Jamie_Beatson

I would be fascinated to see how much it has cost Motherwell to have Van Veen on their books for a couple of seasons, in comparison to the cumulative costs of us having Mahon, Crawford, Vertainen and Bair on ours.
There's a perception of Saints as being unwilling to spend money, but actually what we've done is pissed a huge amount of it down the drain while other clubs around us have spent their money far more wisely.
Some of the decisions that have left us in the position we're now in are absolutely criminal.

Is anyone even surprised by what happened today? We're absolutely rotten, our manager is useless, and the entire club has been stuck in snooze mode ever since we won the Double. 

Yeah, the idea that Wotherspoon in some way has played himself out the team just doesn't sit with me. He did well before the break and looked like the player of old up at Dingwall.
It can't just be that Livingston game but then this is Callum Davidson we are talking about...

Because we were crap in the 80s so it means everything that happens 40 years later can never be questioned? 

A 26-year-old defender who can't get a game in an absolute clown car defence that is rooted to the bottom of the league?
 
Hold me back.

A 26-year-old defender who can't get a game in an absolute clown car defence that is rooted to the bottom of the league?
 
Hold me back.

Yep. If anything the current process is more inclusive because it allows people who don't live locally, or don't drive, or have mobility issues, to easily and quickly buy tickets. 
I remember pre-internet when the ticket process basically involved turning up at McDiarmid Park at a specific time and queuing for hours. Not sure that was particularly inclusive, or convenient for elderly people.
I'm not even sure what alternative process is being suggested, other than "give priority to season ticket holders", which wouldn't have changed anything.

I said when Tommy left that I felt the club would end up regretting not doing more to keep its best ever manager happy, and I believe that as much now as I did then.
I generally enjoyed watching us under Tommy. The football was often better than I think a lot of people give credit for, and his team always had a certain fighting spirit and togetherness that I found enticing as a fan. I think a lot of that came from the longevity and continuity that ran through the squad (elements that have vanished under Davidson, thanks to his numerous signings of loan players and over-30s).
Under Tommy it felt like there was always a plan to push on and do better. And when that didn't work, and we went through bad spells, he always brought us out the other side looking stronger. He did that every single time. I get the impression that with Steve Brown's heart not being in it any more, Tommy had ended up being the guy who was single-handedly pushing us to keep going and stay ambitious (which was probably exhausting). He was the only guy left at the top who really cared. All ambition has drained from the club since he left, and it shows every time the team walks out onto the pitch.
 

This seems a bizarre argument all round to me. To generalise it and say older people are going to struggle to buy a ticket full stop is obviously wrong. Plenty of older people are perfectly capable of using technology to buy tickets if they so wish.
If they don’t - and it is totally understandable that many can’t or won’t for a variety of reasons - there is a ticket office and a phone number published for the ticket office. There was a two week window of opportunity to buy tickets for this particular match before they sold out. What more exactly do people want the club to do to make sure people - and it must be a small number of people in this age. - who can’t or don’t want to buy tickets online, and who apparently can’t phone the club or go in person - do to help a supporter get a ticket? We can’t have pay at the gate for a game where we’re only allocated 700 seats. Would it be better if fan who doesn’t use technology and can’t make it to the ticket office or phone them turned up at Tynecastle and was told tough luck, sold out?  That’s surely the worse option.
Going back to a system of only selling tickets at the ticket office for away games is far more exclusive than offering multiple buying options and would be ridiculous.

This seems a bizarre argument all round to me. To generalise it and say older people are going to struggle to buy a ticket full stop is obviously wrong. Plenty of older people are perfectly capable of using technology to buy tickets if they so wish.
If they don’t - and it is totally understandable that many can’t or won’t for a variety of reasons - there is a ticket office and a phone number published for the ticket office. There was a two week window of opportunity to buy tickets for this particular match before they sold out. What more exactly do people want the club to do to make sure people - and it must be a small number of people in this age. - who can’t or don’t want to buy tickets online, and who apparently can’t phone the club or go in person - do to help a supporter get a ticket? We can’t have pay at the gate for a game where we’re only allocated 700 seats. Would it be better if fan who doesn’t use technology and can’t make it to the ticket office or phone them turned up at Tynecastle and was told tough luck, sold out?  That’s surely the worse option.
Going back to a system of only selling tickets at the ticket office for away games is far more exclusive than offering multiple buying options and would be ridiculous.

Completely agree. Bobbing about in 8th or 9th place and looking over our shoulders at the relegation zone is basically as good as it's going to get for us as long as we have Davidson in charge. He just doesn't have the knowhow, the ideas, the attitude or the long-term planning to ever get us doing consistently better than that.

This sentence completely sums up the situation for me. Depressing.

It wasn't the worst performance we've produced this season but we hadn't tested Clark before conceding a cheap goal and were beaten as soon as the second goal went in. 
There are decent players here but they are hamstrung by a negative, inflexible manager who is well over his use by date.
You look at the bounce a Motherwell team who looked atrocious against us have had with a change and can only wonder what a more flexible and less negative manager could achieve with what is a reasonable squad.
A back three of Mitchell, Gordon and Brown on the left being asked to play out is so illogical it's hard to believe any manager would try and implement it, but here we are.
Fortnight before our next game. Perfect time for a change.

