t.mcneil99

ah good, its been a long time since we spent the whole of deadline day night wondering if free agent danny swanson will sign. no doubt he will end up back at dundee utd

with the likes of scougall is it more likely we can pay a small fee with say 25% of sell on now we have recent relevant examples of players moving on for a fee, whereas before it would be an utterly pointless clause as no one ever went for money at all ?

genuinely heartbroken, dont even know what we can do to protest this either, boycotting games will just kill the club, and continuing to attend just makes those in charge ignore any criticism

Ive sent off an email to the SPFL saying I have 5 years of experience of displaying utter incompetence on a daily basis, and asking for any job openings.

fingers crossed !

It would be amazing to see a talented youngster not jump at the first opportunity and think about his next move.

Maybe Tommy has asked him to give Steve Lomas a call to see what hes up to these days after jumping at the first chance?

Good luck waiting on a reply, I've sent an email every day since the announcement, not even an automated response so far...

I think the technical term is w*nker

almost definitely the next david Robertson , but could be decent

Its been recently publicised that chelsea have a system where they loan players out, with the belief that they will be ready for the first team around the age of 24. I am in no way trying to liken tommy with mourinho, but it seems to be fairly clear he wont play youth for the sake of it, and needs to trust and feel the player is good enough. perhaps that is the way he is viewing things, in terms of when clark, thomson, brown, caddis, kane, hunter, mclaren and perhaps even puting brad mackay in this ( even though he is a senior player ) when they turn 24 we will see that mckay, anderson, mannus , macca, millar, muzz, craig, will be edging towards retirement age, and a mixture of 5-10 senior appearences with loan spells in the championship will see them primed and ready for the premiership and having had a lot of experience in being round the st johnstone camp.

Its worth noting that germany decided in 2002 that something had to be done about the youth set up and are now starting to see the benefits, similar to spain back in the late 90's , we have been really focussing on this for about 3-4 years,, give it time and we will see the benefits.

as for caddis, he needs one lst make or break loan move, surely he would be better playing in a successful team even at a lower level, i.e dunfermline, building confidence and showing what he can do, rather than sending him to alloa, dumbarton morton ect where they will be up against it in most games.

I love that this a lovely polite way of saying, " oi dundee utd, f*ck off"

Im enjoying this whole " hes not good enough defensively" personally i do not travel 100+ miles and pay £20+ to get in with the excitement of watching someone work hard and try to cut out any full back overlaps, Its lovely to have a player who can drift between the lines and who seems to glide past people with the ability to slip someone in or score from distance.

typical british attitude he doesnt track back enough, we have too many players who seem to be there to " not lose us the game " people like swanson will win you 5-6 games a season 

please sign him up

mick mccarthy saying alex henshall is available for transfer , left winger and rapido quick, loan til january would be decent?

seeing as sky sports seems to be using footie manager as the authority on transfers, has us to benefit from 15% of the total fee ( not percentage of profit ) 

could buy a good few minibuses with that

Following on from the signing of darnell fisher is tommy now trying to compensate the lack of pace and width , and the leaky defence with a wing back formation?

It would make sense in that fisher and shaughnessy with dave mackay for back up on the right, and it would suit easton very well, with liam craig and scobbie able to fill in where needed. it would result in a spare player both in the centre of defence and the middle of the park which should make it more solid and easier to keep possesion, our defence has been making a lot of mistakes, but pehaps a central 3 with dave mackay sweeping in behind ( no pace, but does seem to have a reasonable reading of the game ) would hopefully clean up a few errors but also give a bit of calmness to the other two, knowing that they have someone behind if they make a mistake might actually calm them down and help to reduce the errors.

its easy to a see a team of mannus, anderson , dave mackay and brad mackay at centre backs, fisher/ o'shaugnessy right wing back and easton/craig left wing back, a midfield three of millar/davidson/craig/caddis,lappin ( considering only really millar seems to be dynamic enough to get up and down in a midfield 2 having 3 would share the burden ) and with macca/sutton/kane/cummins playing furthes forward with mikey having a free role to just run at people, it would be much more solid than we are now and actually looks.

so perhaps tommy does have a change in formation in mind with a signing of another right back ? either that or maybe he just thinks o'shaugnessy is absolute p*sh, but it could be interesting to see how we line up in the next few weeks

Surely it would have been more balanced to have had a back 4, a midfield 3 of scobbie brown and caddis and then having michael out right, kane or macca through the middle and sutton wide left.

obviously sutton wouldnt have been able to do a lot, but playing a sort of wide target man ( lee mcculloch for scotland ) can be effective, and the way o'halloran was getting down the right would have had a few crosses to go at.

It was worrying that kane was stuck wide left, where he struggled due to lack of pace/trickery and not strong enough when it came to feet, the problem was clearly the formation ended up a sort of 5-1-4 with brown sitting very deep and scobbie sitting more with the back line, it meant they had 40-50  yards of space with often one or two saints players to their 4/5 which will always outpass us, and was it a case of unfit players being able to close down, or a startling degree of too much respect being given to the opposition, if you stand off any player long enough they will make something happen. I dont understand the deal with caddis, surely he is being paid a senior player salary, and is signed on as part of the first team squad, there is no point in keeping him for the u20's league, you would have thought that being one of 2 centre mids fit then he has to play, if tommy cant trust him then why was he signed on? he is a recongnised centre mid, play him there, 

To compare it to scottish football as a whole, the best teams ( including the national team ) seem to be able to counter with a bit of pace, and a bit of decisiveness to create chances, we are an example of a well organised side who cannot make chances, and when that gets found out ( which it seems it may have been ) must be nearly impossible to fix overnight. We could still be playing now and nobody would look like being able to slip a pass in behind the full back or centre backs to create an opening, its pretty worrying viewing. 

still maybe its  a blessing, kairat almaty would have royally humped us based on this.

