Time for Levein to go

[Northern saint]

I was criticised for saying I ranked Levein as 3 out of ten on my report card.  I'd be down to two today.  We can bemoan the fact that players like Mahon, Cleery, Eetu, even Bair had few opportunities to develop when given a chance.  I'm not hitching the season getting injury prone players back.  They'll not be match fit and they'll be injured soon again.  Many wanted Steven back in January as we cried out for some pace out wide.  

Levein had a limited bounce but it's all deflated.  What is Kirk's role?  

It seems that Geoff hadn't updated his managers book since he left.  12 years ago, Levein may have had something, but his recent history is poor and is being repeated here.  

There will be no change unfortunately.  I don't think anyone arriving now would be able to make any changes to salvage the season but would learn the players to keep in the championship.  

May in midfield, like many older strikers could be good but he needs more discipline in that role as he tends to run around like a headless chicken, too often.  That would bring us back to our coaching and we seem incapable of good coaching.  Dire days ahead.

 

[Gekko]

2 hours ago, Maskrey said:

You are living in a fantasy world if you think any new owners are going to have a passion for St Johnstone.  Any new owners/investment in a Scottish club is more likely to be a vanity project.  It’s a play thing to look good in front of their equally rich friends by owning a sports team on the cheap.  If we fall into the wrong hands it could be the end of us.  Geoff Brown wants his money nothing more nothing less.  This is a really dangerous time for Scottish clubs who are being invested in by foreign owners as you never know the mess that will be left behind when they have had enough.

When I say passion, I mean a non profit making project, rather than somebody having a passion for St. Johnstone.

We lucked out when we got Geoff in that regard.

It's not often a true fan takes over their local team with the club's best interests in mind.

On the subject of Geoff, I don't believe that he's only after his money. It's been reported that there have been bids for the club, but all they wanted to do was asset strip and make a quick buck.

If he'd just wanted his cash back, he would have taken one of them on and not bothered about the consequences.

Isn't he giving all the proceeds of the sale to a local project anyway?

So, you call it vanity, I'm saying passion, but it's really the same thing. We're just using different terms.

The only reason a bunch of Americans would want the club is either because they can brag about it to their mates, whether that be for business purposes or just for the fun of it, or they really, genuinely, fancy giving it a go.

With the exception of asset stripping, there's no money to be made in football, not only with us, but anywhere.

Even the big clubs in England rarely make a profit. In fact, with the profit and sustainability rules, they're penalised if their outgoings are a lot more than their incomings.

Everton, Forest and now probably Leicester, have had the book thrown at them because of this.

Also, how much have Rangers lost over the years? And there are not many clubs who can match their resources and fanbase.

So, these ideas of "Nobody will buy Saints because there's no money in it", or "they'll be in a lower league, so they won't buy" don't add up if you look at it from a purely financial point of view.

Yes, they might prefer having a Premiership club, but it'll be for the exposure and prestige of that rather than about purely profits.

It's extremely difficult to make money by owning a Scottish football club, and if that's all you want, then there are far easier ways to do so.

[PSJ.84]

43 minutes ago, Gekko said:

On the subject of Geoff, I don't believe that he's only after his money. It's been reported that there have been bids for the club, but all they wanted to do was asset strip and make a quick buck.

If he'd just wanted his cash back, he would have taken one of them on and not bothered about the consequences.

Isn't he giving all the proceeds of the sale to a local project anyway?

Yep - net proceeds are going to Saints’ Community Trust. Extremely unfair on Geoff - and just wrong - to say that the money is all he’s interested in. 

[Gekko]

22 minutes ago, PSJ.84 said:

Yep - net proceeds are going to Saints’ Community Trust. Extremely unfair on Geoff - and just wrong - to say that the money is all he’s interested in. 

Yeah, I thought it was something like that.

It's a really generous offer when you think about it. Not even just a percentage of the sale but the full proceeds.

Not many would do that.

Fair play and respect.

[RandomGuy]

Geoff Brown having the final say on who buys the club is the only reason I'm vaguely positive it'll work out alright.

[Cagey]

3 hours ago, RandomGuy said:

Geoff Brown having the final say on who buys the club is the only reason I'm vaguely positive it'll work out alright.

Geoff brought in Le vein so I am not that confident about him making the right choice now.

[rik2304]

1 hour ago, Cagey said:

Geoff brought in Le vein so I am not that confident about him making the right choice now.

This is a bit different. And Stan was likely involved in that as well. 

[slf]

 No

[MySpazz]

Levein has done as well as anyone with the resources could have done  - we won't be going automatically down, but might need to play off to prove our status.