Please feel free to donate if you have a few pound you can spare, thanks in advance. 
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/phil-heller-is-going-bald?utm_term=vYBVR2veQ

MacPherson, and May to a degree, were fairly rotten last season. Even in 20/21 May was struggling and its only this season hes started looking like being a semi-regular goalscorer again.
You can simultaneously say that we shouldnt have signed MacPherson (for a fee) 12 months ago based on his loan spell, and say hes turning into a good signing, and not be wrong.
Opinions are allowed to change, and opinions of football fans are allowed to be emotional. 

Completely agree with this. That comment on the radio about "always looking down" really stood out to me as summing up why Davidson's attitude is always going to hold us back and is never going to change.
Under Tommy Wright we'd have considered 8th place to be a poor season. Now I'm seeing people almost celebrating it and talking about how our league position is somehow proving the manager's doubters wrong. It's incredible how quickly people's standards and ambitions have slipped, and all because we were so rotten last season when we never should have been.
Incidentally, I don't think we're safe yet. Another run of crap results, with other results going against us, could quickly see us teetering above 11th.

His opinion was a garbled mess. Describing Clark's tackle as "dangerous" and thus a red while Jack's was only "reckless" and a yellow is just wild.

If you look under the Supporters Clubs section of this site you'll see we used to have quite a lot of different supporters clubs, but I don't know how many of them are actually still active. The club seems to consider the FCU a supporters club these days. There used to be the 208 and Dunkeld Road clubs who ran buses to away games. I've no idea if either of those two clubs actually still exist in any form.
What Saints fans could actually benefit from is a Supporters Trust, which is a bit different. It would be a proper body who would raise funds with the aim of getting an actual seat on the board for a supporters representative. If the worst came to the worst with the ownership situation it would also give the supporters a route into fan ownership. A lot of clubs have these but Saints fans have never really been motivated to do it as our ownership's been so stable for such a long time.
I'm a member of a Supporters Trust for a non-league club in England. I pay an annual membership fee and in return I get to vote on the Trust's position on major issues, which is then represented at board level (it also gives me benefits like priority for tickets for bigger games). The plan is for the whole football club's ownership to eventually be handed over to the Trust. The Trust also plays a part in raising funds for the club, selling merchandise, etc.
There's an interesting blog here by Alastair Blair about the Saints ownership situation and whether fan/community ownership might be an option.
Info on supporters trusts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supporters'_trust
https://thefsa.org.uk/fan-resources/resource-training/supporters-trusts-training-resource/setting-up-a-new-supporters-trust/

Cammy Kerr is absolutely humpty and the fact he has some absolutely colossal number of appearances for Dundee says it all about how they have been run for the past decade. A weak link in a Premiership defence and only passable at Championship level.

Cammy Kerr is absolutely humpty and the fact he has some absolutely colossal number of appearances for Dundee says it all about how they have been run for the past decade. A weak link in a Premiership defence and only passable at Championship level.

I can’t see a logout button on iOS either! Will investigate.

Back up and running after an outage this afternoon. The upgrade to new software is complete and everything should be a) much more secure and b) faster now, with far fewer errors. There was a really irritating one that meant the site wasn't loading at all for non members which should now be sorted.
Any bugs you spot please do reply here and I'll sort them out.

Back up and running after an outage this afternoon. The upgrade to new software is complete and everything should be a) much more secure and b) faster now, with far fewer errors. There was a really irritating one that meant the site wasn't loading at all for non members which should now be sorted.
Any bugs you spot please do reply here and I'll sort them out.

The more I've thought about this as a marketing exercise the more irritating it gets for me. I spoke to Matt Gallagher at the PA the other day and kind of mentioned it to him, but this was really an opportunity to try something different and put the current disastrous league form to the side for one weekend and try to rally the fans.
My profession til a few years ago was in media and PR - it really wouldn't have taken a great deal of imagination to do something along the lines of:
- Emphasise the fact that Saints have won more trophies than Rangers over the past decade. Some tongue in cheek stuff (but absolutely factual) about the fact that Rangers are trying to chase our record down.
- Market it as "We Want More" - we've won three cups in the last nine years, and we want another. Again - a bit tongue in cheek - but really hit the fact that we've done it before and we want to do it again, this time in person.
- Again, hit the fact that we missed out last time because it was all behind closed doors. "Don't miss it this time" or something along those lines.
- Pitch it as a one-off game - forget the league form, forget everything else, this matters more for one weekend.
- Just flood social media with constant videos of James Brown/Nicky Clark's goals earlier this season against Rangers along with Zander's header on to Chris Kane at Ibrox during the 2021 cup run, along with the shoot out. And obviously the cup final goals/trophy lifts. Get the excitement going - we've done it before, we'll do it again.
- Combine all of the above - if at all possible - with cutting Rangers back to <3000 tickets in the North/Main stands and ticket prices at £20 adults, £15 students/OAPS, £10 12-18 and £5 for U-12s. I'd like to think that having half the number of Rangers fans would see a drop in the costs in terms of policing etc, but that's really not something that's public knowledge.
We might not sell out, but we'd surely at least get a home crowd that outnumbers the Rangers support on the day. 4000 home fans and 2800 away at least? Back ourselves, give ourselves a chance, try *something* instead of... this...

Back up and running after an outage this afternoon. The upgrade to new software is complete and everything should be a) much more secure and b) faster now, with far fewer errors. There was a really irritating one that meant the site wasn't loading at all for non members which should now be sorted.
Any bugs you spot please do reply here and I'll sort them out.