wattie_rojas

Gordon Norrie has been on trial with Dundee although I'm not sure whether he's been offered a contract.

Saintees played well and met a good saintee in the kebab shop although his mate in the pink t-shirt was a tool. Good luck against the tangy filth next season.

Have Saints not got an U/19s this season?

I know that Dixon was unhappy at being dropped and that he believed the reason he was was because of rumours that he was signing for United. In his case, it's probably because he knows he'd only be second choice behind Malone. Swankie is fed up of the boo-boys at Dens and wants to make a fresh start while remaining in the area.

I thought Main looked pretty dodgy vs Dundee and time has maybe caught up with him. He's a good character and similar to Boruc has some good banter with the opposition fans. IMO Cuthbert is far too wee to be a decent keeper and I think Saints definitely need a new NO.1.

Happy New Year Saintees! Hope you all have a bumper harvest this year and a successful village fete. A friendly welcome tomorrow would be appreciated:-o 'Mon the Dee!

Fred, your post regarding Dundee's youth set-up is pretty wide of the mark for a number of reasons. Kiernan, Forsyth, Elvin, Clark, Cord, Garvock, Mason and Johnstone are all still at Dens so it's hardly the whole team that have been released. Also, Kenny Cameron signed his son and half of an average Dundee West team to make up our youth team while he was there which resulted in us having an awful team. Finally, the fact that a Dundee team missing several of it's best players humped Saints last week must tell you something about the 2 set-ups surely?

Monkey, I think even most Saintees would agree that MacDonald, Dixon and Robertson are all better players than the ones you've mentioned. The fact they've played between 60-80 games each as opposed to maybe 15 in total says it all. Added to this is the fact that 2 of the 3 are u21 internationals and all 3 are being covetted by bigger clubs.

About half of the Dundee team is also able to play in this league next season too. Our coach Gordon Wallace did say that the quality of players tends to go in cycles which was borne out by the fact Dundee's youth team finished mid-table last season. However the lack of players making the step up into Saints 1st team has got to raise doubts as to the system in place there. Same could be said for Dunfermline. In comparison, in recent years the Dundee youth team has produced the likes of Langfield, Soutar, Wilkie, Mair, Linn, Dixon, MacDonald, Robertson and Deasley to mention just a few which shows at least that part of the club has worked well if not some of the other parts.

Looking at this from a neutral's point of view, I think that if OC thought he had good enough players in the youth team then he would play them. I was at the Dundee vs Saints u19 game on Sunday which finished 4-0 to Dundee and I'd say that only Barr and maybe Doris showed any promise. The rest looked very poor TBH. I think a successful youth policy usually only provides 1 or 2 players for the first team a season as there is a huge jump in standard. Although Barr looked quite good in the second half, he looks a bit lightweight.