Summer 2025 transfer window


blueheaven

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Assuming most transfer talk from this point on will be for the summer window, so kicking off a new thread to look ahead. There are 26 players whose deals with Saints are due to expire this summer (all highlighted in orange below). Here's the squad situation as it stands:

 

Goalkeepers 

Andy Fisher - 2025 - on loan from Swansea City

Kyle Thomson - 2025(?) - on loan at St Andrews United

Josh Rae - 2026 - on loan at Raith Rovers

Ross Sinclair - 2026

Craig Hepburn - 2027

 

Defenders/wing backs

Sam Curtis - 2025 - on loan from Sheffield United

Zach Mitchell - 2025 - on loan from Charlton Athletic

Barry Douglas - 2025

Sam McClelland - 2025

Bayley Klimionek - 2025 - on loan at Civil Service Strollers

Liam Parker - 2025 - on loan at Cove Rangers

Joe Ellison - 2025

Scott Bright - 2025(?) - on loan at Brechin City

Bozo Mikulic - 2026

Daniels Balodis - 2026

Andre Raymond - 2026 - on loan at Dunfermline Athletic

 

Midfielders/wingers

Max Kucheriavyi - 2025

Matt Smith - 2025

Cammy MacPherson2025 - on loan at Tampa Bay Rowdies

Sven Sprangler - 2025

Graham Carey - 2025

Drey Wright - 2025

Elliot Watt - 2025 - on loan from Burton Albion

Stephen Duke-McKenna - 2025 - on loan from Harrogate Town

Alex Ferguson - 2025 - on loan at Forfar Athletic

Arran Cocks - 2025 - on loan at Jeanfield Swifts

Ben McCrystal - 2025 - on loan at Berwick Rangers

Jason Holt - 2026

Jonathan Svedberg - 2026

Josh McPake - 2026

Fran Franczak - 2026

Taylor Steven - 2026

Victor Griffith - 2026

Aaron Essel - 2027 - on loan at North Texas SC

 

Forwards

Nicky Clark - 2025

Benjamin Kimpioka - 2025

Stevie May - 2025 - on loan at Livingston

Jackson Mylchreest - 2025

Adam McMillan - 2025

Adama Sidibeh - 2026

Uche Ikpeazu - 2026

Makenzie Kirk - 2026

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The squad could well be decimated, especially if we go down. I'd hope Adam would get the chequebook out to keep Fisher, Mitchell, Sprangler, Wright and Duke-McKenna. I know it won't happen, but offloading the higher-paid old guys would be worth it.

Fingers tightly crossed for avoiding relegation and having a better chance of holding on to those boys.

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I'd love for us to hold on to Fisher, but financially it's not feasible. If he's far out of the picture at Swansea, maybe they'd agree to another years loan. That's the only way I could imagine it happening.

Mitchell the same, you'd sign him up in a second. But I think Charlton have plans for him to progress to the first team. Quite rightly, I think he's ready for it.

I can't imagine Clark staying. He certainly isn't going to get an offer with the crazy amount he's reportedly on at the moment.

May you'd think, would be off. Benji away, along with Matt Smith, Max, MacPherson, McClelland. I've no idea about the younger lads.

I wouldn't mind offering Duke a permanent deal. The rest of the loanees will return to their clubs.

I'd offer deals to Sven, and Douglas, as much for his influence off the field as well as on, I'd give Carey another year, also Drey.

It basically means that another big rebuild is needed in the summer.

A long way from the days when Tommy said he only needed to add one or two.

Edited by Gekko
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59 minutes ago, Gekko said:

I'd love for us to hold on to Fisher, but financially it's not feasible. If he's far out of the picture at Swansea, maybe they'd agree to another years loan. That's the only way I could imagine it happening.

Mitchell the same, you'd sign him up in a second. But I think Charlton have plans for him to progress to the first team. Quite rightly, I think he's ready for it.

I can't imagine Clark staying. He certainly isn't going to get an offer with the crazy amount he's reportedly on at the moment.

May you'd think, would be off. Benji away, along with Matt Smith, Max, MacPherson, McClelland. I've no idea about the younger lads.

I wouldn't mind offering Duke a permanent deal. The rest of the loanees will return to their clubs.

I'd offer deals to Sven, and Douglas, as much for his influence off the field as well as on, I'd give Carey another year, also Drey.

It basically means that another big rebuild is needed in the summer.

