Double Winning St Johnstone FC Thread

[Mr Heliums]

"The club need to keep a hold of Alston […] to keep the midfield serviceable"

Written by Blair's dad I reckon.

[RandomGuy.]

Yes, it's not the best. Disappointing as I've enjoyed his other stuff and the other unknowns he'd been suggesting. 

Fwiw I did think Lindsay would be a decent signing for us, him or Joe Thomson at QOS. High energy grafters. 

[tree house tam]

Is this guy a Partick fan? Pretty clueless and writes like a cretin, if he isn't he fucking should be.

[Zamora Fan]

Stopped reading at the bit that called Easton a right back.

[capt_oats]

I enjoyed this from his Twitter feed a while back. Quoting me (a Motherwell fan) from a post on the County thread. I think he had been making all sorts of zany suggestions for them in the January window.

[The Saintee]

8 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

http://www.thefootballlife.co.uk/post/173256050836/st-johnstone-summer-scouting-report-2018/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Enjoyed these articles so far. Not read it yet so dunno how accurate it is, but been enjoying an outsiders view of other clubs so hopefully this is the same. 

Utter gash.

Guy's a moron.

[Radford]

His stuff on Saints is routinely dreadful. He helped spin the web of lies about our preparation for Europe last summer as well. He seems to hold it against Tommy Wright that fans called him out on it and wrote a piece in December basically advocating sacking him. He also appears to have an issue that the manager won't sign Boris Borisov from FK Boris based on a few Wyscout videos. Total slaver.

Although some of the names there are alright...

[The Marly]

15 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

http://www.thefootballlife.co.uk/post/173256050836/st-johnstone-summer-scouting-report-2018/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Enjoyed these articles so far. Not read it yet so dunno how accurate it is, but been enjoying an outsiders view of other clubs so hopefully this is the same. 

Jesus Christ Bawb - if you enjoy these articles then you're in a worse state than even I thought.  I will send help.

[RandomGuy.]

I'd been enjoying them due to the utter randoms he'd been suggesting, probably because I love signing folk like that on FM, tbh. Was quite looking forward to finding out which Bulgarian winger we should sign to replace MOH. 

[SaintDougie]

Punt that to the Terrible Journalism thread.

[RandomGuy.]

This Mique Messi rumour gathering strength, hope you're not bullshitting @Radford

On a more serious note, what's happened with Euan O'Reilly? Seems to have vanished, unless he's injured of course. 

Edited April 25, 2018 by RandomGuy.

[realmadrid]

This Mique Messi rumour gathering strength, hope you're not bullshitting [mention=6873]Radford[/mention]
On a more serious note, what's happened with Euan O'Reilly? Seems to have vanished, unless he's injured of course. 

He's injured.
He was there on Monday night but was only part of the back room team clearing up after the game.
He has been injured since February and should be back for the start of next season.

[Kyle]

1 hour ago, SaintDougie said:

Punt that to the Terrible Journalism thread.

I've got something else for the terrible journalism thread;

 

https://twitter.com/TheTwoPointOne/status/989054907977256960

Don't even know where to start here.

[RandomGuy.]

2 hours ago, Kyle said:

I've got something else for the terrible journalism thread;

 

https://twitter.com/TheTwoPointOne/status/989054907977256960

Don't even know where to start here.

Despise podcasts. What's the gist of it? 

[tree house tam]

2 hours ago, Kyle said:

I've got something else for the terrible journalism thread;

 

https://twitter.com/TheTwoPointOne/status/989054907977256960

Don't even know where to start here.

Got to the bit when Tam Scobbie was mentioned, that's plenty for me. 

[Crroma]

Despise podcasts. What's the gist of it? 

You despise podcasts? I mean f**k despise is a strong strong word.

[Kyle]

46 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Despise podcasts. What's the gist of it? 

