The Road Ahead!

[Kat71]

6 hours ago, CAH said:

I agree that the squad is too weak in terms of quality & quantity as you say but surely 'mindset' is the responsibility of the manager who has to get them fired up to fight every week??

Agree completely, also it’s all about personal opinions and I personally feel that Simo isn’t up to the job. He’s showing a lot of inconsistencies with team selection and substitutions.

[Linky]

Don't want to be that guy (ok, I do) but our two best players yesterday were Ikpeazu and McPake who have been slated all season as some sort of demonstration that Levein was single handedly trying to destroy the club. Put him with Kirk and Sanders, who we at least got some money for, and you've got a decent team....if you forget all the other areas of the pitch....and the terrible tactics....

[RandomGuy]

11 minutes ago, Linky said:

Don't want to be that guy (ok, I do) but our two best players yesterday were Ikpeazu and McPake who have been slated all season as some sort of demonstration that Levein was single handedly trying to destroy the club. Put him with Kirk and Sanders, who we at least got some money for, and you've got a decent team....if you forget all the other areas of the pitch....and the terrible tactics....

Tbf on McPake Valakari made the point he needed to learn more than just cutting in and shooting, which a lot of fans of his previous clubs criticised him for, and I think we have seen him do really well trying other things.

How much you believe Levein wanted to do similar is open to everyone's individual interpretation. 

The reported wages spent on already injured player in Ikpeazu was still a poor decision when the goalkeeping position seemed to be neglected, regardless of how Ikpeazu performs.

[Tattie-bogle]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy said:

The reported wages spent on already injured player in Ikpeazu was still a poor decision when the goalkeeping position seemed to be neglected, regardless of how Ikpeazu performs.

Maybe a bit unfair to level the goalkeeping situation entirely at leveins door. Given that it seems to be the general consensus that getting Scotland number one was blocked at a board level. Granted hindsight is 20/20 and it probably looked more of a risk then than it does now but still...

If that is the case and that type of shenanigans was going on at the time along with the rumours of budgets being held back then others just as culpable seems to be avoiding criticism and should never darken our doors again as well.

 

[sixties saintee]

1 hour ago, Tattie-bogle said:

Maybe a bit unfair to level the goalkeeping situation entirely at leveins door. Given that it seems to be the general consensus that getting Scotland number one was blocked at a board level. Granted hindsight is 20/20 and it probably looked more of a risk then than it does now but still...

If that is the case and that type of shenanigans was going on at the time along with the rumours of budgets being held back then others just as culpable seems to be avoiding criticism and should never darken our doors again as well.

 

Disagree wae your first paragraph, but agree wae the rest.

[RandomGuy]

1 hour ago, Tattie-bogle said:

Maybe a bit unfair to level the goalkeeping situation entirely at leveins door. Given that it seems to be the general consensus that getting Scotland number one was blocked at a board level.

I can't see that being true at all.

Craig Gordon was Hearts number one again before this season even started.

[blueheaven]

23 hours ago, Linky said:

Don't want to be that guy (ok, I do) but our two best players yesterday were Ikpeazu and McPake who have been slated all season as some sort of demonstration that Levein was single handedly trying to destroy the club. Put him with Kirk and Sanders, who we at least got some money for, and you've got a decent team....if you forget all the other areas of the pitch....and the terrible tactics....

I think if you ask why it's taken until now for Ikpeazu and McPake to be starting games, you may find some justification for that criticism of Levein. I'm not sure the fact that they've started in one win, at a time when the team is still seriously adrift at the bottom of the league, suddenly makes Levein a master of the transfer market.

Aside from that I don't think anyone ever denied that Levein signed some reasonable players. His inability to build a balanced, functioning squad was a far bigger issue than his ability to identify decent individuals.

 

21 hours ago, Tattie-bogle said:

Maybe a bit unfair to level the goalkeeping situation entirely at leveins door. Given that it seems to be the general consensus that getting Scotland number one was blocked at a board level. Granted hindsight is 20/20 and it probably looked more of a risk then than it does now but still...

If that is the case and that type of shenanigans was going on at the time along with the rumours of budgets being held back then others just as culpable seems to be avoiding criticism and should never darken our doors again as well.

 

I've never seen any manager make more of a mess of our goalkeeping situation than Craig Levein did last summer. I think there's a very strong argument for saying that is the single biggest reason for us being bottom of the league.

I'd still happily swap the contracts of Ikpeazu, McPake, MacPherson and Rae for the services of one good goalkeeper who could have played for us all season.

