rickardo

Something's rotten in the state of McDiarmid. Only we could turn the joy and kudos of double cup winners into a team of desparate, joyless, and shambolic band of shitebags.
The team has no soul or identity and quite frankly the fans deserve better.
It's time to take a stand against the eye-bleeding, tactic-less shambles that we're witnessing.
Callum and McLean will rightly take their place in the Saints hall of fame but please do the right thing and walk away while we still have some dignity.
 

The whole of that team ,management and the board want to take a big look at there selfs , us the ****in mugs the fans have put up with that shit all season . Not giving a **** what anybody says about the double last season as magic as it was ,only Saints could do this to us what should have been a season to celebrate they managed to turn it into misery . 
 
We will go into the play offs with very little chance of winning it but for some mad reason we will be there . 
 
50 odd years a sadistic arse . 
 
SJFC .

Muller, Dendoncker, Devine - Far too inexperienced to step up to a side that was in our position.
Vertainen- Never given a chance. Possibly due to internal issues between manager and HoR? Fee paid.
Cleary- passable although questions asked when faced with pace. Kerr replacement given the managers preferred style but a massive downgrade.
Gallacher- some potential but too inexperienced to properly improve the side.
Hallberg- started strongly but regression recently. Probably the best signing this season.
Mahon - who knows  Fee paid though.
Bair- who knows  Fee paid again.
Ciftci - impressed early against Hearts but dreadful since injury return. Signed on reputation IMO.
Crawford- decent contract handed out. Absolute wage thief.
MacPherson- another wage thief. Fee paid 
Hector-Ingram - 
Butterfield - shite and immobile. Likes a day out at Parkhead though. Hi mum!! 
Solomon-Otabor - good reputation but didn't deliver much.
Effin Ambrose - praised by management early on. Punted for being a bombscare.
Hendry- not fancied by management and farmed out. Brought back as other options didn't want to sign and looking like the only player that might score. Probably the player of the year 
Brown - signed permanently after the double. Definition of journeyman.
What a ****ing shower. 
Some amount of money pissed away and we have to suffer the real dross because they've got long contracts.
We used to laugh at other clubs for this type of shambles.

Cups seem like a long time ago and we never really got a chance to celebrate them but I thought we could only get better this season but this season has drained all the joy out of it.

CD has to go at the end of this season regardless. I can't keep watching whatever 'this' brand of football is. And the so-called 'creative' types he does pick, are garbage. Crawford especially. 
We must also be the only team to continually select a striker who can't score, week in week out.
Dismal stuff.

Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.
I'm not sure who I'm more angry with: the manager for playing the same useless system every single week, or the board for sitting on their arses and taking no action to fix this. 
Excited for Steve Brown's interview this time next year where he moans about the fact that the fans have all disappeared.

Here's the system. Crawford give s the opposition the ball. Ciftci runs about very slowly. When the opponents score we wait about 15 mins then we take Crawford off. It could be Ciftci. then 15 mins later we take of either Crawford or Ciftci depending on who had been taken off 15 mins before.
That's why we are in 11th position.

Was at a game the other day and in the programme they had someone who was "Head of Restarts"
These laptops w*nkers and commercial football folk need to GTF. The whole turn it into the NFL is boring. 

Bring back beers sunk, boys drunk, locals rattled..... when saturday comes!
Now go sign someone from Cowdenbeath for £25,000 and turn them into a star!
MON THE SAINTS! 

I know it’s a cliche, but games against Celtic are really such a poor measure of a team. That said, the fact that we don’t “go at” anyone with Callum Davidson at the helm is terrifying.
Arbroath, Kelty, Dundee… I’ve never seen us pile pressure on a team once this season. It’s so lacklustre and quite frankly eye-bleedingly boring.

This is the irony of it: Ciftci has looked pretty poor, and yet seems to be rated by the manager the best of the 3 new strikers we signed, one of which we supposedly paid a fee for. It's pretty shambolic whichever way you look at it

Very good whilst the club is doing a bit of enticing why not do something for season ticket holders as well.
a voucher for a coffee or pie would go down well.
after all season ticket dudes want to feel enticed as well.
 