A long way from the days when Tommy said he only needed to add one or two.

I think that's exactly my thoughts too. This time last season I was on the fence about keeping Carey, but this year I'd definitely want to give him another year, even if it's only to be used as an impact sub.

I see Wright and Sprangler as the important ones to tie up and even if we go down I'd be tempted to give them another year on their Premiership wages, perhaps with a break clause for either party if we don't manage to win promotion at the first time of asking. Duke-McKenna might be worth a deal if he fancies staying up here. Douglas might be worth another year but I reckon we'll be looking for younger options for the left side of defence. We should really be looking to get Kirk's deal extended too.

Presumably we'll also try to shift on some of the under-contract players who won't be wanted, i.e. McPake, Raymond, Essel, and possibly Ikpeazu and Rae/Sinclair?

I'd imagine some of the youngsters will be kept on, but for me the rest can go to make way for Simo's own signings. I'm quite excited to see what he does with this window. I expect we'll get quite a few interesting and unexpected additions coming in.

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7 minutes ago, Linky said:

Really concerns me that it looks like the manager has lost faith in some of the players he's signed already.

I don’t think any of them on loan are players he really wanted. It’s well known 3 players backed out after the Dundee game and we spent the window scrambling. 
 

Squad in general is full of crap or Shitebags as well. 

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Just think he's starting to panic and only rely on those he can 'trust'. We've seen this before. What do we do with players like Svedberg when they're contracted for another season but the manager doesn't want to play them?

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3 minutes ago, RandomGuy said:

He'll be doing it based on merit won't he? Both Watt and Svedberg played themselves out of contention.

I don't think you can write off a couple of players on the strength of about 100 odd minutes on the field . Although I haven't been impressed by either of them.

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Watt is only a loan so not too worried was probably a bit of a punt.

I'm hoping Svedberg maybe needs a rest (did he not come after playing a full season) / preseason to get up to speed.

Who knows Championship may be the level needed to acclimatise 

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2 hours ago, RandomGuy said:

He'll be doing it based on merit won't he? Both Watt and Svedberg played themselves out of contention.

Then why sign Svedberg? It was a Simo signing. A player he knew well. Both need time to acclimatise to the league. Can’t continue to do this players that, have at least shown themselves in the past to be decent - Smith, Raymond, etc

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22 minutes ago, Linky said:

Then why sign Svedberg? It was a Simo signing. A player he knew well. Both need time to acclimatise to the league. Can’t continue to do this players that, have at least shown themselves in the past to be decent - Smith, Raymond, etc

Because he thought Svedberg could improve us? He's talked about him being a goal threat when he gets near the box and he signed him on a 2yr deal for a reason I assume.

Raymond and Smith haven't proven to be decent at all. Both were massively lazy defensively and it's no coincidence at all our defence performances, for the most part, have improved without them playing. The January defeat to Dundee had Raymond not bothering to mark or track back at 2 of the goals at least, then we had the farce away to Hibs (I think, might have been Motherwell) where Smith is 8 yards deeper than the CBs having a casual stroll while they try to play a striker offside.

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2 hours ago, RandomGuy said:

Because he thought Svedberg could improve us? He's talked about him being a goal threat when he gets near the box and he signed him on a 2yr deal for a reason I assume.

Raymond and Smith haven't proven to be decent at all. Both were massively lazy defensively and it's no coincidence at all our defence performances, for the most part, have improved without them playing. The January defeat to Dundee had Raymond not bothering to mark or track back at 2 of the goals at least, then we had the farce away to Hibs (I think, might have been Motherwell) where Smith is 8 yards deeper than the CBs having a casual stroll while they try to play a striker offside.

Surely signing players and not playing them is…not a good thing. You’re saying Simo signed Svedberg because he thought he would improve us, and then doesn’t play him because he’s been poor. Something has gone wrong either way.

When Levein did this with McPake, he was rightly criticised for it.

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4 minutes ago, Linky said:

Surely signing players and not playing them is…not a good thing. You’re saying Simo signed Svedberg because he thought he would improve us, and then doesn’t play him because he’s been poor. Something has gone wrong either way.

When Levein did this with McPake, he was rightly criticised for it.

To me theres a difference between signing a guy from the Swedish top flight, giving him a few games and realising he needs a lot longer to adapt than expected, and signing a guy from Stirling Albion and knowing straight off the bat hes not a top flight player.

