Radford 72

Whilst clearly not glad he has another injury, certainly not bothered at the loss of McClelland from the squad. Happy that the manager can assess other options without having this guy in the back of his mind. About as slow a player as I can remember and that's before two operations.

Hopefully more Kevin James than Mark Campbell...

Let other clubs make the noise about what they are gonna do and how much they are going to spend. Valakari has spoken well this week in media but now needs to back it up with actions. If there are to be 10 plus signings as Eric Nicolson alludes to in Courier today then there will be more departures to come if they are aiming at this 20-man outfield squad.

I'm thinking, maybe: Fisher Sprangler - Balodis - Douglas Curtis - Watt - Holt - Steven Duke-McKenna - Ikpeazu - McPake

Haven't read minutes yet so this isn't about actual issues discussed but the attitude towards our own supporters who give up their time to be a link between the fanbase and the club is really crappy IMO. I don't see any evidence of this secret society folk hint at. Everything seems quite open to me and presumably it's open to anyone to put themselves forward for election. Don't personally know any of those currently involved but appreciate them giving up their time to do it.

The difference in the midfield when Watt came on yesterday was noticeable. You need to have an array of midfielders and getting one that's comfortable on the ball and just knows where to be and how to spread the play is imperative. We haven't used him enough over the past couple of months. We need to have central midfield options that cover all the bases. We then need a manager that more often than not gets it right when selecting which ones to use and is also capable of identifying how to change things using the options at his disposal during games.

Are you going to keep saying that every week when we have games that are easier than those that lie ahead? A point was fair but it wasn't a good result. Just as it wasn't at Dens Park. We need to find a win in at least one of the next three games.

Don't bring data into it. Us and Dundee could lose every game until May but we'll be fine if all we need to do is win on the final day to go level with them on 28 points...

It's OK to pick the wrong option. We all do it sometimes. Valakari needs to reach 36 or 37 points. That should be the minimum expectation on him.

Things have been better since the Xmas collapse but I don't think we've collected enough points. We are going to need to find another level now. Using the ClubElo rankings, this was the fixture list in terms of difficulty: Ross County (H): 3 Dundee (H): 0 Motherwell (H): 3 Aberdeen (H): Hearts (H): 0 Dundee (A): 1 St Mirren (A): 3 United (A): Hibs (A): Killie (A): 0 Celtic (H): Rangers (A): 0 The Dundee home game came too early and bookended a major reason for our relegation if it comes, substandard goalkeepers. Losing it meant we had to make up points somewhere else and we maybe did that at St Mirren but then taking nothing from Hearts puts you back in the same situation. Of course in the context of the actual match a point was fine on Saturday but it just means you need to pick up something more in harder games to come. You can't live week-to-week in a relegation battle, it creates too many downs and ramps up the pressure. I think Valakari is aware of that and is managing the situation well when he talks about targets. And ours needs to be that Dundee will get to 36 or 37 points. I can already see us going into the final few games and the same folk that have been fixating on gaps will be talking about how we can win the final 3 games etc... Saints need to be getting to 30 points by the split, whether that's two points ahead of Dundee or two points behind them.

Four points from these two games would have been fine if we'd not lost to Dundee at home and failed to take anything from Hearts or Killie. But we now play four of the top five before the split and a point or two isn't going to be enough. You have to work off assumption that Dundee will get to 36 or 37 points. We needed another couple before this tough run of games. The time we needed draws was back in the autumn or at Xmas to keep the tally ticking over at the rate of a point per game. If folk keep saying a point is fine they will soon find out, in actual fact, it wasn't.

This was always going to be a card Saints had to play. The outside perception was we were gone and I think our support, if not resigned to it, had begun to make peace with the idea. The manager and the players have the support behind them and that has to be a positive. It was always going to be a huge thing if any other team ended up right down the bottom with us.

I've found it hard to second guess the line-up over the past few weeks. It probably makes it hard for opposition managers but also opens up our management to not always getting it right. Luckily, Valakari is never slow to react. Feel like you are just waiting for it to go wrong with a very unorthodox backline but they keep surprising and looked very comfortable on Wednesday. Svedberg hasn't really impacted yet but Valakari obviously likes him. I think Carey remains most threatening off the bench. Temptation would maybe be there to start Clark as a link between the midfield and forwards but he's another who can hopefully make his mark from the bench. These are the days where the manager needs to get it right though. Without knowing what it's like behind the scenes, Dundee need to break their sacking cycle. I'd probably be more confident of finishing above them if they sacked Docherty.

TV Schedule released: Friday (19:45) - Aberdeen vs Queen's Park (BBC) Saturday (12:00) - Celtic vs Hibs (Premier) Sunday (12:00) - Celtic vs Hibs {Premier) REPEAT Monday (19:45) - Hearts vs Dundee (BBC)

As recently as 2021 anyway, Saints didn't do medicals. At most, the players were asked to fill in a questionnaire.