andrew

42 minutes ago, Cksaint said:

Great that saints are doing a deal for the the last 2 games but what about the season ticket holders 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

They got to bring a friend to the Livi game 😂 

4 minutes ago, Steve McQueen said:

I'm surprised how quickly fans turned on Levein given Davidson got months & months of leeway.

 

It hasn't been great but we were 100%getting relegated when he took over

Davidson got no leeway from me. I wanted him out after Kelty.

2 hours ago, blueheaven said:

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.

And St Mirren and Motherwell. Four clubs we were consistently outperforming. We know where it started to go wrong - SB gave up, leaving Flaherty and Davidson to wreak havoc and destroy our hard earned status, our squad and potentially our legacy. I can’t help but wonder if Geoff could have intervened and limited those two incompetent and wasteful chancers given that his son didn’t. Stan may be reducing costs and wages since he returned, but the damage was done by then. How many more years of poor, negative, defensive football do we have to suffer? New owners bring uncertainty rather than anticipation. They’re going to have to prove themselves and earn our support.

1 minute ago, blueheaven said:

Totally agree (and would add, why is it a bad thing to be a younger fan?).

It feels very unique to Saints that there's a section of the support who seem to constantly want to argue against any attempt to show ambition, and seem to be of the view that if things aren't as bad as they were in the 80s, then by default it means everything's fine and we should change nothing. Any suggestion that we could and should be doing better is met with "be careful what you wish for" or implying that we're a small club so should know our place.

It goes hand in hand with the bizarre view that there are certain clubs (weirdly including Hibs) who we couldn't possibly hope to compete with, and who are more or less guaranteed to be in the top 6, so it's unrealistic to expect Saints to target being at that level. This is despite the fact that we've regularly finished above many of those clubs for years now, and even this season we've seen Killie, St Mirren and Dundee occupy top 6 places at the expense of some of those clubs for most of the season.

I’m in my 60’s and recall our slump in the 80’s very well. That has nothing to do with the fact we worked hard to establish ourselves with top 6, Europe and trophies. Different eras in the club’s history. One doesn’t have to affect the other. What angers me is that Brown, Flaherty and Davidson almost destroyed our hard won elevated status, and failed to build on TW’s good work, allowing the likes of Killie and St Mirren to overtake us in a short period of time.

4 hours ago, blueheaven said:

Wasn't the Freedom of Perth award for winning the Double? I just had a quick Google and couldn't find any mention of it in reference to the 2014 win. 

The mural that appeared in town last year honouring local athletes was brilliant and something like that to honour our cup win would have been a great move. The council commissioned this. Why didn't they commission anything for Saints?

 

 

 

I remember they planted trees in the 70’s along the front of Bell’s to honour local sports people. My dad had one for boxing.

6 hours ago, chips said:

Still baffles me what this presentation actually means to the ones receiving it, when I was a bairn I thought it meant you got on the buses for nothing, free chips from Watsons or even 20 smokes from RS Mcolls  etc 🤣 

Aye, like useful things 😂 

1 minute ago, Stumpy1949 said:

You get a lot more right than wrong. The fact that people know the ones you get wrong just proves that they are as interested as me. Keep up the good work. 

I agree with stumpy

5 minutes ago, Bruno Strasser said:

A bit surprised that no comment has come from either club given that people were injured.

If there is to be any criminal investigation, then I wouldn’t be saying anything if I were the club. Regardless of anyone’s opinion, I guess the legal process will decide if the tweet, the bottle launcher or both are responsible, and to what degree. We shall see.

2 hours ago, _daviiie_ said:

Thank you for the explanation! 😊
I was told on Reddit that this is why the ticketing scheme exists, but I had no idea that it was even deeper than that.

We already had the idea of buying tickets for the Rangers away section, but this was quickly discarded. As foreigners, we certainly wouldn't be sitting in the Glasgow Rangers ultras sector. A few of us don't speak English well at all and none of us understand the Scottish accent. There's no way I'm going to sit there with drunken Ultras, half of whom are probably criminals and who force us to sing along all the time, etc., when all we want to do is watch the football match in peace.

Do you know what concerns me the most? None of us are real fans of either club. We just want to watch the game because it's the only Sunday game and we can watch two games. We would have taken any game. We would have preferred the Hearts game on Sunday, which would have been in Edinburgh - where we have our accommodation. But well, the Scottish Football Association didn't want to bring us any luck. 

We're definitely not Rangers fans and we're definitely not Scottish. 😉 You can put that aside for now. I very much hope that the SLO responds...

🤔 daviiie, is your nose blue?

1 hour ago, Cleveland-Saint said:

Thats a good catch. If home building companies are getting into fiscal trouble, could that mean if this drags on the Browns may become open to less gilt chip offers to get out?

I realize there may be activity going on behind the scenes, promoting the sale, but I wonder if the message is getting to everyone who could have interest? Maybe we need to be more public with the PR around the sale.

Its not like we have a stellar record on marketing and promoting the club.

 

Maybe we could’ve beaten Motherwell to making a video…

3 hours ago, RandomGuy said:

Are they?

They got a win against Hearts in August, who were in poor form due to Europe, and and in the 4 months since then have beaten Livi twice, St Mirren, and Ross County.

