Saints v Livingston, 30/09/2023

[Muirton Saint]

23 minutes ago, blueheaven said:

At the end of last season we'd started giving over the Ormond Stand to charity and community groups and that seemed like a great idea for all parties. This season I don't think we've done anything like that at all. Other than one solitary game where season ticket holders get to bring a friend, what is the actual plan?

The club should be trying to do it on a more regular basis, be a decent way to attract younger kids to supporting the club. 

[Gas Monkey]

Crowd was 2691 you say? We had over 4000 against Livi mid way through last season, that’s a severe decline

[PSJ.84]

4 hours ago, blueheaven said:

East Stand looked emptier than usual from the Main Stand, particularly the FCU/scoreboard end.

Been a notable decrease in numbers from the FCU in the last few games, albeit one of those was against Rangers. Not sure if there’s anything to read into that or not. 

[PSJ.84]

2 hours ago, Gas Monkey said:

Crowd was 2691 you say? We had over 4000 against Livi mid way through last season, that’s a severe decline

Was the last game of the season and I’m pretty sure they gave out well over 1,000 tickets. The game midway through last season was about 2,900. 

[rik2304]

54 minutes ago, PSJ.84 said:

Been a notable decrease in numbers from the FCU in the last few games, albeit one of those was against Rangers. Not sure if there’s anything to read into that or not. 

Aye. They were in the other stand.

[Willie Peat]

5 hours ago, blueheaven said:

On the other hand, if we'd lost that play-off we might now be flailing around in the bottom half of the Championship, instead of still in the Premiership with a fighting chance of staying up. I really think we need to hold onto our top flight status at all costs. I'm not at all convinced that we'd find it easy to come back up if we went down, and the cut-backs would be severe. Just look at clubs like Hamilton, Dunfermline, Partick, ICT etc who have all found life really tough after going down.

For what it's worth I'm not convinced losing that play-off would have resulted in all that much of a clear-out anyway. I think Davidson would have held onto his job and been given a chance to get us back up, and we would have made exactly the same mistakes but just made them at a lower level with a lower budget and lower attendances.

I don't disagree with what you say. I just feel that if the worst had happened and, while it would  have been hard to take, it would have been an opportunity to start afresh with a new management team which would hopefully have been given a decent budget to work with. The attendances might not have been all that different if given a winning team. 

However, as you say, we would probably have still been stuck with the usual suspects, a low budget  and finished up in a situation similar to the clubs you mention. We'll never know.

[MySpazz]

On 9/30/2023 at 6:37 AM, PSJ.84 said:

Ferranti Thistle?

Ah yeah, that too, but, what about Annan didn't they get in at the same time?

[saintgscot]

On 10/1/2023 at 1:00 PM, Cagey said:

How could it be high if he won the ball that was on the ground. His trailing eg which was behind him may have touched the player but not enough to roll around and stay on the ground whilst ge ref looks at the screen. Livis tactics were to go to ground in the second half at every tackle and making a kicking action to the ref to try to get the player booked. Very cynical but it worked.

On yesterday's display Livi will be down their at the end of the season with their pitch giving them enough points to survive.

Yep I agree fully he won the ball clearly before any contact on the player if any. Also Nuble was after a free kick any time someone went near him 

[blueheaven]

On 10/2/2023 at 6:32 PM, Willie Peat said:

I don't disagree with what you say. I just feel that if the worst had happened and, while it would  have been hard to take, it would have been an opportunity to start afresh with a new management team which would hopefully have been given a decent budget to work with. The attendances might not have been all that different if given a winning team. 

However, as you say, we would probably have still been stuck with the usual suspects, a low budget  and finished up in a situation similar to the clubs you mention. We'll never know.

I definitely think there's something to be said for rebuilding in a lower league, clearing out the duds, getting back into a winning habit and coming back up with a clean slate. If it was done well/properly it could give the whole club a bit of a new lease of life. I do have major doubts about whether the club would get it right, though.