 
 

Jeez this is some read, I still go along and think saints will win every week even now, maybe deluded hope but nae point going if think otherwise, maybe blind loyalty, I want Callum to succeed but I have questioned his tactics and said he should maybe go, usually a reaction after a game etc, we all deal with it differently, but regardless of opinion we all care and love the club, but channel it in different ways rightly or wrongly, I don't have inside info of what goes on at board level, politics in the club, I'm not a coach, but I've played and watched enough football over the years to know the current performances are not good enough and there are a lot of mitigating factors that most if ys are not party to. I was there from the seventies, eighties etc yeah hear the punching etc and the younger fan expectation of we should be higher up the league as that's all they gave ever known, but I still think we should be doing better in performance on the pitch and forward planning as a club. But with anything in life you can always aim higher and not accept what you have or way things were, maybe no get to where you want but let's not accept mediocrity.

I think most Saints fans would agree that we'd like to see Callum succeed, and the horrific run of injuries combined with ludicrous refereeing decisions have perhaps made things appear worse than they are.
But personally it's his lack of flexibility, his continued poor use of substitutes and his stubbornness to not throw new players straight in and see what they can do that makes me think he just isn't up to it.
I'll be very happy to be proved wrong but he's giving me no reason to believe he's learning from any of it.

Just back from this game although I might as well have left at half time.
Anyone could see the inevitable happening and we were lucky not to lose in the end.  Thought Callum had turned a corner last week in terms of positive subs but back to the negative ones again.
We can't keep hiding behind poor referee decisions as the fact is we aren't good enough to invite the pressure we do in our own half defending a lead.
At least Middleton looks like he's picked up a bit of form which could be important.  If Booth and Clark are both out injured for any length of time we'd be aswelll accepting 12th now.
Our transfer business the last two windows has been atrocious.  With the amount of money we spent on Bair I'd be hoping he would be getting some minutes and  I'm assuming Hector Ingram is here to simply make up the numbers.  Gallacher has always been shite I can't believe that boy got a move to Liverpool.  We've ended up having to gamble on Cifti and Hallberg staying fit.
You look at the other clubs around us signing Jordan Jones, Luke McCowan, Greg Kiltie, Andrew Shinnie, Omega etc.  These were well known players in Scottish football and  would have been good options for us. Instead in the summer we go with young players on loan that aren't good enough yet to play at this level (brown, devine, muller) and players other clubs at this level didn't want (macpherson and ambrose).  I'd have taken a risk and tried to get lafferty to be honest as even with his baggage he looks a better player than the strikers we've signed so far.
The board is to blame for the mess we are in they shouldn't have sold kerr and McCann that late in the window.  Its too late to sack Davidson now and after last season I suppose he deserves to be at least given the full year now even if we are relegated. I can't believe we have sleepwalked into this situation and we just have to hope we're still in touch with dundee at the split.
 

Same here.plenty memories of captain pugwash back when we were the equivalent of the young team.
 

Bizzare post I must have missed something ! Crawford actually wanting the ball never mind pushing forward with the thing ,is something I’ve yet to witness ,he’s usually running away from the baw so he doesn’t have to get involved . As for Muzz he’s maybe getting on a bit but 11 Of him on the park and we wouldn’t be in this shit . 100% every game is good enough for me not shitbags that hide .

Bizzare post I must have missed something ! Crawford actually wanting the ball never mind pushing forward with the thing ,is something I’ve yet to witness ,he’s usually running away from the baw so he doesn’t have to get involved . As for Muzz he’s maybe getting on a bit but 11 Of him on the park and we wouldn’t be in this shit . 100% every game is good enough for me not shitbags that hide .

I think its a bit early to be writing off our new players. Last night was not great, but we had previously went three games undefeated, which was a big improvement on our form before the transfer window. I think Cleary has slotted in well and looks comfortable at this level, Gallacher has obvious qualities but needs to become a bit more streetwise, Hallberg has added much needed quality into midfield and whilst early days, Bair and Mahon on the face of it look like promising signings. 
January was always going to be a difficult month for us to bring players in. I am led to believe we tried to sign Jordan Jones, but when it is a choice of playing for a relegation threatened team or a team challenging for top 6 and still in the Scottish Cup, he was always going to chose St Mirren. Look at Forrest as well, why would he leave Livingston to come to us when there was is real possibility we will get relegated. It all goes back to the summer when we failed to add quality from a position of strength and sold our best two players on the last day of the window
I don't see us getting rid of Davidson anytime soon. Steve Brown wont have backed him to the extent he has and then sack him a few weeks later. The only way that may change is if we get completely detached at the bottom of the table and the support completely turn on Davidson, then the board would have a decision to make. I have criticised Davidson for many things this season, but as suggested elsewhere, I dont think the blame can be entirely placed on him. The Chairman and board should have supported the manager better in the summer transfer window and not rolled over when Preston came calling for McCann. The Head of Football Operations , the man responsible for convincing players to sign contracts could have done better, Zak Rudden the prefect example of that and finally the head of recruitment is not completely blameless either with some of his recommendation such as Eetu Vertainen looking completely out of his depth at this level. Combine all that with losing many key players (Rooney, Bryson, Spoony, MOH, Ciftci and Kane) and some horrendous referring decisions going against us, then its all contributed towards where we are now.
I personally feel that it will go right to the wire between us and Dundee. Both teams as bad as each other. 