 

[Mizfit]

Craig Leveins spell at us mirrored his final hearts spell, including making an arse of the goalkeeping situation.

[Hendo]

My concern is that we've not seen enough of the teams that Simon would like to play due to, initially, lack of squad depth & quality, and then injury.

 

I believe someone did the count and we have 15 players out of contract. I would keep three of them. I'm interested to see if we hit the ground running with signings. We have to sign players that give us at least the prospect of getting out of the Championship. I think attacking the right players is easier, but not easy. 

 

There needs to be 5 or 6 signings pretty much as soon as the window opens to give us an idea of what's happening. Relegation hasn't fallen out of the sky, so I think it's fair to expect we have a shopping list prepared. 

[garydavidson]

St Johnstone manager Simo Valakari tells BBC Scotland: "It was not good enough for a long time because the table doesn't lie. It really, really hurts.

"We are crying tonight and tomorrow but always looking forward. This season is history. We need to change things and get this beautiful club back to winning ways.

"It's hard to play in relegation battles but it's even harder to play for promotion .That's what our aim is and that's what we start doing the day after tomorrow. It's a big, big job and will require a lot of effort every day.

"We can't have off days. We already started preparing, but we wanted to fight to stay in the Premiership. No excuses, we were not good enough.

"Numerous things need to change - some big, some small. It's more how you sustain this level and effort every match. Our weaknesses have been too big."

Asked if he expects to stay in charge next season, Valakari replies: "Things need to change and we are starting this change. We can't anymore like it has been three or four years flirting with relegation. It needs to go back to being successful and being more stable.

"I don't need to make any decisions. I want to stay. I want to rebuild this club and be successful with this club."

[Tricky6]

Scary as it sounds (cause the standard is woeful), we need to firstly look at the other premiership teams and championships teams released or out of contract players…there will be guys in there capable of doing a job.

[MySpazz]

2 hours ago, Hendo said:

My concern is that we've not seen enough of the teams that Simon would like to play due to, initially, lack of squad depth & quality, and then injury.

 

I believe someone did the count and we have 15 players out of contract. I would keep three of them. I'm interested to see if we hit the ground running with signings. We have to sign players that give us at least the prospect of getting out of the Championship. I think attacking the right players is easier, but not easy. 

 

There needs to be 5 or 6 signings pretty much as soon as the window opens to give us an idea of what's happening. Relegation hasn't fallen out of the sky, so I think it's fair to expect we have a shopping list prepared. 

15 players out of contract

and probably another 10 who would rather walk away than take the pay cut they'll take for the championship

[Graeme S]

Don't think we can look ahead without understanding where we came from and learning from our mistakes. The utter, utter mismanagement of the club over the last 10+ years is astonishing and I personally will never forgive the Davidson's, Flaherty's, Grieve's, Levein's and Bairn Broon's that got us to this place. Almost every player brought in since 2019 has been a downgrade of what's gone before. Ask yourself if the worst Tommy Wright team could beat a Davidson, MacLean, Levein or Valakari best team and the answer is invariably yes. 

Off the field has been a shambles as well, the Sandford/Dailly "deal" springs to mind, and was there not a sponsorship deal that wound up costing the club money? Mismanagement 101. 

Now there is a generation of the fanbase who have only ever known Premier League football, and the odd "away day" at Brechin, Forfar, Ayr, Stranraer, Dumbarton, Morton, etc was seen as a bit different and fun. From someone who was watching Saints when we were the 30th team of 38 in Scottish football, it wasn't FUN playing in broken down grounds (and I include Muirton latterly) in p*ssing rain on a cold, dark Wednesday night. 

I think this is a misplaced view which the club has also bought into - "a season in the lower league will be fun, we'll enjoy winning every week and it'll be a reset". Inverness, Hamilton, Hibs, Rainjurs, Falkirk, and Livi (so far) and many other clubs took more than one attempt to get out of the Championship. United this season were the exception, not the rule. 

At my age, I've no inclination to watch games played in broken down stadiums with crappy pitches (again, include McDiarmid) and centre halves with broken noses, tattoos and the striker's b*locks in his fist at corner kicks. It's not pretty, it's not attractive football (generally) and positively not FUN. 

I think we, as a club and as a fanbase, are in for a rude awakening, if Simo couldn't get his first choices in January because of our league position, is the choice going to be any better in the summer? 

I remember being at Clydebank under Sturrock, with photocopied programmes, and Sloop was actually standing on the terracing coaching on the team and there was no fans within 50 feet of him (yes, ref stopped game and ordered him back to the dugout).