I think one of the things that really depresses me about going down is we've now had 14 consecutive years in the top flight, which is the best spell in our entire history, and we should have been able to carry on building on that and growing gradually stronger and really confirming our place as an established top flight club. Having to go down and start from scratch, yet again, like various yo-yo clubs keep having to do, after everything Tommy Wright and his predecessors had built, just feels like a massive let-down. It's just infuriating to think of how avoidable the decisions that have brought us to this point were. 

I know some people will say that, for a club of our size, it's inevitable that we'd end up going back down at one point or another - but I really disagree with that.

 

[SaintJet]

4 minutes ago, blueheaven said:

I definitely think there's something to be said for rebuilding in a lower league, clearing out the duds, getting back into a winning habit and coming back up with a clean slate. If it was done well/properly it could give the whole club a bit of a new lease of life. I do have major doubts about whether the club would get it right, though.

I think one of the things that really depresses me about going down is we've now had 14 consecutive years in the top flight, which is the best spell in our entire history, and we should have been able to carry on building on that and growing gradually stronger and really confirming our place as an established top flight club. Having to go down and start from scratch, yet again, like various yo-yo clubs keep having to do, after everything Tommy Wright and his predecessors had built, just feels like a massive let-down. It's just infuriating to think of how avoidable the decisions that have brought us to this point were. 

I know some people will say that, for a club of our size, it's inevitable that we'd end up going back down at one point or another - but I really disagree with that.

 

This is a great post BH.

Not building a solid foundation for the future after such a succesful period; this is the single biggest thing that drives me nuts. With some careful planning we should have been able to weather some thin spells. The spending last year was just nonsensical and we could all see where it was leading. The PR from the club has been abysmal over the the good years and we never truly capitalised on our success. We were always last to promote a new kit even after the double cup years which sums up our ambition.

Sadly I think it's too late to save us now and it's going  to be a long road back.

[blueheaven]

56 minutes ago, SaintJet said:

This is a great post BH.

Not building a solid foundation for the future after such a succesful period; this is the single biggest thing that drives me nuts. With some careful planning we should have been able to weather some thin spells. The spending last year was just nonsensical and we could all see where it was leading. The PR from the club has been abysmal over the the good years and we never truly capitalised on our success. We were always last to promote a new kit even after the double cup years which sums up our ambition.

Sadly I think it's too late to save us now and it's going  to be a long road back.

Thanks. It's sort of incredible to see how narrow some of the margins have been between success and failure, and how seemingly avoidable errors have had such a knock-on effect in sending us spiralling downwards. It took such a lot of time and effort and hard work to get Saints to where they were, but arguably only a few months to destroy.

I still think back to the two times when Saints' profile and pulling power was arguably at its very highest (after winning the Cup in 2014 and then after winning the Double) and on both occasions we basically did nothing to build or strengthen or try to attract new fans in the aftermath. The club must have seen that they'd missed opportunities in 2014 and yet they made the exact same mistakes a few years later. On both of those occasions we were about to head into Europe and yet our managers were given basically no funds to help us get through those games. It's frankly miraculous that in summer 2014, Tommy Wright was told he wasn't allowed to sign a single player, and we lost Stevie May early in the season, and yet we still somehow went on to finish fourth in the league.

And I still say Callum Davidson's decision to field a full strength team against Dundee United, in between the two games against LASK, directly resulted in us being knocked out of Europe, which resulted in us missing out on a huge amount of money, which in turn resulted in the successive relegation fights we've seen every year since. That one game against United still represents a massive turning point in this club's fortunes.

 

[rik2304]

Actually... giving Davidson access to MORE money is quite a scary thought.

[PSJ.84]

1 hour ago, blueheaven said:

It's frankly miraculous that in summer 2014, Tommy Wright was told he wasn't allowed to sign a single player, and we lost Stevie May early in the season, and yet we still somehow went on to finish fourth in the league.

And to do it while only scoring 34 goals is an astonishing - and underrated - piece of work. 

