbite then it doesn't exactly foster a feeling of trust. He's shown no enthusiasm for this job since he got it.

Are we allowed to say that we're worse than we were under Macca yet? In my eyes that was the sort of performance you get out of a team when they've completely given up and the manager is on his way out. A lot of talk on here about the players being spineless and having no battle in them and that's clearly true, but on top of that they're not even getting the basics right. They look unfit, disorganised, they're in the wrong positions, they don't know where to pass the ball or where to move to. The whole thing's a complete mess. It was really interesting to watch the contrast in intent and gameplan between Hibs and Saints. I don't think Hibs have especially good players but when they had the ball they always knew generally what to do with it. They played it forwards as quickly as they could, and the guys who didn't have the ball moved around to drag the Saints players with them. When our players had the ball, by contrast, everyone stood still, the ball got stuck around the halfway line and we had no option but to pass it sideways and eventually lose it, or hoof it forward and also lose it. If our sole tactic for attacking is to play the ball forward to a fast guy (Sidibeh), why not just play both of our fast guys (Sidibeh and Kimpioka)? That way we'd double our chances of the ball actually finding one of them? Instead we play Clark in an absolutely nothing role, where he's completely ineffective. And our sole tactic for defending appears to be playing an extra defender. How many defenders do we get next week? Six? Seven? We could have started with 11 defenders on Saturday and Hibs would still have walked through them whenever they wanted to. How about actually coaching those defenders so they can function as a unit, with and without the ball? What are they actually doing in training all week? Positive mention for Mitov of course who single-handedly saved us from a serious embarrassment. He's way too good to be playing for us. Levein must go.

Brilliant picture on pie and Bovril so true well done

Ormond before my time, would have said great post until you mentioned Davidson, he’s still a major part in why we are in this mess.

He can't play for us until the transfer window opens, so no. Today was one of the most pathetic performances I've ever seen from a Saints team. Zero heart or fight on the pitch or from the manager. Just a shell of a team praying others fail.

I have a colleague who is a season ticket holder at Tannadice tells me that McCelland has been a stand out for the Terrors since he's started getting a regular game and they would happily keep him. Several fans are of the same opinion so that's good news going forward becasue we definitely need a shake up up in defence.

As a saints fan I don’t give a flying fuq.