blueheaven

I don't think anyone's denying that with some better coaching he could have done better here than he did (he's far from alone in that). But I think it's a bit of a stretch to try to suggest he was doing anything of much note before we signed him. Before he came to Saints he'd been playing in the Norwegian lower leagues where he scored 4 goals in 18 games and only managed a full 90 minutes once. Prior to that he was mainly being used as a sub for Vancouver in the MLS and had scored 3 goals in 39 appearances. The last few months have been the first period of his career in which he could be considered prolific.

It was reported as $135,000 (in Canadian dollars, I'm assuming), plus add-ons. That converts to about £80,000.

Apparently he scored quite a few goals in closed doors games. Wonder if one of those was against Motherwell and that was when he caught their eye? Still, it would be an amazing show of faith to give him a two-year deal off the back of that. I think that point about Tommy Wright getting nothing is what makes all of this doubly infuriating. Just imagine what he might have done in the summer of 2014 if he'd been allowed to follow up on our cup success and prepare for Europe by spending the sort of money we eventually went on to spend on Bair, Mahon, Crawford etc. Also for all we talk about clubs like Kilmarnock outspending us and being able to bring in someone like Van Veen, they're seeing their spending pay off with their league position, while we settle in for a third successive relegation battle.

I totally agree, but it all feeds into the same point. We signed a lot of players who weren't good enough, and as a result those players ended up being quickly frozen out whilst tied to expensive contracts. Other players started out well but very quickly went backwards. Just a huge waste of the club's money.

If we're talking about players who were signed and went backwards, or were quickly cast aside after signing, or were already here and went quickly downhill, I think you can just about take your pick from any of the departures of the last couple of seasons. Luke Jephcott, Eetu Vertainen, John Mahon, Charlie Gilmour, Michael O'Halloran, David Wotherspoon, Callum Hendry, Jacob Butterfield, Ali Crawford, Jahmal Hector-Ingram, Nadir Ciftci, Alex Mitchell, Guy Melamed ... probably others I've forgotten about. Huge sums of money wasted, terrible recruitment strategy, awful coaching.

Personally I felt he looked miles out of his depth at Saints, in fact more so than any other player I've ever seen. He just didn't look like he knew what to do or where to go. He seemed to need constant instruction from other players around him, to the extent that it distracted the rest of the team and felt like going down to 10 men when he came off the bench. When he did come on he often barely even got a touch of the ball. He didn't even seem able to use his size to his advantage as he was so poor in the air and was easily nudged off the ball. It still amazes me that Motherwell gave him a two-year contract. There's no way they did that on the basis of watching how he played for Saints. Hats off to him - he's clearly worked incredibly hard and he's found himself at a team that plays in a way that suits him. No doubt better coaching has had a huge amount to do with it. The coaching at Saints has clearly been awful over the last few years and we saw many players' performance levels go quickly backwards after arriving here (remember when we used to be a club that actually made players better instead of worse?). But I don't believe for a second that he's suddenly become an incredible player. My feeling is he's a very limited player who is going through a spell of fantastic form and is high on confidence, and well done to him for that, but I'll be very surprised if it lasts and he becomes someone who is a prolific goalscorer in multiple seasons. I think it'll be really interesting to see what he does next.

Saints 1 Sevco 0 Goal: Carey Booking: Considine

I agree now, but only because we chose to make a more experienced right-back surplus to requirements and loan him out. Personally I think it would have been a better long-term plan to hold onto Brown until the end of the season as back-up, and let Olufunwa go out on loan to get experience.

I think if McClelland gets a decent amount of game time at United then the move will have been beneficial for him. I still think we probably should have done the same with Olufunwa. Max too, in fact. I think all three of them would benefit from playing regularly in the Championship and then coming back here in the summer. I'm not convinced Kerr Smith is going to start all that many games for us, but we'll see.

So we gave Kane a new contract in December why? Just laughably bad decision-making.