[Cagey]

4 hours ago, blueheaven said:

Thanks. It's sort of incredible to see how narrow some of the margins have been between success and failure, and how seemingly avoidable errors have had such a knock-on effect in sending us spiralling downwards. It took such a lot of time and effort and hard work to get Saints to where they were, but arguably only a few months to destroy.

I still think back to the two times when Saints' profile and pulling power was arguably at its very highest (after winning the Cup in 2014 and then after winning the Double) and on both occasions we basically did nothing to build or strengthen or try to attract new fans in the aftermath. The club must have seen that they'd missed opportunities in 2014 and yet they made the exact same mistakes a few years later. On both of those occasions we were about to head into Europe and yet our managers were given basically no funds to help us get through those games. It's frankly miraculous that in summer 2014, Tommy Wright was told he wasn't allowed to sign a single player, and we lost Stevie May early in the season, and yet we still somehow went on to finish fourth in the league.

And I still say Callum Davidson's decision to field a full strength team against Dundee United, in between the two games against LASK, directly resulted in us being knocked out of Europe, which resulted in us missing out on a huge amount of money, which in turn resulted in the successive relegation fights we've seen every year since. That one game against United still represents a massive turning point in this club's fortunes.

 

Fielding a full team against United was crazy as I think the majority on here said at the time. Defeat in that probably sapped confidence. 

If we had strengthened for Europe I think we could have got the group stages of the Conference league with the millions that would have given us would have set us up for life. It would also given us cover for the eventual loss of Kerr and McCann.

The only thing I would slightly disagree on was not taking the opportunities after the double. COVID robbed us being able to celebrate and appreciate the double and probably restricted Saints on capitalising on it.

[blueheaven]

8 minutes ago, Cagey said:

Fielding a full team against United was crazy as I think the majority on here said at the time. Defeat in that probably sapped confidence. 

Yep, and if you look at the times of LASK's goals in the second leg (72 and 84) I think it's pretty clear that our players were tiring on the night and that allowed LASK to go for the jugular in the last 20 minutes. I also think there's an argument that, had we invested in a good striker over that summer, we very possibly could have buried them in the first leg, given how we played over in Austria.

 

8 minutes ago, Cagey said:

The only thing I would slightly disagree on was not taking the opportunities after the double. COVID robbed us being able to celebrate and appreciate the double and probably restricted Saints on capitalising on it.

I think that's a fair comment, and yeah I agree there were issues with getting bums on seats with Covid as it was at that stage. But I still feel that if ever there was an opportunity to try to attract one or two players of a bit better quality to really give us a chance at kicking on as a club, then that was the time to do it. A few months down the line the club ended up spending the money anyway, but spent it on a raft of poor players to try to get us off the bottom of the league, instead of spending it on one or two to improve our chances in Europe. All in the past now but still irks me a bit. 😁

 

[garydavidson]

30 minutes ago, blueheaven said:

Yep, and if you look at the times of LASK's goals in the second leg (72 and 84) I think it's pretty clear that our players were tiring on the night and that allowed LASK to go for the jugular in the last 20 minutes. I also think there's an argument that, had we invested in a good striker over that summer, we very possibly could have buried them in the first leg, given how we played over in Austria.

Exactly this, that period of the United and LASK game made it clear Davidson had no flexibility or ability to change and I don't think there were many on here who didn't comment on it at the time.

[R.B.B:- Adz]

On 10/2/2023 at 2:22 PM, Gas Monkey said:

Crowd was 2691 you say? We had over 4000 against Livi mid way through last season, that’s a severe decline

Even worse when you look at the Championship yesterday and see Raith Rovers pushing nearly 4000 home fans with a match attendance of nearly 7000.

[garydavidson]

8 hours ago, R.B.B:- Adz said:

Even worse when you look at the Championship yesterday and see Raith Rovers pushing nearly 4000 home fans with a match attendance of nearly 7000.

I am sure Raith wouldn't be getting that level of support if they were bottom of the table, hadn't won a game and never looked like scoring. They also used the Dundee United ticket sales as a crutch to encourage home sales, a team that is also new to the league this season.