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5 hours ago, RandomGuy said:

To me theres a difference between signing a guy from the Swedish top flight, giving him a few games and realising he needs a lot longer to adapt than expected, and signing a guy from Stirling Albion and knowing straight off the bat hes not a top flight player.

Mcpake has been far more impressive than your saviour Taylor Steven when he’s been given game time, nita high at tbh, Steven is far too big around the hips, lacks any pace and agility 

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2 hours ago, dave mc said:

Mcpake has been far more impressive than your saviour Taylor Steven when he’s been given game time, nita high at tbh, Steven is far too big around the hips, lacks any pace and agility 

McPake has the benefit of barely playing, and when he does its in his strongest position in a team that's attacking against a side that's happy to let us have the ball. He looked impressive v United but ultimately flunked both shots from 16 yards by dragging shots to the near post when the back post area had a huge gap.

Steven has played left back more than right wing so far. Even on Saturday there he was playing right back for most of it.

You're not comparing them fairly.

Steven has been disappointing but he's not been given a chance to actually show what he has.

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9 hours ago, Linky said:

Surely signing players and not playing them is…not a good thing. You’re saying Simo signed Svedberg because he thought he would improve us, and then doesn’t play him because he’s been poor. Something has gone wrong either way.

When Levein did this with McPake, he was rightly criticised for it.

Simo has talked publicly about these players, which is a huge step up from what we have had in the previous managers.

Svedberg https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/football/st-johnstone/5213643/st-johnstone-simo-valakari-on-jonathan-svedberg/

Watt https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/football/st-johnstone/5215082/st-johnstone-elliot-watt-simo-valakari-recall/

Raymond https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/football/st-johnstone/5193794/st-johnstone-simo-valakari-andre-raymond-dunfermline-loan/

The last chat about Smith is a bit older though https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/sport/football/st-johnstone/5138426/matt-smith-st-johnstone-chat-clarity-plans/

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10 hours ago, Linky said:

Surely signing players and not playing them is…not a good thing. You’re saying Simo signed Svedberg because he thought he would improve us, and then doesn’t play him because he’s been poor. Something has gone wrong either way.

When Levein did this with McPake, he was rightly criticised for it.

I think it's early days for Svedberg and we need to wait and see. He arrived in a situation where we had no breathing space to wait for anyone to get up to speed and for me he's looked a little lost, so putting guys like Holt and Carey back in was the right decision. Maybe Svedberg will come good, or maybe he's just a bad signing, but I don't think we can say yet.

For me that's a bit different from McPake who wasn't even standing out for Stirling Albion and yet was handed a two-year deal at a top flight club, at a time when the budget was already extremely tight and we desperately needed first team standard players to take us into the season. Signings like McPake, Rae and Ikpeazu (along with the new contract for MacPherson) were just a massive waste of a small pot of money and Levein was rightly criticised for that.

Personally I'd have held on to Raymond for the second half of the season but it seems there may be off-the-pitch reasons for wanting to move him on, in which case I can't really argue with that.

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While it will all come down to the budget at the end of the day, a major part will be in what direction does Simo wish to take the team? 

Some of Levein's last signings were youngsters with one eye on along with a lot of hope for the future.   Will Simo look to blood more youngsters amongst the team to prepare them for the next season back in the premiership?  

Off the loanees only Fisher, Curtis, Mitchell and Duke-McKenna have done enough to warrant consideration.  Fisher, Mitchell would be outside our abilities to pursue in my opinion.  

The out of contract players, I'd offer Sprangler, Wright new contracts.  I'm on the fence regarding Carey.  Had McClelland shown enough improvement before his injury to be vying for a first team place.  

I hope the staff have been keeping an eye on our on-loan players so have an idea whether the likes of Parker, Klimionak, McCrystal, Crocks, Mylchreest, McMillan have progressed and could be a member of the squad.  

As for those under contract, Uche may be valuable in that division.  Holt, I'm not a fan.

Sinclair would be a year removed from his injury and he could still be a very good keeper at that level.  

We'd need to add a left back, a creative midfielder and a winger.  

Further changes would be removing Kirk and Cleland and bringing in Simo's own staff as neither have shown they can develop players.   

 

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I can't see many of the youngsters being kept , I don't think any of them have set the heather in fire out on loan. Not sure if anyone keeps an eye on them since Craig left. Alistair Stevenson was in charge of bringing them into the club but don't know who managed them since Liam left or who will advise Simo on who to keep .

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