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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.

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.

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.

If MacPherson has a million haters, then I am one of them. If he has ten haters, then I am one of them. If he has only one hater then that is me. If MacPherson has no haters, then that means I am no longer on earth. If the world loves MacPherson, then I am against the world.

If only we were allowed to make substitutions

I do think that was huge in terms of manager/squad dynamic but the rot had already set in and we'd taken some heavy defeats. The emergence of Parker papered over things a bit for a while but (under him) his expensive signings like Hartley and Lovenkrands just hadn't worked. I remember being 3-0 down at HT at home to Motherwell at the start of a run of 13 games without and win and giving him another summer was the wrong call. The budget probably wasn't great but you've got to have more imagination than the signings you mentioned above. Davidson and Stark weren't good for opposite reasons. The former is, in my mind, undoubtedly a good coach. What he did with the double-squad was remarkable and (despite the fact we couldn't always put chances away) we were entertaining and attacking, as well as really well drilled. Up there with the Saints teams I've most enjoyed watching. 5-2-3 was Gary Rowett's system though, Davidson was just good at coaching it. He was completely unable to adapt and identify and new way of playing when it was required. And his man-management skills seemed lacking. Stark though, was clearly very popular with his players, which created the problems for Connolly. I think Geoff Brown is quoted as saying he's his favourite manager in terms of personality. He just couldn't get us playing to any level of consistency or in a particularly exciting manner. We've become accustomed to dross these days but back then that was far more of an issue after the best of Clark, Sturrock and Totten.

Macca and McClelland better than Davidson....how soon we forget...

I always felt the turning point for Sandy Clark was the O'Boyle-Thomas incident. Things seemed to go rapidly downhill for him after that. Not sure if the players turned against him for his part in that but certainly things took a turn for the worse. His budget also seemed to be cut fairly dramatically towards the end, as in his final pre-season he started signing over-the-hill guys like Falconer and Jackson. To be honest, I'd say Stark and Davidson were both dreadful managers. Save for Davidson's very brief period where we did extraordinarily well, I struggle to think of anything positive to say about either of them. I think you can probably sort our McDiarmid era managers into four different clumps. There's the very good ones (Wright, McInnes, Sturrock, Totten), the ones who were a bit of a mixed bag but gave us some really good times (Coyle, Lomas, Clark), the ones who were mistakes that were quickly gotten rid of (McClelland, MacLean, Connolly) and the ones that were just plain crap (Davidson, Stark). I've hung back on including Levein as he's still doing the job, but right now I suspect he'll end up in one of the latter two categories.

Pretty near the bottom! But in my mind I tend to give Connolly a bit of a free pass as he inherited a mess, was given a massively reduced budget to try to rebuild an entire squad in one summer, and was kicked back out the door very quickly when it didn't work. A lot of parallels with Macca, really. But also like Macca I think Connolly made a few good signings (Dobbie, Sheerin, Rutkiewicz, Steven Anderson, Allan McGregor, even David Hannah). On balance I'd probably still say Stark is the worst I've seen. He was here for three years, got us relegated, didn't even come close to mounting any sort of challenge to bring us back up, was crap in the cups, implemented a really half-arsed style of football, and often just seemed to want to sign all his old Celtic mates. Don't think he understood the club at all and he seemed to always think hovering around 2nd or 3rd in the First Division was OK for St Johnstone (unfortunately I feel there are a few parallels with Levein in that attitude).