blueheaven

Up until Saturday I'd have agreed with this, but I felt the Hibs game saw a bit of a capitulation. A lot of the players looked like they were just at the end of their tether and had given up. I mean, in some ways it's better if they weren't trying, because if that's what they play like when they're actually giving their all then we're in even more trouble than I thought.

He managed it last time. We were awful in Macca's last few games, culminating in the 4-0 defeat at St Mirren. Cleland then took charge and within a couple of days we'd beaten Kilmarnock with probably our best home performance of the season. It's pretty common for a team to get a lift and pick up a couple of good results after a change of manager. In the situation we're in that would probably be enough to keep us up. Surely that's worth going for? For me, we need to try every option available to get ourselves out of this mess, and changing the manager is the most obvious option. Craig Levein's contract is not more important or more valuable than our Premiership status. It amazes me that anyone would want the club to just sit and watch us get relegated, instead of actually doing something proactive to change the situation and try to get us out of this mess while there's still time.

It's until May 2026 - so covers most of this season plus the next two seasons.

Straight-forward yes or no question to see what the feeling is amongst our support. Is it time to get rid?

I agree, but there's the root of the problem: Geoff Brown handing out a three-year contract to completely the wrong manager, after the club had already given a three-year contract to a different wrong manager just a few months earlier. The people running our club just lurch from one crap decision to the next. I totally get that we wanted someone with experience, but for me the St Johnstone manager should always be someone who is up-and-coming and has ambitions to move higher, whether that's with Saints or effectively by using Saints as a stepping stone. They should be hungry and determined and have bags of new ideas they're desperate to try. They should be excited to come to our club and they should recognise it for the opportunity it is; not just act as if they're here to do us a favour. I've heard a lot of people mentioning Rhys McCabe and I've no idea if he's good enough or ready to step up, but to me he ticks a lot more of the above boxes than Levein does. Did Saints even interview anyone fitting that description, and properly consider our options, or did we just look at Martindale (I mean, FFS) and then go straight to Levein? I can't help but think a half-arsed process has left us with a half-arsed manager, and Geoff Brown needs to carry the responsibility for that.

May's energy coming off the bench has been one of the few positives for weeks now. Not that it makes any difference to Levein. I've no idea what he bases his decisions to start players on, but it certainly isn't performances.

Sorry, dragging the thread a bit off topic here, but I think this is the biggest myth going. Why do people think Davidson was a good coach? From what I could see he made every single player worse.

Levein's been here for six months and, other than a brief flurry of decent results and performances that dragged us off the bottom of the table, we haven't improved in the slightest. He hasn't managed to implement even the most basic gameplan or system to get us functioning, and the players still look unfit. In fact I think he's now at the point of taking us backwards from where we were when he arrived. I wouldn't even have allowed him to give his latest dismal post-match interview. Our only chance of staying up as things stand is to get rid of him immediately and hope that we get enough of a short-term new manager bounce to keep us up. Put Cleland in charge for the remaining games, then start again in the summer.

Are we allowed to say that we're worse than we were under Macca yet? In my eyes that was the sort of performance you get out of a team when they've completely given up and the manager is on his way out. A lot of talk on here about the players being spineless and having no battle in them and that's clearly true, but on top of that they're not even getting the basics right. They look unfit, disorganised, they're in the wrong positions, they don't know where to pass the ball or where to move to. The whole thing's a complete mess. It was really interesting to watch the contrast in intent and gameplan between Hibs and Saints. I don't think Hibs have especially good players but when they had the ball they always knew generally what to do with it. They played it forwards as quickly as they could, and the guys who didn't have the ball moved around to drag the Saints players with them. When our players had the ball, by contrast, everyone stood still, the ball got stuck around the halfway line and we had no option but to pass it sideways and eventually lose it, or hoof it forward and also lose it. If our sole tactic for attacking is to play the ball forward to a fast guy (Sidibeh), why not just play both of our fast guys (Sidibeh and Kimpioka)? That way we'd double our chances of the ball actually finding one of them? Instead we play Clark in an absolutely nothing role, where he's completely ineffective. And our sole tactic for defending appears to be playing an extra defender. How many defenders do we get next week? Six? Seven? We could have started with 11 defenders on Saturday and Hibs would still have walked through them whenever they wanted to. How about actually coaching those defenders so they can function as a unit, with and without the ball? What are they actually doing in training all week? Positive mention for Mitov of course who single-handedly saved us from a serious embarrassment. He's way too good to be playing for us. Levein must go.

Is this the easiest Player of the Year decision ever? I can't remember any other season where one player was such an obvious stand-out. I can't think of any other player who even comes close (although I agree with the above comment from @SaintJet about McGowan's attitude impressing this season).

