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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).

Given the quality of Sidibeh and Keltjens, and to a lesser extent Kimpioka, I have reasonable confidence that if we manage to stay up this season (which I think we will - 10th place), Levein has an eye for a player, and the contacts to ensure we can have a decent squad next season and be more like 7th/8th finishers. We have some high earners whose contracts will be finishing in the summer, and some older players who will be moving on. Both Livi and Ross County are likely to lose their final game before the split (against Hearts and Rangers respectively). We have a really good opportunity at home against Killie to pull 7 points ahead, which would then make it very hard for Ross to catch up.

The result was always going to be the most important thing today, and we got it. Huge win! Especially at an away venue against a team who were supposedly on the rise, and with nobody expecting us to get anything. Sidibeh is some boy. I think he makes the whole team better because now they know that they have a teammate on the park who has pace, is a threat and can score. Mitov, back to his excellent self. In fact, the whole side did their jobs well and that's all you can ask at a time like this. It's been a while since I cheered a goal like I did our second. Anyway, we won. So for now, that'll do. It's nice to feel good on a Saturday night again.

Hello! Hope this is okay to post. We've recently relaunched Heartland FM, the community radio station in Perthshire, and have started covering St. Johnstone on our Daytime show. We've got regular interviews, courtesy of Saints TV, and chat from McDiarmid Park. We'd love to hear from Saints fans about what they'd like from a radio programme. Thank you.

I know there is a lot of negativity around but there is no one on here after 10 games that wouldn’t have taken pre the split to be a sh1tload of points ahead of 12th and 4 above 11th. Great result today.

Tony Gallagher. First name on team sheet for me .

Yeah, I agree that Tommy is our best ever. He not only won our first major trophy, but also laid the foundations for future successes. However, I wouldn’t say that Ormond and Totten were too far away from him when it comes to achievements. Ormond is up there, and has the stand named after him, because he managed to create a team that was capable of taking on Rangers and Celtic, at a time when both of them, and maybe even Scottish football as a whole, were arguably at their peak. To finish third in 70/71, above a really strong Rangers side who went on to win the European cup winners cup the next year, is an incredible achievement. Celtic at the time were one of the best teams on the planet, taking on the likes of the then, all conquering Leeds United, along with the rest of Europe's top teams. To be able to hold our own, over the course of a full season, in that kind of company is again, incredible. Totten did an amazing job in turning what was essentially a pub team, into an exciting and successful top league side in just a few years. The football his team played at that time was great as well. None of this well organised nonsense you have these days. It was "get intae them" from start to finish. Moorey, Maskrey and big Roddy at a packed out McDiarmid. Good times.

I think history will remember Davidson kindly. 100 years from now, if there's still a St Johnstone, he'll still be known as the manager who won the Double for Saints, long after whatever happened after that has been forgotten about. But he also played a huge part in destroying so many of the elements that had made St Johnstone successful. We're still feeling the repercussions of the damage he did, and it's looking increasingly like we're going to continue feeling them for several more years to come. If we go down, much of the blame for that is going to be at his door. His signing policy was atrocious, he didn't bring through a single youngster, his treatment of some players seemed unfair, he implemented the most turgid and ineffective style of football I'd ever seen at Saints, and he was too arrogant to change his ways when it was obvious he needed to. He also made an absolute pig's ear of probably the best chance this club will ever have of reaching European group stage football. He just completely ruined everything that Tommy Wright had built, and I still find that very hard to deal with.