Obviously impossible to predict what Levein's going to do but my guess would be that we revert to our more usual back three, Max and C. Smith come back in, Kimpioka plays on his own up front and Sprangler sits wasting his time on the bench as usual. So something like: _______________________Mitov ___________McGowan Gordon Considine Keltjens ________M. Smith Max ________Robinson ______________C. Smith _______Carey ____________________Kimpioka (Unless Phillips is fit, in which case he'll probably be in there somewhere.)

I've somehow managed to find someone who wants a ticket, but of course the big issue is that your bring-a-friend can't sit with you if you don't have an unreserved seat next to you. So if you only have one season ticket to use, you're basically asking someone to come along and sit on their own. Not sure it will work in the way it's been done, but hope it bumps up the crowd at least a little. I still think the club would have been better off using this type of initiative for a more appealing fixture with a better atmosphere (e.g. at home to Dundee or Hearts). I think that way people would have been more likely to have a memorable/enjoyable experience at the game and want to come back.

We knew what we were in for each week with Davidson and MacLean, yet it seems he carried on going. After years of sticking by us while we've been terrible, it seems odd to me to decide to stop going when we appoint a new manager.

Why?

P.S. As much as I agree with all the criticism of VAR, what was Liam Gordon thinking putting his hand all over the Dundee player's face like that? He should know better than anyone in the team that his every move is going to be reviewed and scrutinised in these situations. Very soft penalty and ridiculous circumstances, but let's not hide from the fact that it was also completely avoidable. On the up side, I thought Sidibeh looked really good. Fast, hard-working, good in the air, good technique, hard shot. Would like him to get a run in the team to see what he can do once he's settled in a bit.

Levein laying into the players at full-time whilst completely blind to the fact that he himself has had an absolute shocker. At 1-0 up I thought we looked pretty comfortable and there's no reason at all why we couldn't have gone on to get three points and be sitting 6th in the table right now. What a huge boost that would have been, and a brilliant platform for the rest of our season. Instead Levein starts tinkering in an attempt to defend our lead, completely unsettles the team and it backfires gigantically. The introductions of Max and Connor Smith with over half an hour still to play weakened us massively and we just crumbled after that. How does a guy with over 25 years of football management experience get that so wrong? Such fine margins between success and failure in the league right now and it's infuriating to see us again fail to take advantage of the opportunity to actually turn this into a good season. Since Levein arrived we've surrendered 12 points from winning positions, and from what I've seen this is entirely down to his game management decisions. Those 12 points would have us joint fourth. Instead, we continue to teeter above the bottom two and look very lucky that Livi and Ross County are having such bad seasons. If County make a decent appointment to replace Adams and pick up a few good results, we're suddenly going to look like we're in a lot of trouble again. Just not good enough.

I think in a way that's what makes it frustrating. If they'd looked streets ahead of us on the pitch on Wednesday night, and we'd kept it to 1-0, I think people would have been grudgingly content that we'd got an OK result against a far better team. But to me it looked like if we could just have been that little bit braver and more positive, we might have been able to get something more from that game. Hearts didn't look like anything special and we showed towards the end of the game that we had it in our armoury to cause them problems.

I don't think even Levein thinks Gallacher should be in the team. But he clearly does think Max should be in there every week and Sprangler shouldn't, which is a lot more worrying. But perhaps nothing is as worrying as Andy Considine saying that the team "played some of their best football" against Hearts and carried out the manager's style of football "to a tee in the first half".

I don't really get not filling the bench. Don't we even have any youngsters who would find it valuable to get that experience of being part of the first team squad, even if they don't get to come on?

Personally I think we should have tried to send Olufunwa out on loan in the second half of this season to get him some much-needed game time and experience. I think there might be a player there but he seems incredibly raw and needs a lot of instruction. We'd have been better off with James Brown in Olufunwa's role last night. I know Brown's been told he can go but we're still paying him so why not use him if he's still needed until we're able to further strengthen in the summer? Last night we didn't even use up our full allocation of allowed players on the bench, but we had five strikers on there and only one defender. I'd have thought that at the very least, a versatile right-sided defender like Brown would make sense to have as an option on the bench in case of injury.