 

[RandomGuy]

10 hours ago, Cagey said:

Geoff brought in Le vein so I am not that confident about him making the right choice now.

On paper levein made a lot of sense at the time, and it's still one I dont think you criticise the club for no matter how it turns out.

[pezza70]

23 minutes ago, RandomGuy said:

On paper levein made a lot of sense at the time, and it's still one I dont think you criticise the club for no matter how it turns out.

I agree he ticked the boxes that we needed at the time, will he keep us up, I honestly don’t know, but we are a team that can’t score and clean sheets are something we can’t seem to keep either at present.

[blueheaven]

On 4/1/2024 at 8:08 AM, Gekko said:

He also said that he didn't think he was ready for it, in a press interview! But thought he couldn't turn it down when offered.

Surely, if he'd said this to Steve Brown, and I presume the chairman would know this since it was public knowledge, he should have then searched elsewhere, or could he be bothered?

Remember his "If he doesn't work out, it's not my problem" line on the pitch when he was leaving at the end of last season. That sums it up.

100% this. Getting the appointment right after sacking Davidson was absolutely critical for Saints, and Steve Brown clearly just couldn't be arsed with it. MacLean got the job just because he happened to be there. You couldn't even say Macca got the job because he did especially well in his interim period. Anyone watching those games could see that there were red flags even then. Sticking him in until the end of the season made sense but we should have used that period to do our due diligence and find the right guy to take over in the summer. Macca could always have kept his job on the coaching staff if the club wanted to give him a chance, instead of pushing him into taking a number one job he clearly had no appetite or aptitude for.

 

[blueheaven]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy said:

On paper levein made a lot of sense at the time, and it's still one I dont think you criticise the club for no matter how it turns out.

I wanted to be positive about Levein and give him a chance but for me it just never sat well and he's turned out to be completely the wrong fit for the club. I don't really buy into it making a lot of sense at the time. Bringing him back to this level was a big gamble. He made a big mess of his last stint at Hearts, it's a very long time since he was a success at our level and bringing Kirk with him meant putting a Highland League manager in charge of a Premiership club's training. 

I still think back to those opening interviews he gave, where he didn't mention Saints at all, expressed no excitement for the job or opportunity, and just said he came because Geoff asked him and he likes the people here. He just seemed way too relaxed about the whole thing, and he still does. Is he hungry for this job and does he understand the ambitions of St Johnstone? There would have been younger, hungrier, more ambitious managers absolutely desperate for the chance to come to this club. I wonder how many of those guys Geoff Brown even spoke to?

Compare Levein to everything we know about Derek McInnes - the attitude, the work he puts in, the strategy he has. That's someone running a club that should be one of our close competitors in this league, and I just don't think Levein comes even close to matching him. That's why clubs like Killie (and Dundee) have overtaken us when they never should have. All of this has just been so annoyingly avoidable.

[Cagey]

1 hour ago, blueheaven said:

I wanted to be positive about Levein and give him a chance but for me it just never sat well and he's turned out to be completely the wrong fit for the club. I don't really buy into it making a lot of sense at the time. Bringing him back to this level was a big gamble. He made a big mess of his last stint at Hearts, it's a very long time since he was a success at our level and bringing Kirk with him meant putting a Highland League manager in charge of a Premiership club's training. 

I still think back to those opening interviews he gave, where he didn't mention Saints at all, expressed no excitement for the job or opportunity, and just said he came because Geoff asked him and he likes the people here. He just seemed way too relaxed about the whole thing, and he still does. Is he hungry for this job and does he understand the ambitions of St Johnstone? There would have been younger, hungrier, more ambitious managers absolutely desperate for the chance to come to this club. I wonder how many of those guys Geoff Brown even spoke to?

Compare Levein to everything we know about Derek McInnes - the attitude, the work he puts in, the strategy he has. That's someone running a club that should be one of our close competitors in this league, and I just don't think Levein comes even close to matching him. That's why clubs like Killie (and Dundee) have overtaken us when they never should have. All of this has just been so annoyingly avoidable.

Ta saved me the trouble of responding to Random.

[andrew]

2 hours ago, blueheaven said:

I wanted to be positive about Levein and give him a chance but for me it just never sat well and he's turned out to be completely the wrong fit for the club. I don't really buy into it making a lot of sense at the time. Bringing him back to this level was a big gamble. He made a big mess of his last stint at Hearts, it's a very long time since he was a success at our level and bringing Kirk with him meant putting a Highland League manager in charge of a Premiership club's training. 