I thought there were both positives and negatives from that performance. The positives, the fact that we were actually attacking. It's been a long time since I've heard the media say "wave after wave of St. Johnstone attacks". This was a far cry from the ultra negative Davidson days. Sidibeh is raw and a bit all over the place, but is great to watch. And as for that goal, excellent! Robbie Savage even mentioned at the start of the 606 phone in on Sunday night. It's good to have somebody in a Saints shirt who gets you excited whenever he gets the ball. Again, it's been a while. Clark still looks a bit rusty, Kimpioka looked good when he came on. Max did okay but we missed Sprangler. If he had been in his normal place, there's a strong possibility that neither Dundee goal would have happened. As for the negatives, like others, I can't fathom out Levein's substitution policy. So many players were showing signs of tiredness with around 30 minutes to go, surely some fresh legs on the pitch would have made a difference. Callum had this reluctance as well and it's so frustrating. Good modern managers can take advantage of the five players you're now able to bring on. And more and more, it seems to be becoming an important part of the game. Levein seems stuck in the old two subs maximum days. This really needs to change going forward. Yes, we don't have the strongest bench, but Kimpioka and May could have been on earlier and even Crawford could have been brought on with ten minutes to go, to hopefully get one of his trademark equalisers or winners. For what it's worth, I thought at the time, and I still do, that the McGowan "goal" should have stood. I'm agreeing with Sportscene pundits for once, the keeper wasn't in control of the ball. I also thought it was already over the line. That's at least four points Dundee have got from us this season because of V.A.R. That would make the current table much different than it is now. And if you add in the Aberdeen game with the Carey goal! Levein frustrates me but if he keeps us up then it's job done. After that, he can be more accurately judged on his team and performances going forward. Dundee by the way I thought were okay, but not nearly as good as some people think. They remind me of what we used to be like, organised and able to somehow get a result when required. Beck makes them look better than they are, but without him, they're not as good as the hype.

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.

There was plenty of effort from the players, but lacking so many of the basics. Thought Sidebeh was impressive. He was raw, but he was constantly looking to make things happen and scored an outstanding goal. His attitude towards being a St Johnstone player is also highly refreshing. You can see what it means to him, to have this chance in British football. A few others could learn a lesson from him.

I fear for us. Im struggling to see us getting anything from the next two games and think that County have more about them in an attacking sense. Played well for periods in the second half, but you can’t miss chances like we had and then defend so poorly for their winner. Leveins use of subs is just bizarre and has been since his first game. Kirk and Levein stand on the touch line for about 20 minutes discussing things with no action. It was clear that Sidibeh (delighted that he scored and thought he played well at times) was knackered and Kimpioka needed to come on, but they both stood there doing nothing until Sidibeh was pleading to come off. Max is by all accounts a lovely lad, and given his story, we all want him to do well, but it’s clear he is not cut out for this level. Carey should have been on well before he was. Docherty used his subs well, whilst Levein was left wanting. I don’t have any confidence in Leveins ability to turn us around. It’s been a depressing three seasons and I can’t see anything improving soon. Our only hope is that we somehow manage to stay up this season and we get a new owner in who is willing to invest in the squad and make a change of manager. We have so many players who just seem happy to drift through a game and offer absolutely nothing.

Can you imagine any other business where hard work, dedication and competence drives standards up, then the customers just accept the acquiescence to how things used to be? Customers would just walk away. Especially if the price of an inferior product was only rising.

I personally don't understand this way of thinking. I'll admit I'm a younger fan, but why is it a bad thing to have standards? Should we be winning league titles? Absolutely not, but from 2012/13 to 2020/21 we finished no lower than 8th. 3rd 1x, 6th 1x, 4th 3x, 8th 1x, 7th 2x, 5th 1x. Six times in the top 6. I see that as setting mid-table as a standard which is on the players to uphold, why shouldn't the fans have reasonable expectations given the last 10 years of results?

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.

I think that is easy forgotten by those that are clearly not CL fans. We would of been dead and buried by now, had we not changed manager. As it stands, he is doing what he has been brought in to do. Get us out of the bottom two and stay in the top league. The transfer window has also seen us sign an absolute gem, that could well be the difference between us staying up or not. I don't agree with all of the managers decisions, but we are certainly in a better place now and the previous window has been a success to me. Great 3 points today. A draw next weekend as a minimum (on top of a County defeat) and we are in a strong position come the split.