Squad more or less complete , get nigel back , and use mcfaddens and swansons wages to get stevie back on loan and were sorted....

if only 

If he wanted to come back but we could afford to pay the full wage ( presuming sheff wednesday would still pay a portion of his wages as happens with a lot of loan deals like this, ) i would happily pay £10/£20 a month to saints to help towards the cost of his wages, because he is the type of player that makes you want to go to watch the team. does that kind of thing ever happen? obviously they would need to get a few on board, im not completely convinced my extra tenner alone would swing it for him

a) Jason Scotland - awesome player, scored so many important goals ( cup games against hibs + motherwell come to mind, plus scoring those two against " bobby robson's gretna) and to steal him from dundee utd because of weird work permit laws even better?

rudi vata, my dads a big celtic fan, said he was excited at his signing and thought he would be great, saw him one game away to brechin, and he spent the entire game doing this bizarre lofted flighted free kick from anywhere on the pitch for either their keeper to stand and catch, or for the ball to just sail out for a goal kick.

honorable mentions to darren sheridan, james mc fadden, and any of the string of queens players that Connelly brought with him.

zlatan ibrahimovic - 1 season

hmm interesting response here in dumfries, it would appear all the celtic fans who jumped on the queens bandwagon despite not having been to a game in years following the scottish cup defeat, then gave it the big one after the 3-3 with inter, are now back to saying they once again support their " home town club"

OF fans really are insufferable

This is a bit of a long shot, but im sure i saw something about this on here a few months back,

is anybody on wap a researcher for st johnstone on FM2015, i had a few things i was wanting to ask about

cheers

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/sport/football/st-johnstone/st-johnstone-captain-had-early-fears-over-perth-career-1.839575

Both MacKay and TW appear to see a good few years left yet by sounds of it. We need to find a RB before can move in though

Im guessing with brad mckay signing up and tommy being quoted in saying dave mackay sees himself moving to centre back, that one of scobbie or frazer wright wont be renewed this summer?

Get a grip folks...out of the cup but not out of the league! I'd like to think Saints could have a bearing on who wins the league! How satisfying would it be to be the team that stopped Celtic winning the league?!

Im not tying to start an over reaction, it was more just a point now we will be a mid table side this season not sure which side of the split we will be on. But also think back to lomas's side who finished top 6 but lost every game - It was more to start a debate on is it worth the gamble to try and push the young players forward to see what can be produced , with the hope that in the future we will have a few talented young players, worth selling on and who will entice people to come and watch, as a sort of long term vision

Im pretty sure Celtic have won the league now, and does a win or draw against them really live that long in the memory of the fair minded fan? Im sure there will be tens if not hundreds of people go to the celtic game next week who wouldnt usually go because its celtic, the majority wont come back to see games against the likes of hamilton or partick because they are not that fussed/emotionally invested.

Where as as an example i have a few friends who live in the south of scotland who were dragged to a couple of games, saw stevie may play, he became a cult hero amongst them and they came back for other games to see him + bought replica shirts with may on ect = £'s in the clubs pocket that would not have been gained by just winning a game against celtic. 

*** Vickery has always said about south American football that they view the short term as tonights game, the mid term as the midweek game and then the longterm view is purely focused on the game the week after - I think this could be applied to a lot of Saints fans. Credit to Steve Brown for actually trying to build some sort of long term legacy with ( yes infrastructure ) and a real investment in youth. yes it could backfire and we could go down, but that will also happen with signing a lot of "experienced" or "established" pros - they are free signings coming to saints for a reason, and eventually a couple of bad signings will leave us struggling and we will go down, at least by trying some young guys there is the real ( if tiny ) possibility we could develop some future scotland internationals.

I understand there is a monetary difference between finishing places in the spl, but surely we have enough money backed up from recent acheivements and smaller budgets we can deal with a bottom 6 finish.

Is it now worth taking a bit of a hit in league positions to try and get some of the u20 players some regular top flight football. I know we cant go nuts and just blood 11 youngsters straight in, but what have we got to lose in saying to chris kane, scott brown, maybe liam caddis you are going to get a run in the team, There must be an element in their mindset that as they have limited opportunities, that when they do get on, they will feel they need to try and do everything themselves to stand out.

It might be a complete bust and we could finish 8/9th, but at least then we know how good our young players really are, and surely it is worth a bit of a risk, rather than just getting by with the likes of graham, lappin , croft , mcfadden ect who dont get me wrong are fine, but arent going to improve and are never going to be sold on, 

Otherwise we will remain stuck in a permanent loop of getting in fairly journeyman players who will just see us as a stepping stone to a better payday, leaving them having to be replaced again.

thoughts?

Maybe more booing Kane going off. He didn't play well but had no service.

the boo was because he was playing fine and shouldnt have been the one getting replaced,not directly aimed at him