Saints 1 Hibs 2 Goal: Sidibeh Card: McGowan

Drey Wright and Liam Gordon can both be spotted in this training video posted by the club today, but I couldn't see any sign of Phillips or DJ.

I'm guessing that would be most people's team if everyone's fit but aren't Gordon, Wright and Jaiyesimi all still doubts? If the above three aren't ready to start I'd go: Mitov Keltjens McGowan Gordon Robinson Franczak Smith Phillips Carey Sidibeh Kimpioka (In fact, what I'd prefer would be May starting on the left instead of Carey, but there's no way Levein is doing that.) But yeah let's face it: Kucheriavyi and Gallacher are starting, and I wouldn't be gigantically surprised if Cammy MacPherson's starting too.

What do you want? We already get games at a cut price by buying the season ticket.

I think MacLean had a small bounce after Davidson and Levein had a small bounce after MacLean, but neither upturn was massive. Even during MacLean's caretaker period I think there were red flags around what he was doing and I still find it bizarre he was given the job based on those games. Just complete laziness on Steve Brown's part is all it comes down to. That said, I also think Macca had a really difficult first pre-season, what with having to rebuild so much of the squad with a reduced budget and then having loads of injuries to contend with. Clearly he had to go, but there's no doubt at all it was a very tough gig for such an inexperienced manager. Levein is going to have a similar rebuild on his hands this summer with a similar number of players likely to leave, so it'll be interesting to see how he handles that if he's still here.

Any idea what MacLean's total PPG is for league games in comparison to Levein's? I suspect they're not all that different?

To be honest, I wouldn't care how we played under Levein if the results were good. But in reality they've barely been any better than they were under MacLean. Personally I wanted Davidson out after Kelty. The club gave him way too long, but that's on them rather than the fans. But yeah, I think he had some credit in the bank because of the Cup double, and to a lesser extent his previous background at the club. I think that's fair enough. Although a lot of us were expressing unhappiness with Davidson on forums like this one, at the actual matches I think the fans were remarkably patient with him and the support remained almost weirdly positive in the face of some awful, awful football and increasingly bad results. I think Levein's had it pretty easy at matches too. I really thought there'd be a lot of unrest and booing towards the end of the Killie game, but there was nothing.

Great to see the club finally catching up with this after the slightly embarrassing situation last season. Really hope people show up to back the team in some decent numbers.

Agree with this. But perhaps most damaging is the overall mindset Davidson instilled in the team, which I think we still haven't managed to pull ourselves out of. That attitude of fear, making all the players scared to try anything creative or a bit different that might have shown some spark or got the fans on their feet. Always scared to make a substitution or a tactical change in case it made things worse instead of better. Always scared to go for it at 1-0 down in case we went 2-0 down. Telling everyone that winning a relegation play-off would be better than winning the Double. Yes we were often defensive under Tommy Wright too, but we were also brave and aggressive and adaptable to situations. I still think of the way Eetu Vertainen - at a time when he was young, living in a new country and eager to impress - was publicly shamed for trying one little flick on the halfway line against Rangers, and think that was the moment we really knew beyond any doubt what Davidson was all about. Sign players who might be good and drill every glimmer of flair out of them, and refuse to give them a game until they're fully brainwashed into playing with the same stiff, defensive mindset as everyone else. So much of all of where we are now is Callum Davidson's fault, and if we go down much of the blame for it will be on his shoulders.

Seems like that loan's turned out to be pretty beneficial for McClelland, even though he didn't play much to start off with. I thought he looked pretty promising at the start of the season so hopefully he can bring that good form back with him as there's presumably going to be at least one vacancy about to open up in our back line. I still think it's a real shame we didn't give Olufunwa a similar opportunity. Feels like it would have done him the world of good to get half a season playing at right-back for Raith Rovers, instead of sending James Brown there.

Just to clarify, by "now happening" I mean that there are now ex-Saints players who are at other clubs and doing well, after doing badly here, when it used to be the other way around. Obviously it's not possible to know if this will be the case with any of the current players, as they're still current players.

I voted yes. No idea what will actually happen of course, but at this point in time my guess is we'll finish 11th and scrape through the play-off.

I don't think anyone would ever suggest that he is. But he doesn't need to be the Stevie May of 11 years ago to still be good enough to be an option for the current side.

Not really!

All true, but equally I think it's important for the club to actually look at why this happened so it doesn't happen again, rather than just shrug the shoulders and have a laugh about it. It's not just luck that allowed us to benefit in a similar way in the past. It happened because we'd created an environment here where players could thrive. If the opposite is now happening (and it definitely is, and not just with Bair), then that's probably a big part of the reason why we're now a team that struggles every year.