Have we underachieved this season?


Shaggy Jenkins
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Have we underachieved this season? Is this still a work in progress? Or about right?

Its beginning to look very much like increased budget but we have at best remained stagnant, at worse regressed.

For what its worth looking historically for St Johnstone 7-9 is probably about right...however and its a big however, not with this squad.

On paper (I know, I know) I believe man for man our best 11 is on a par with killie. So we should of been looking at 6th-4th.

I know we did have a great run but even through that I was never totally convinced by the team.

So what's gone wrong? I'm genuinely at a loss. Has something happened behind the scenes?

For me, and i take no joy in saying it but a lot of blame is resting at the managers door. Constantly playing out of form 'favorites' and for all our attacking options we are playing with the shackles on.

All in all this season should of been so much better.

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4 minutes ago, Shaggy Jenkins said:

Have we underachieved this season? Is this still a work in progress? Or about right?

Its beginning to look very much like increased budget but we have at best remained stagnant, at worse regressed.

For what its worth looking historically for St Johnstone 7-9 is probably about right...however and its a big however, not with this squad.

On paper (I know, I know) I believe man for man our best 11 is on a par with killie. So we should of been looking at 6th-4th.

I know we did have a great run but even through that I was never totally convinced by the team.

So what's gone wrong? I'm genuinely at a loss. Has something happened behind the scenes?

For me, and i take no joy in saying it but a lot of blame is resting at the managers door. Constantly playing out of form 'favorites' and for all our attacking options we are playing with the shackles on.

All in all this season should of been so much better.

Spot on but I think we over achieved in the first half of the season by shitfesting games with last minute goals.

Start of the season like most we looked at the squad & thought we could probably put out 2 decent teams. Turned out we couldn't put out 1 or is it we have a manager that doesn't know how to get the best out of them.

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I reckon we are where we should be.

Injuries to what should be key players haven't helped us. Wright being the obvious one. Easton would have made us more defensively secure.

MOH hasn't been fit...probably won't be properly fit until next season. Don't think Swanson is match fit either.

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We over achieved for a spell earlier in the season, and have underachieved recently.

A battle for the top six is where we'll likely be aiming for, and it's taken until the 31st game for that to go.

Csnt help but feel theres been a missed opportunity considering where we were after beating Dundee at New Year though.

Hopefully the manager and players are learning from this run and we see a reaction next season.

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I would think that our expectations every season is to finish no worse than 10th, which it would appear we will manage to do.

If you take into consideration what appeared at the start of the season to be signing of better quality players then expectations would be to achieve a higher position than last year.

We have fallen away badly which coincided with Drey Wright's injury.....so was Drey the one who made the rest tick??

As others have stated on other threads TW seems to stick with certain players irrespective of their performance where others who perform well in a match are then dropped.

In the remaining matches TW needs to focus on the players who are committed to us for next season and beyond and bench or put in the stand those that have not committed to us.

We also have to find a format that utilises our best players rather than defend and hope we can keep a clean sheet.... Note to TW......look at our goals against column its not working.

Roll on Wednesday and lets hump the DEE

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4 minutes ago, MrBored said:

I reckon we are where we should be.

Injuries to what should be key players haven't helped us. Wright being the obvious one. Easton would have made us more defensively secure.

MOH hasn't been fit...probably won't be properly fit until next season. Don't think Swanson is match fit either.

Professional footballers not fit after 3 months when they wouldn't have started from zero fitness.

I just think they are not interested.

Steve Brown opened his purse strings & allowed Tommy to bring in those 2 who at the time it didn't look like we needed. They hardly played which says it all.

I am sure Stevie boy will be feeling worse than us tonight.

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13 minutes ago, MrBored said:

I reckon we are where we should be.

Injuries to what should be key players haven't helped us. Wright being the obvious one. Easton would have made us more defensively secure.

MOH hasn't been fit...probably won't be properly fit until next season. Don't think Swanson is match fit either.

Both signings have been a complete waste of time and money because neither have contributed anything apart from a missed penalty which didn't cost us anything due to a late winner.

Totally depressed.

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6 minutes ago, Cagey said:

Professional footballers not fit after 3 months when they wouldn't have started from zero fitness.

I just think they are not interested.

Steve Brown opened his purse strings & allowed Tommy to bring in those 2 who at the time it didn't look like we needed. They hardly played which says it all.

I am sure Stevie boy will be feeling worse than us tonight.

There is a difference between their general fitness and match fitness. MOH had the hamstring injury when he was down under and I wonder if he has ever got over that this season.

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12 minutes ago, garydavidson said:

A worry I have is whether or not Steve Brown re-evaluated in December and thought we were dead set for top six?

Will we be set for a big financial loss?

Can't see it. Brown doesn't roll the dice when it comes to Saints.

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League-wise we're probably about right - Jambos, Hibs, TFOD etc have all spent big. Tommy has been backed but has been IMHO unlucky with his signings - Drey's injury was a big loss and Swanson, Watt, Mikey have failed to live up to their past reputations with us - in fact after today Mikey is the only one I'd think about maybe keeping.