Since Levein became manager we've picked up more points than them too

 But the media. St Mirren, Kilmarnock and now Dundee are great and they love them. They had us relegated in September.

1 hour ago, pezza70 said:

Sprangler is also baffling, he was one of our best under CD but doesn’t seem to be a first choice selection under the new regime.

He gives our midfield plenty of bite along with Phillips and I think potentially they could be a combo like Kane/Dasovic for us.

Sprangler was here under CD?

Agreed. He has a great attitude. I never liked how CD and then Macca ostracised certain players the way they seemed to. Shameful behaviour. It is to Ryan’s credit that he said nothing and got on with it, then took his chance when it came.

3 hours ago, Cagey said:

There was a lot of money wasted and Geoff says there will have to be cut backs to get where he wants to be.

I’m surprised that Geoff didn’t take Steve’s potentially legacy destroying reckless behaviour in hand when he was throwing money at Davidson to waste (regardless of Flaherty’s part in it or anyone else he appointed). Great management for decades then almost throw it all away, along with our hard won status in the top flight and as a regular top six side with trophies and European qualifications.

4 minutes ago, SaintJet said:

I detect a serious lack of interest in this game among Saints fans.

Can't see us getting anything - wish list - no injuries, keep the loss down to a goal and hope no damage to the stadium. Move on.

Agreed. Almost a “do we have to” feel about playing OF now.

16 hours ago, Smarmy Arab said:

Hi Andrew hope you're well.  
 

I was speaking to a coach who worked with Spoony as a kid, he made exactly that point, it was no surprise to him that Spoony had a gala season without the fans, he is a shy lad who worked hard at his game.  I though Kane was an underrated element to the double winners, he defended like a lion, from the front, and was cute as you like, he bought free kicks all over the place at crucial time in all the important games. 

I’m well, apart from needing a transplant.

Yesterday, our subs were warming up in front of us, near the corner flag. As play continued, and (individual) shouts of dissatisfaction grew ever louder, I could see the look on Costelloe’s face, in particular. Some of these guys must wonder what they’ve let themselves in for.

4 hours ago, blueheaven said:

Then again, if fans had been allowed at those games, perhaps we wouldn't have won the trophies anyway. It did seem like a bit of a leveller that worked more in our favour than it did for some of the bigger clubs. But really who knows.

I agree. Kane and Spoony were two who got stick and their heads went down. None of that with no crowd.

8 hours ago, Widge said:

Aye the only way we get more saints fans at these games is by banning an away support entirely. That’s simply not possible nor is it financially viable, so there’s really nothing saints can actually do to improve the home crowds. As others have mentioned they’ve tried in the past, they can’t lower the price for home fans only and they can’t stop the away fans from being idiots. It really is a lose/lose situation every time as no matter what saints come off looking the bad guys. 

St Mirren and, to a lesser extent, possibly Kilmarnock. Fans of Paisley Saints are particularly happy with how their club have handled it the last year or so. Before anyone highlights their losses, the new arrangement came in first game after the period to which those accounts relate.

1 hour ago, blueheaven said:

The double was obviously a fantastic achievement but sadly I think what we saw in the two years that followed were a far more accurate reflection of Davidson as a manager.

 

Which is why it’s galling having to listen to/read comments from his pals in the media about how hard it must have been for him knowing he was one game from being fired. I’d have fired him after Kelty - I could see what was coming and it was horrible to watch it unfold the way it did.

26 minutes ago, Saintdunc said:

John Connolly was shocking as our Manager but he is still a legend. 

I hope we don't forget that Davidson's time at Saints was not all bad. He just stayed too long when things became, so obviously, bad. 

About 15 months too long, I’d say. Makes me cringe hearing the usual sycophants backing their pal on the radio. They felt sorry for him. Sorry he had wasted the biggest budget, built a bloated and aging squad, couldn’t see past his formation, treated players badly, was heading for the drop and all with very little entertainment.

A good player, a double winning manager and a good coach.

Player of the Year: Matt Smith

Young Player: McClelland

Final League Position: 8th

Top Goalscorer: Luke Jephcott

10 minutes ago, Stumpy1949 said:

To be fair being the forwards coach doesn’t mean a thing if the manager sets the team up to play with only one attacking player. 

And that one player is no good as a lone striker 

16 hours ago, dunblanemike said:

I think a clue is in the name of the stadium. It is on the flat land next to the Forth so imagine the water table is not far beneath the pitch.

It’s also exposed, sitting under all those hills where inclement weather comes in from.

54 minutes ago, garydavidson said:

90% of the time I drive near Stirling in the autumn and winter it is raining 

Were those home games? They had an away game in Dumbarton called off four or five times.

Home games, aye. It can’t be raining over Forthbank more than anywhere else LAUGH OUT LOUD but there does seem to be a lot of postponements compared to others.

21 hours ago, Cagey said:

Just checked the Stirling site . I think we should poach their groundsman. Says rain is biggest problem. If the pitch gets wet in October it is wet til spring to paraphrase him.

Our groundsman waters the pitch relentlessly through the winter.

I live in Stirling and I’ve noticed that Albion have had more matches postponed when other games are going ahead nearby, such as Falkirk, Alloa, etc. Is that the groundsman, the environment or the weather?