Aye for me the Totten period was the most memorable in terms of exciting football.There was a great passion for the club from both players and fans that seems lacking these days.Maybe I'm just being nostalgic but i definitely felt more connected to the club than now.The heart and soul of Saints is sorely missing at the present time imo. Think TW was one of our best managers and Davidsons success was off the back of that.I certainly echo BHs previous post that CD although ironically managing us through a double cup win then went on to blow our best chances in Europe and systematically ruin the team and waste millions of pounds on poor players.Just a shame TW was never given this money.Just imagine where we would be now.I still feel pissed off about it tbh

Agree with all of this, but for me the thing that really puts Wright top of the bunch isn't just the obvious stand-out achievements, but the fact that he sustained us at a high level for year after year. Our other successful periods have petered out relatively quickly (even Ormond's league positions and cup performances were fairly unspectacular outside that one 3rd place finish and European run), but Wright turned us into a club that was comfortable in the top flight and enjoying at least one good cup run pretty much every year. The other thing I loved about Wright was that every single time it looked like things were taking a dip, he'd haul us out of it. We had some bad patches, but I always had faith in him to turn them around, and he always did. And his ability to continually refresh the squad without ever needing to resort to a massive rebuild was almost Alex Ferguson-esque (except Fergie had millions and Wright had a shoestring). Even when we lost Stevie May and he wasn't allowed to use any of the money to sign a striker to replace him, he just got on with things and somehow managed to finish 4th in the league despite only scoring 34 goals all season. That's just incredible.

It was around this time last year we jettisoned Davidson and found ourselves away at Killie - a match we ultimitley won to confirm our top league status whilst Killie were left scrambling anxiously late on to avoid the play off game. How things have changed; Killie are on the brink of European football and we find ourselves desperatley trying to keep our head above water. In another quirk of fate the corresponding game in Perth earlier in the season we turned over a buoyant Kilmarnock with stand in manager Alex Cleland managing to bring the best out of our beleagured squad exposing the underlying problemes with the squad with the previous incumbent. Kilmarnock are still playing some nice football and will be a tough side to over come but we go in to this game buoyed by our fine win in Edinburgh last weekend. Three points would be massive for our future aspirations in the Premeir league. Killie have great wide players so I think this might come in to the thinking of the manager when choosing the starting line up. Gordon will start if he's fit and I have a feeling Carey might be in the line up too with Sid up front on his own with Clark in behind. I expect Clark to have a big bearing on this game.

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

Apologies. Thats not the kind of club we are. Think i talk for 99% of the supporters here that if any of the older lads seen something like that happen they would have grab the little shit who done that. Hope your son is ok.

Agree we'll probably stick with the winning team or something close to it, but I can't help but feel our midfield could be so much stronger. Gallacher just isn't a winger and Matt Smith has had to shift out to the right in order to let us accommodate Max in the middle. Way too many square pegs in round holes. Personally I feel we'd be much stronger if we stuck with Smith and Phillips in the middle, probably with Carey on the left, and I'd like to see Franczak put on the right as his direct style really benefitted us when he had his spell at RWB.

Judging by Saturday they all lack fitness and that's why they lost the second goal. You can excuse lack of skill but not fitness and workrate which is the minimum a club should be looking at and the fact they don't have those qualities must be down to coaching staff. Too late this season now.

You'd bracket Connolly with McClelland and MacLean, mistakes that were relatively quickly rectified. Clark, Stark and Davidson weren't necessarily dreadful managers but were allowed to carry on for far too long. Things started going downhill for Clark in the autumn of 2000 and by the spring of 2001 they probably should have been assessing things. Geoff Brown had stepped away from Saints at the time though and I think has said he'd have acted sooner than leaving it until the start of the following season. Like with Davidson, the club were too loyal because of past achievements. I think CD probably earned a chance after Kelty (despite the losing run it was part of) but the 7-0 at Celtic Park should have ended him, the players just weren't playing for him by that point. Stark had a knack of getting a result when he needed it which always seemed to keep our promotion hopes alive, when the reality was that we'd never have the fight to win big games if it really mattered. There was never going to be a benefit to sacking him mid-season though so the missed opportunities were at the end of his first two campaigns. It is hard to compare the first three against the latter three but Stark was clearly worse than Clark and Davidson, by miles, so your worst four in McDiarmid-era are: McClelland, Stark, Connolly and MacLean. I'll let others rank them in order of ineptitude.