I still think back to those opening interviews he gave, where he didn't mention Saints at all, expressed no excitement for the job or opportunity, and just said he came because Geoff asked him and he likes the people here. He just seemed way too relaxed about the whole thing, and he still does. Is he hungry for this job and does he understand the ambitions of St Johnstone? There would have been younger, hungrier, more ambitious managers absolutely desperate for the chance to come to this club. I wonder how many of those guys Geoff Brown even spoke to?

Compare Levein to everything we know about Derek McInnes - the attitude, the work he puts in, the strategy he has. That's someone running a club that should be one of our close competitors in this league, and I just don't think Levein comes even close to matching him. That's why clubs like Killie (and Dundee) have overtaken us when they never should have. All of this has just been so annoyingly avoidable.

And St Mirren and Motherwell. Four clubs we were consistently outperforming. We know where it started to go wrong - SB gave up, leaving Flaherty and Davidson to wreak havoc and destroy our hard earned status, our squad and potentially our legacy. I can’t help but wonder if Geoff could have intervened and limited those two incompetent and wasteful chancers given that his son didn’t. Stan may be reducing costs and wages since he returned, but the damage was done by then. How many more years of poor, negative, defensive football do we have to suffer? New owners bring uncertainty rather than anticipation. They’re going to have to prove themselves and earn our support.

[Strawman]

Was Martindale ever really our first choice of new manager, the fact that only Levein and him were mentioned is a worry as don’t think he’d have been a great fix either.

I think every interview he does you can’t take seriously, it’s like he can’t be arsed and in his head I think he thinks he’s amusing.

In his very first interview he tried to tell us he was only at the game Cleland took charge of to watch Max and that he nearly left when he realised Max wasn’t playing. Of course he was there because he was invited by Geoff so why make that wee story up.
 

Somewhere in Levein s  head he wants us to think at that Tues night game, Geoff Brown looks over and turns to Roddy :

“ is that Craig Levein over there ?”

Roddy : “ aye I think it is “

Geoff : “ run over and see if he fancies the Manager job, our only other option, Livingston didn’t give us permission to speak to “

Roddy : “ he says he will take it, but only if he can bring some lad called Andy and it will be Andy does all the work, he only wants to mentor Max “

 

Edited April 2 by Strawman

[blueheaven]

43 minutes ago, Strawman said:

I think every interview he does you can’t take seriously, it’s like he can’t be arsed and in his head I think he thinks he’s amusing.

Totally agree. If a manager tries to be funny when things are going well, supporters will generally love it. But do that when things are going badly and it just looks like you don't give a sh*t.

Anyone else notice how much the activity on the touchline has changed recently as well? When he first arrived, him and Kirk were always pretty animated throughout the game. They'd be constantly discussing things, waving their arms around and pointing at things before doing nothing. Now they just skip straight to the doing nothing part.

 

[Stumpy1949]

21 hours ago, blueheaven said:

Totally agree. If a manager tries to be funny when things are going well, supporters will generally love it. But do that when things are going badly and it just looks like you don't give a sh*t.

Anyone else notice how much the activity on the touchline has changed recently as well? When he first arrived, him and Kirk were always pretty animated throughout the game. They'd be constantly discussing things, waving their arms around and pointing at things before doing nothing. Now they just skip straight to the doing nothing part.

 

I’m surprised you have time to notice that I can’t take my eyes off the scintillating play on the pitch😡 

[rik2304]

I mind when Stark would just stand on the sidelines with his arms folded looking like a pointless statue.

[blueheaven]

13 minutes ago, rik2304 said:

I mind when Stark would just stand on the sidelines with his arms folded looking like a pointless statue.

I saw Stark retired this week. Up until the last few years I always had him down as the worst Saints manager I'd seen. Nowadays I'm not so sure.

[RandomGuy]

19 hours ago, blueheaven said:

I saw Stark retired this week. Up until the last few years I always had him down as the worst Saints manager I'd seen. Nowadays I'm not so sure.

In all seriousness, where does Connolly rank?

[blueheaven]

26 minutes ago, RandomGuy said:

In all seriousness, where does Connolly rank?

Pretty near the bottom! But in my mind I tend to give Connolly a bit of a free pass as he inherited a mess, was given a massively reduced budget to try to rebuild an entire squad in one summer, and was kicked back out the door very quickly when it didn't work. A lot of parallels with Macca, really. But also like Macca I think Connolly made a few good signings (Dobbie, Sheerin, Rutkiewicz, Steven Anderson, Allan McGregor, even David Hannah).

On balance I'd probably still say Stark is the worst I've seen. He was here for three years, got us relegated, didn't even come close to mounting any sort of challenge to bring us back up, was crap in the cups, implemented a really half-arsed style of football, and often just seemed to want to sign all his old Celtic mates. Don't think he understood the club at all and he seemed to always think hovering around 2nd or 3rd in the First Division was OK for St Johnstone (unfortunately I feel there are a few parallels with Levein in that attitude).