We're just incredibly frustrating to watch. I think we have the potential to be a decent team but we show our opponents so much respect and fear that it's damaging our chances of getting anything out of games. I get that Hearts are third in the league but they're not exactly world-beaters and I think we all saw last night that with a bit more ambition we could have taken something from them, just as we have many times in the past. Yet again we didn't really try to have a go until the last 15-20 minutes and when we did we were actually pretty good at it. We created chances, we got the ball into their box and we forced the Hearts defence into making mistakes. But surely we need to be ambitious enough to try that earlier in the game? I get that defence is going to be a priority under Levein but there still needs to be some sort of plan to actually win games. When Hearts had the ball they played it in our half, and when they didn't they pressed us so we couldn't get forward. When we had the ball we kept it around our own half, and when we didn't have it we barely pressed them at all. Whatever happened to the high pressing game we used in the second half of our Double-winning season to such great effect? Why are we not capable of doing that any more? Is it a fitness issue? What I did like last night was seeing Carey getting onto his teammates several times for continually passing the ball backwards and not being positive enough. He was being used in a very weird position, but he was at least trying to move the team forward and get us onto the front foot. Sprangler made a difference when he came on and needs to be starting. I thought Kimpioka had a pretty good game with a difficult task, and Clark and Sidibeh both looked lively when they came on too. We're so, so weak in wide areas though, and at the moment I'm not seeing much from Max or Connor Smith to suggest they should be starting games. Frankly, if Cammy MacPherson was fit I'd be playing him ahead of either of them. The sooner we get Phillips and Matt Smith back, the better. What I find kind of hilarious after the last two or three years is that there were actually people on here who used to complain about Tommy Wright's football being negative or bad to watch. What I wouldn't give right now to go back to the intelligent, adaptable and effective football Wright had us playing. He was just miles ahead of any of the managers we've had since.

Yep to this, especially with Phillips being out which leaves us with very little in the way of a ball-winner/tackler in midfield.

Updated the squad list posted earlier. Nearly all of our defenders are heading out of contract so some big decisions to be made at the back. Goalkeepers Dave Richards - 2024 - on loan from Crewe Alexandria Jack Wills - 2024 Dimitar Mitov - 2025 Ross Sinclair - 2026 Defenders/wing backs James Brown - 2024 - free to leave Ryan McGowan - 2024 Liam Gordon - 2024 Kerr Smith - 2024 - on loan from Aston Villa Andy Considine - 2024 Liam Parker - 2024 - on loan at Edinburgh City Callum Booth - 2024 - on loan at Spartans Luke Robinson - 2024 - on loan from Wigan Tony Gallacher - 2024 Olusadare Olufunwa - 2025 David Keltjens - 2025 Sam McClelland - 2025 - on loan at Dundee United Midfielders/wingers Drey Wright - 2024 Cammy McPherson - 2024 Daniel Phillips - 2024 Ali Crawford - 2024 Graham Carey - 2024 Cammy Ballantyne - 2024 - on loan at Clyde Sven Sprangler - 2025 Connor Smith - 2025 Max Kucheriavyi - 2025 Matt Smith - 2025 Alex Ferguson - 2025 - on loan at Queen of the South Attackers Diallang Jaiyesimi - 2024 - on loan from Charlton Atheltic Chris Kane - 2024 Taylor Steven - 2024 - on loan at Alloa Athletic Stevie May - 2025 Nicky Clark - 2025 Benjamin Kimpioka - 2025 Adama Sidibeh - 2026

So possibly the same starting line-up as Saturday then? Has Levein picked the same starting XI for consecutive games yet?

Thats a helluva drop for Ballantyne, going from the Premiership to the bottom of League Two in one move. Just shows how hard it can be to get a move and narrow the margins can be between playing in the top league or the bottom one. Wonder if he'll end up back at Montrose once his contract here is up and he's a free agent.