Was Martindale ever really our first choice of new manager, the fact that only Levein and him were mentioned is a worry as don’t think he’d have been a great fix either. I think every interview he does you can’t take seriously, it’s like he can’t be arsed and in his head I think he thinks he’s amusing. In his very first interview he tried to tell us he was only at the game Cleland took charge of to watch Max and that he nearly left when he realised Max wasn’t playing. Of course he was there because he was invited by Geoff so why make that wee story up. Somewhere in Levein s head he wants us to think at that Tues night game, Geoff Brown looks over and turns to Roddy : “ is that Craig Levein over there ?” Roddy : “ aye I think it is “ Geoff : “ run over and see if he fancies the Manager job, our only other option, Livingston didn’t give us permission to speak to “ Roddy : “ he says he will take it, but only if he can bring some lad called Andy and it will be Andy does all the work, he only wants to mentor Max “

On paper levein made a lot of sense at the time, and it's still one I dont think you criticise the club for no matter how it turns out.

Does anyone actually still have any faith in Levein? I just can't see a single redeeming feature to sway me from the thought that he's been an absolutely calamitous appointment, completely wrong for the club, barely giving a sh*t, and when he eventually goes he'll just give a shrug of the shoulders, have a laugh about it with his mates on the radio, and wander into another media job without a care in the world while we're left in an absolute mess. Couldn't help but notice the contrast in body language between Docherty and Levein on the touchline yesterday. Docherty enthusiastic, encouraging, wanting to be involved in everything. That job is huge to him. Levein, on the other hand: relaxed, casual, hands in pockets while his team falls to yet another defeat. Couldn't even be arsed to bring on a substitute for a player who was literally sitting on the ground during the game. Oh for the days when our club had the nous and the foresight to go for hungry, up-and-coming managers who actually saw the Saints job as a big opportunity and had a point to prove.

Jesus is rising early!

Don't be silly, it would do us no good to go down. We have a realistic chance to punt 15 or more players at the end of this season without relegation. The soon to be new owners have seemingly said Premiership status is a must for any sale to go through. Do folk seriously think relegation is a good thing?

I hardly think we won comfortably, given for 135 minutes of the play offs we were still level. The difference then to now is that you had Rooney, Hendry and other senior players digging in and coming up with the goods and essentially dragging us to safety. We don't have that quality or drive from this squads of shitebag players and we cant score goals so any of the lower league teams will see us as a huge chance to beat.

100% this. McInnes has always been a manager who does his homework and puts a lot of thought into everything. That's why his teams tend to do very well. Kilmarnock aren't anything special on paper, but they have a very good manager who recruits well and is thorough in his preparation and gets the very best out of his players. We, on the other hand, don't. If only we'd gone for McInnes when he was still available, that would probably be us in fourth place right now.

00/01 was my favourite.

Wow....County showing what you can achieve when you don't just play for a point.

I think we're in the same situation as we've been for years, in that the manager thinks we need to play a back 5, a midfield 4, and a front 2, as he doesn't trust the team to defend without 3 CBs or 4 midfielders. Lately we've tried Gallacher at LM as he can cover as a LWB if/when we defend and that makes your back 5, and Clark drops into midfield to make the midfield 4. So defensively its 5-4-1 with the diamond midfield shape McInnes talked about. That leaves us exposed out wide, but our midfield is so soft it doesn't stop teams there either. In attack its meant to become a 4-4-2 with Gallacher and Clark pushing up, and either Smith or Kucheriavyi going right. But that falls apart as we just hoof it and lose it so nobody can get into the shape, and then if we do keep the ball everything moves so slowly that teams are back into shape before we are and with nobody capable of beating a man it's easy to defend against. It would be less of an issue shape wise if anything other than a hoof to Sidibeh was done quickly, but Levein won't encourage that play as it's risky and would mean we lose the ball without having a shape, which leads to us being open as all over the park we have players who can't track runners. So we're constantly fluxing between 2 different shapes, while players are told to prioritise safety against counters, which leads to random spurts of some gambling and others not which leads to a shambles as we play neither shape most of the time. He's not going to encourage more risks in the position we're in, until it gets too much pressure wise like before Aberdeen, so we just have to hope it works out. His previous career suggests that's just who he is too, the United squad he built is a long way ago and it's like experience has made him more cautious.