[Radford 72]

59 minutes ago, RandomGuy said:

In all seriousness, where does Connolly rank?

You'd bracket Connolly with McClelland and MacLean, mistakes that were relatively quickly rectified.

Clark, Stark and Davidson weren't necessarily dreadful managers but were allowed to carry on for far too long.

Things started going downhill for Clark in the autumn of 2000 and by the spring of 2001 they probably should have been assessing things. Geoff Brown had stepped away from Saints at the time though and I think has said he'd have acted sooner than leaving it until the start of the following season. Like with Davidson, the club were too loyal because of past achievements. I think CD probably earned a chance after Kelty (despite the losing run it was part of) but the 7-0 at Celtic Park should have ended him, the players just weren't playing for him by that point.

Stark had a knack of getting a result when he needed it which always seemed to keep our promotion hopes alive, when the reality was that we'd never have the fight to win big games if it really mattered. There was never going to be a benefit to sacking him mid-season though so the missed opportunities were at the end of his first two campaigns.

It is hard to compare the first three against the latter three but Stark was clearly worse than Clark and Davidson, by miles, so your worst four in McDiarmid-era are:

McClelland, Stark, Connolly and MacLean.

I'll let others rank them in order of ineptitude.

[blueheaven]

2 hours ago, Radford 72 said:

You'd bracket Connolly with McClelland and MacLean, mistakes that were relatively quickly rectified.

Clark, Stark and Davidson weren't necessarily dreadful managers but were allowed to carry on for far too long.

Things started going downhill for Clark in the autumn of 2000 and by the spring of 2001 they probably should have been assessing things. Geoff Brown had stepped away from Saints at the time though and I think has said he'd have acted sooner than leaving it until the start of the following season. Like with Davidson, the club were too loyal because of past achievements. I think CD probably earned a chance after Kelty (despite the losing run it was part of) but the 7-0 at Celtic Park should have ended him, the players just weren't playing for him by that point.

Stark had a knack of getting a result when he needed it which always seemed to keep our promotion hopes alive, when the reality was that we'd never have the fight to win big games if it really mattered. There was never going to be a benefit to sacking him mid-season though so the missed opportunities were at the end of his first two campaigns.

It is hard to compare the first three against the latter three but Stark was clearly worse than Clark and Davidson, by miles, so your worst four in McDiarmid-era are:

McClelland, Stark, Connolly and MacLean.

I'll let others rank them in order of ineptitude.

I always felt the turning point for Sandy Clark was the O'Boyle-Thomas incident. Things seemed to go rapidly downhill for him after that. Not sure if the players turned against him for his part in that but certainly things took a turn for the worse. His budget also seemed to be cut fairly dramatically towards the end, as in his final pre-season he started signing over-the-hill guys like Falconer and Jackson.

To be honest, I'd say Stark and Davidson were both dreadful managers. Save for Davidson's very brief period where we did extraordinarily well, I struggle to think of anything positive to say about either of them.

I think you can probably sort our McDiarmid era managers into four different clumps. There's the very good ones (Wright, McInnes, Sturrock, Totten), the ones who were a bit of a mixed bag but gave us some really good times (Coyle, Lomas, Clark), the ones who were mistakes that were quickly gotten rid of (McClelland, MacLean, Connolly) and the ones that were just plain crap (Davidson, Stark). I've hung back on including Levein as he's still doing the job, but right now I suspect he'll end up in one of the latter two categories.

 

 

[Papa Jack]

57 minutes ago, blueheaven said:

I always felt the turning point for Sandy Clark was the O'Boyle-Thomas incident. Things seemed to go rapidly downhill for him after that. Not sure if the players turned against him for his part in that but certainly things took a turn for the worse. His budget also seemed to be cut fairly dramatically towards the end, as in his final pre-season he started signing over-the-hill guys like Falconer and Jackson.

To be honest, I'd say Stark and Davidson were both dreadful managers. Save for Davidson's very brief period where we did extraordinarily well, I struggle to think of anything positive to say about either of them.

I think you can probably sort our McDiarmid era managers into four different clumps. There's the very good ones (Wright, McInnes, Sturrock, Totten), the ones who were a bit of a mixed bag but gave us some really good times (Coyle, Lomas, Clark), the ones who were mistakes that were quickly gotten rid of (McClelland, MacLean, Connolly) and the ones that were just plain crap (Davidson, Stark). I've hung back on including Levein as he's still doing the job, but right now I suspect he'll end up in one of the latter two categories.

 

 

 Macca and McClelland better than Davidson....how soon we forget...