I hope everyone else is right and I'm wrong - I hope Simo's the guy, I hope there's a fantastic "rebuild", I hope we bounce straight back up, and I hope it is FUN. But, most of all, I never want to see a period of mismanagement the likes of which has brought us to this sad point, ever again. 

Onwards and upwards, bring on the fun and entertainment then. 

 

Edited May 15, 2025 by Graeme S

[RandomGuy]

Think the games different now, financially relegated sides get so much money in parachute payments that you have huge financial advantages for years.

We probably want County to beat Livi in the play off for that season, as that plus Roy MacGregor being willing to write off £2m+ losses every season mean County would be almost certs for the title.

Structure of the club needs to be right from now on.

[Tattie-bogle]

11 minutes ago, Graeme S said:

Don't think we can look ahead without understanding where we came from and learning from our mistakes. The utter, utter mismanagement of the club over the last 10+ years is astonishing and I personally will never forgive the Davidson's, Flaherty's, Grieve's, Levein's and Bairn Broon's that got us to this place. Almost every player brought in since 2019 has been a downgrade of what's gone before. Ask yourself if the worst Tommy Wright team could beat a Davidson, MacLean, Levein or Valakari best team and the answer is invariably yes. 

Off the field has been a shambles as well, the Sandford/Dailly "deal" springs to mind, and was there not a sponsorship deal that wound up costing the club money? Mismanagement 101. 

Now there is a generation of the fanbase who have only ever known Premier League football, and the odd "away day" at Brechin, Forfar, Ayr, Stranraer, Dumbarton, Morton, etc was seen as a bit different and fun. From someone who was watching Saints when we were the 30th team of 38 in Scottish football, it wasn't FUN playing in broken down grounds (and I include Muirton latterly) in p*ssing rain on a cold, dark Wednesday night. 

I think this is a misplaced view which the club has also bought into - "a season in the lower league will be fun, we'll enjoy winning every week and it'll be a reset". Inverness, Hamilton, Hibs, Rainjurs, Falkirk, and Livi (so far) and many other clubs took more than one attempt to get out of the Championship. United this season were the exception, not the rule. 

At my age, I've no inclination to watch games played in broken down stadiums with crappy pitches (again, include McDiarmid) and centre halves with broken noses, tattoos and the striker's b*locks in his fist at corner kicks. It's not pretty, it's not attractive football (generally) and positively not FUN. 

I think we, as a club and as a fanbase, are in for a rude awakening, if Simo couldn't get his first choices in January because of our league position, is the choice going to be any better in the summer? 

I remember being at Clydebank under Sturrock, with photocopied programmes, and Sloop was actually standing on the terracing coaching on the team and there was no fans within 50 feet of him (yes, ref stopped game and ordered him back to the dugout).

I hope everyone else is right and I'm wrong - I hope Simo's the guy, I hope there's a fantastic "rebuild", I hope we bounce straight back up, and I hope it is FUN. But, most of all, I never want to see a period of mismanagement the likes of which has brought us to this sad point, ever again. 

Onwards and upwards, bring on the fun and entertainment then. 

 

This has saved me a post.

Echos almost word for word what I was going to say.

For all the premiers faults the lower divisions are hell there is not one fun thing about it. This will likely be a very long road back as the novelty wears off round about November.

The 7 years it took the last time to come back honestly just about broke me as a fan, the year we won it could of been my last regular year had we not.

To be honest I'm not sure I can go through that again for more than a year.

[Maskrey]

Valakari is not the right man to get us out of the Championship.  There is very little between the teams down there and the bottom sides in the Prem.  A lot will depend on how much we invest and if we avoid massive cost cutting then we have a chance.  It is possible we could be down there for years though.  We need to bring in a shrewd operator who knows what needs to be done to get out of the league.

[garydavidson]

37 minutes ago, RandomGuy said:

Think the games different now, financially relegated sides get so much money in parachute payments that you have huge financial advantages for years.

We probably want County to beat Livi in the play off for that season, as that plus Roy MacGregor being willing to write off £2m+ losses every season mean County would be almost certs for the title.

Structure of the club needs to be right from now on.

I was thinking that as well, would we really want County or Dundee down with us? Might be hard for Livi to hold the squad together if they miss out on promotion. 

[garydavidson]

8 minutes ago, Maskrey said:

Valakari is not the right man to get us out of the Championship.  There is very little between the teams down there and the bottom sides in the Prem.  A lot will depend on how much we invest and if we avoid massive cost cutting then we have a chance.  It is possible we could be down there for years though.  We need to bring in a shrewd operator who knows what needs to be done to get out of the league.