Two very cheap goals. The worst moment for me in the first half (there were several incidents to be fair) was when Robinson and Gallacher doubled up on Armstrong and the Killie winger was easily able to swing in a perfect cross. The lack of intensity in getting in the faces of the opposition was really sad. It seems a culture of defeatism across the team, something which was evident in the teams since 2021. Not good enough all over the pitch. Sad, really sad. It's been rotten football for far too long.

There is no one in that squad that are not signed that I would want to see next season. I would also hope that emotionless mumbling Levein is gone as well. I don't want to see anti football again next season.

We have our fair share of arseholes unfortunately. They are shitebags who don't like a fair fight.

Is it just me, or has nicky clark been somewhat invisible last couple of games

I can confirm that all of the above is putting 2 and 2 together and getting 5. Not remotely true.

Win a game he’s a hero. Lose a couple of games people want him sacked. Just the way it is these days.

We won away and we scored two goals. Gordon was not playing. Just saying...

He definitely was crap though.

I wanted to be positive about Levein and give him a chance but for me it just never sat well and he's turned out to be completely the wrong fit for the club. I don't really buy into it making a lot of sense at the time. Bringing him back to this level was a big gamble. He made a big mess of his last stint at Hearts, it's a very long time since he was a success at our level and bringing Kirk with him meant putting a Highland League manager in charge of a Premiership club's training. I still think back to those opening interviews he gave, where he didn't mention Saints at all, expressed no excitement for the job or opportunity, and just said he came because Geoff asked him and he likes the people here. He just seemed way too relaxed about the whole thing, and he still does. Is he hungry for this job and does he understand the ambitions of St Johnstone? There would have been younger, hungrier, more ambitious managers absolutely desperate for the chance to come to this club. I wonder how many of those guys Geoff Brown even spoke to? Compare Levein to everything we know about Derek McInnes - the attitude, the work he puts in, the strategy he has. That's someone running a club that should be one of our close competitors in this league, and I just don't think Levein comes even close to matching him. That's why clubs like Killie (and Dundee) have overtaken us when they never should have. All of this has just been so annoyingly avoidable.

They have only fully sold out one section behind the goal. Still tickets available at both side of the goal and in the main stand. Thought they would have sold much more by now. Good to read that Saints have given away 1,500 tickets to schools and community groups for tomorrow

The "you're clearly a young fan who's spoiled by success" line is the shite we got from older fans who happily seal clapped while Callum Davidson and Ian Flaherty drove us into the ground losing almost £2m over a year. I can't see that type of comment now without assuming the next comment is along the lines of claiming anyone under 20 isn't a real fan because they've never experienced the 3rd tier or lower.

Knowing what Saints are like when it comes to selling players, probably a very small one. That's why I'd rather we just held onto him for another year. I think another full season of having a goalkeeper as good as that is worth a lot more to us than the £200,000 or whatever it would be we'd end up selling him for. I wonder if there's a chance Celtic might show an interest in him.

No chance for Sprangler I reckon. We really do need to try and win this though. Make a statement, Levein FFS.

What do you think Saints should have done? The article says we made previous attempts to keep him. It's highly likely his agent would have been advising him to wait and see what other offers come along. And really, why would he want to commit his future to Saints when we could easily be playing in the Championship next season? Even if we stay up, playing for Saints doesn't exactly look like it's a lot of fun these days. This time next year it'll be Mitov we'll be facing up to losing, unless there's a plan to cash in on him this summer.