Tommy has stuck by players but even today the team he put out, if they'd been in form would have been good enough. The lack of confidence in the defence was there to see once we lost the first goal and for a team that's meant to be playing with wingers we singularly failed to play the ball down the wings instead relying on long balls. But Tommy has also stuck with the likes of Muzz or Swanson when the likes of Alston (who I thought has improved a lot this year) is being frozen out.

Tommy still has my backing - his dealings in the transfer market were all met with backing here and you could argue its the ones that weren't hyped up that have given a better return, Wright, Kennedy and Callachan. But he has to I think be seen to be a lot angrier with the players in public - the fans know what we've seen isn't good enough, in terms of effort at least and while Tommy may be raging in the background I think a public display of anger might also help.

As for the rest of the season we're going to be bottom six. So we identify who is staying next year - anyone who hasn't renewed their contract gets a deadline put to them. And we play those players - if that means Watt, Joe etc vanish from some matchday squads so be it - the fans need to see every player given a chance.

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Guest ScottMann
54 minutes ago, George Grieve said:

I started the Taxi for Tommy thread.....If we hadn’t gone on a wee run, we would have been going down. This season has been piss poor.

So in other words, if we hadn't been good enough to win quite a few games to help accumulate more than double the amount of points the second bottom club have got, our total actually being three more than the bottom two clubs combined, we'd be relegated? That's some 'wee run'. Oh well. At least you've sussed out how a league table works.

For the record after today we've lost two more league games then we've won. 

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I think there has been a combination of factors this season. Our fixtures have been murder.  We really were handed a tough run which was then repeated after the break but aggravated by the extra cup game v Celtic.

 think it took 15 days for Wright to be overtaken in the man of the match votes which show how much of a loss he was to us. 

Dundee United never recovered from playing Celtic four times in a row. I guess we got lucky with the bottom three this season and or great run earlier.

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19 minutes ago, Havana Saint said:

2019 has been pathetic. Some of the performances really poor. We are not creative and really fail to score goals.

Having our second top scorer and player with best goals ratio nowhere near the starting 11 and not even on the bench today is simply management madness. 

Injured I think. May be a political injury though rather than Tommy admitting he doesn't want to play him.

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I agree with George Grieve all good things come to an end signings have been disastrous look back to previous seasons where we were relegated the following season the pattern of this season looks much like that.Tommy’s support team needs an improvement in quality as without change we will really struggle ultimately we may need more drastic change

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Agree we are where we should be in the whole of Scottish football, but going by our points total at beginning of January the games in 2019 have been awful and are relegation type form. To me we always had a solid back four, now we don’t it’s a mess, Tanser and Joe are not good enough, panic in possession and just punt the ball long giving the ball straight to the opposition and they are both pretty poor defenders, fair play to joe for getting a good deal elsewhere, but will love saints going against him next year based on the last few weeks, not bothered he is going, he has given up the ghost since the new year after all his talk of staying. Foster is now a hit or miss and age catching up. The midfield no creativity and watching Murray last few weeks  feel his best years are past, do we need him and Callahan next season, but certainly need a creative midfielder and that not goss, he’s a bigger shite bag than tanser when a man gets near him. Up front we are powderpuff, watt is okay as a hold up player and Kane struggles with a poor touch, still feel McMillan could have offered us something this part of the season, but need to recruit and liked Kennedy in there like before Xmas.

Still these guys are decent enough players, but Wright seems to always play to the opposition rather than make them worry about us, but sense he is getting fed up being too loyal to a few of them. But he is the guy who puts them on the pitch and sees them all week in training so he is to blame as much as the players he puts on the park.

Another area that seems to have slowed is the youth set up, has anyone from the youths pushing the first team, yeah Kerr has come through but since then has anyone else, look at Motherwell today they seem to have kids that are ready to move up and play and push for places, again never bought into all the alistair Stevenson hype.

But maybe we have been spoiled over the last decade and could be a Patrick, Falkirk , Dunfermline but it’s fustrating at the moment when you know these players are capable of more than that end result today and where we were at January, think the rot started the way he set us up at tyncastle against a hearts team struggling, he basically gave them the game..

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Exciting start to season, team spirit. Best football for many seasons, entertaining, dangerous going forward.

Drey Wright gets injured. 

Shite since the perfect performance v Dundee at Dens at New Year, 3 going on 10, and what we didnt know back then - that would be the last time we see any sort of performance for the remainder of the season.  

Are we 7th best in Scotland, mibee. Are we 9th best in Scotland, mibee. Not a disaster season, just failed to reach the destiny our first half of season was leading us to.

 

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If we had accumulated our point total evenly over the season we or at I would have been happy. However this season has totally gone to pot and we have the points but no satisfaction.

We need a striker who scores goals, a holding midfielder and a big centre-back.

We need a clear-out.

How many will not renew their season ticket?

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