We really need to come out of the division stronger than we are going into it. I don't buy into the needing someone who can just get out of the league. We need to win it and be in a place to strengthen to get back to operating around the top six rather than bottom three.

[HertsAgain]

3 minutes ago, Maskrey said:

Valakari is not the right man to get us out of the Championship.  There is very little between the teams down there and the bottom sides in the Prem.  A lot will depend on how much we invest and if we avoid massive cost cutting then we have a chance.  It is possible we could be down there for years though.  We need to bring in a shrewd operator who knows what needs to be done to get out of the league.

Exactly my view.  A tough manager who knows the league and the game here who is going to make us above all else a side that's hard to beat and feared because of a take-no-prisoners, leave-it-all-out-there, all-for-one-one-for-all attitude (Tommy Wright 2.0!?).  Almost like we need to take a leaf out of the Gretna book - attract the best players in the division to get the job done.

[blueheaven]

I thought I'd be gutted when we eventually got relegated but right now I just feel relieved that after all the glimmers of false hope it's finally confirmed and we can move on. Maybe I'll feel differently once the misery of playing in the Championship hits home, because playing in that league is certainly something I have absolutely no appetite for and it's imperative we hit the ground running so we can get out of it at the first attempt. I'm hoping Ross County or Dundee win the play-off because it would be a big boost to us not to be joined down there by one of the teams that finished above us this season.

I think we're going into a really poor league and if we can't cobble together a strong push for promotion then there's going to be something seriously wrong. For me, Simo still has my backing to take charge of the re-build job over the summer, but in my view there's no wriggle room for a season of consolidation or readjustment or anything like that: we simply have to win that league, and if it starts to look like that's not going to happen then there will need to be a change made early enough to turn that around.

[Ritspeed]

Now the boil has been lanced I am feeling relaxed and optimistic, and, after reading Valakari's post match comments, even a bit encouraged.  Maybe relegation is a necessary part of the rebuild and a break from the recent past.  Unlike some forum members I believe Simo is the manager to construct the rebuild.  He will study the Championship and be well aware what is required to get out of it.

[Dooj]

I'm happy to give Simo a chance, but need to see a strong start to the season. I'm not optimistic about coming straight back up - it's not an easy division to get out of as realistically you need to win it, with the play-off route so much in favour of the premier team. But I want to see progress, particularly in terms of strengthening the team, bringing through younger players. If no signs of that by, say, October/November then need to look elsewhere. Key is that board need to back Simo and they need to assess whether players genuinely want to play for him and each other; if that's not happening that is a big red flag for me, regardless of how good they are individually.

[GOB10]

1 hour ago, HertsAgain said:

Exactly my view.  A tough manager who knows the league and the game here who is going to make us above all else a side that's hard to beat and feared because of a take-no-prisoners, leave-it-all-out-there, all-for-one-one-for-all attitude (Tommy Wright 2.0!?).  Almost like we need to take a leaf out of the Gretna book - attract the best players in the division to get the job done.

Give big dunc Ferguson a call

[RandomGuy]

1 hour ago, HertsAgain said:

Exactly my view.  A tough manager who knows the league and the game here who is going to make us above all else a side that's hard to beat and feared because of a take-no-prisoners, leave-it-all-out-there, all-for-one-one-for-all attitude (Tommy Wright 2.0!?).  Almost like we need to take a leaf out of the Gretna book - attract the best players in the division to get the job done.

Tommy Wright got sacked because he was going to fail to get Kilmarnock promoted from the Championship. 

I love the guy but some folk have built him up to levels he just never actually reached. He signed plenty of pea hearted shite players and was often bailed out by players whod been there for the best part of a decade

[Graeme S]

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy said:

Tommy Wright got sacked because he was going to fail to get Kilmarnock promoted from the Championship. 

I love the guy but some folk have built him up to levels he just never actually reached. He signed plenty of pea hearted shite players and was often bailed out by players whod been there for the best part of a decade

Not taking issue with Tommy, the most successful manager in the club's history. He fitted well at Saints, not so much at Killie and paid the price for short termism (if that's a word) 

Yes, he signed a lot of diddies and sh*tebags, and, as you say, was bailed out by players that had been there for a decade - the point being that he HAD players that had been there for a decade, and were there because they were happy and wanted to be there, but the simple fact that he actually had backup is more than what we have currently, and have had for a while. 

It just seemed better organised, we had backups and sometimes backups to backups, all, apparently done on a shoestring. Interesting that organisation seemed to disappear when he left - another sign of what he was doing behind the scenes? I genuinely don't know.