Can anyone make a strong argument for Ali Crawford to be starting games?
He had his shot on target and a few decent touches last night, but beyond that, he actively goes missing or when the ball does come to him, he is unable to control it in time or just looks like he wants to get rid of it as soon as possible. There were times last night when the St Mirren midfield were breaking forward and he was just casually jogging back, not picking anyone up.
Staggers me that Callum Davidson, Steven MacLean and Alec Cleland, all who have played at a high level think that he is the answer to our current predicament.
 

There were definitely positives to take from the first half. We were getting up the park better. Testing their keeper. Our penalty was a result of positive play from Middleton. their penalty, soft as it was, knocked the stuffing out of us.
Second half was dire. Davidson’s desperation tactics of emptying the bench had me just as confused as the players as to what we were trying to do. The only positive was actually playing Middleton on the wing firing crosses into our strikers who are both decent in the air. 
What really stuck out was how often we commit fouls. It seemed every Midden attack was stopped by us pulling shirts or wrestling them to the ground. This is clearly (no pun intended) a pre-planned strategy. It was like watching the Six Nations. Historically we are one of the most organised teams defensively but that has gone to shit like everything else this season. Discipline comes from the manager. We are seriously lacking it and it’s killing us.

Don't want to put a negative spin on what was a good battling performance but I felt that the second half yesterday really highlighted Davidson's shortcomings. As soon as we went down to 10 men we reverted to our old ways of sitting back on the 18-yard line and letting the opposition come at us in wave after wave. We completely abandoned any sort of pressing game and the only plan seemed to be to hope and pray that they didn't break us down and we could get a point. Completely appreciate that Plan A was destroyed by the red card, but we surely need to have a better Plan B. I think we got a bit lucky that United were poor, otherwise we probably would have been punished.
On the bright side it's clear we've made significant improvements and you could see in the first half how much higher up the park we're trying to play. Hallberg looks like a class act and his quick and clever passing is allowing us to move the ball more quickly through midfield. Hendry is having a big impact too. I just worry that it's not going to be enough. In previous years I'd have taken a 0-0 from that game all day long but in our current predicament single points are just not going to give us what we need.

Desperate times all hands on deck , Hope this sinking ship don’t go down . 
 
If if it does it will be fun rising up . 
 
The young Saints fans and I’m saying under 25s here have had it to good anyway ,never seen a poor Saints team ever .  Great fun down below and will be a tough place  to get out of but it will be a hoot trying. 
 
And me personally after 51 years watching this shit ,I’ve seen worse but no much . 
 
But it it’s my team through shite and muck , will be there till I die anyway .

Desperate times all hands on deck , Hope this sinking ship don’t go down . 
 
If if it does it will be fun rising up . 
 
The young Saints fans and I’m saying under 25s here have had it to good anyway ,never seen a poor Saints team ever .  Great fun down below and will be a tough place  to get out of but it will be a hoot trying. 
 
And me personally after 51 years watching this shit ,I’ve seen worse but no much . 
 
But it it’s my team through shite and muck , will be there till I die anyway .

Desperate times all hands on deck , Hope this sinking ship don’t go down . 
 
If if it does it will be fun rising up . 
 
The young Saints fans and I’m saying under 25s here have had it to good anyway ,never seen a poor Saints team ever .  Great fun down below and will be a tough place  to get out of but it will be a hoot trying. 
 
And me personally after 51 years watching this shit ,I’ve seen worse but no much . 
 
But it it’s my team through shite and muck , will be there till I die anyway .

Desperate times all hands on deck , Hope this sinking ship don’t go down . 
 
If if it does it will be fun rising up . 
 
The young Saints fans and I’m saying under 25s here have had it to good anyway ,never seen a poor Saints team ever .  Great fun down below and will be a tough place  to get out of but it will be a hoot trying. 
 
And me personally after 51 years watching this shit ,I’ve seen worse but no much . 
 
But it it’s my team through shite and muck , will be there till I die anyway .