It's half an hour of Tommy Wright bashing really. Signing policy is all wrong, tactics and coaching are all wrong, we don't develop players from within and we don't sign players with view to develop them long term. It's a cacophony of misconceptions and a lot of the stats used to make Wright look worse than he is, completely ignoring anything that views us more positively.

Wright is getting a harder and harder time from people who I think should know better to be honest. He has one of the smallest budgets in the league and has to be pragmatic to keep us competitive, but the armchair statisticians and the 'analysts' on twitter are increasingly using that as an excuse to have a go at him and to have a go at Saints generally. The podcast above, for example, acknowledges that we have the 2nd smallest budget, but then in the next breath questions why more St Johnstone fans aren't calling for Wright's head when we're sitting 8th in the table. We've achieved European football qualification  3 times out of 5 under Wright, won the cup and had 3 successive 4th places finishes prior to this season. Surely the manager has earned the right to have a less successful season (by budget standards we're actually still above where we should really be) and be allowed to try again next season?

It also talks a lot of nonsense about Wright's coaching which seems to stem from that Norwegian Celtic fan in the summer talking about us only playing 1 match and training for 10 days prior to playing Trakai. Anyone actually paying attention will know we played 3 matches (all of which against other clubs in the same European qualifying round as us) and trained for 3 full weeks going in Trakai. That falsehood seems to have stuck - they're happy to ignore our league finishing positions, our excellent form towards the end of most seasons under Wright and how well organised we are generally as a side, albeit not for large spells this season.

They talk generally about this being the first season we've really had to overhaul the squad and it's a big test for Wright, which isn't completely untrue, but they say they don't think he'll be able to 'turn things around' and we'll struggle once they're all gone. Fair enough we've struggled to replace May, Swanson and O'Halloran individually but we've always managed to adapt to losing them and the collective has maintained our position in the league. It's perhaps not so good to watch, but generally speaking Wright has done exceptionally well trying to patch us the side after we lose important players. He's also managed to bring in Shaughnessy for Wright, Fisher and then Foster for Mackay and they've not been anywhere near as missed as I think a lot of his feared they would be (although they are missed). 

The failure to bring in young players/develop our own is just shite really. Clark, Comrie, Kerr, Gordon, McCann, Kane have all come from our youth team and played at times this season. In terms of signings in the past, Anderson, Craig, Davidson, Wotherspoon Easton, Millar - effectively the backbone of our team - were all signed as young players and have stuck with us for a long time. Most of whom have spent the bulk of their playing career here. What more can you ask really? We've more recently brought in Scougall, Alston, Tanser, McClean and Hendry with a view to developing them. Perhaps we haven't sold as many as we would have liked, but we've developed most of those players into top 4 players as our league placings in the past have shown. The more experienced ones are maybe regressing a bit now, but it doesn't diminish what they achieved for us in the past. We seem to be getting bashed for showing loyalty to players, who in turn show loyalty to us.

They say that our signing strategy is wrong because all we do is sign experienced players. This season we've signed Scougall (24), Tanser (23), O'Halloran (27), Johnstone (22), McClean (19), Hendry (19), McMillan (29). Willock (21), Williams (23). 4 loan players, but two of them are out of contract at the end of the season and we could easily have been looking to sign them permanently in the summer. There's plenty of other examples from previous windows too. Fair enough we've supplemented the squad with some experience at times, but it's certainly not on the scale suggested in the podcast.

I remember Wright was a relatively popular manager in Scottish football when he first came in, but I think his age, pragmatism and general moaning has turned a lot of people off him. His moaning certainly grates on me at times, but you can't really question the guy's record in his time at Saints. We're in for a bumpy ride this summer trying to replace excellent players with passable (and probably cheaper) alternatives and you have to fear that it may be beyond Wright to find replacements who are capable of playing at the same standard as the ones he is losing. He does, however, deserve the chance to do so and then deserves the time to make things work if next season starts slowly. 

 

Sorry, that's a bit of a rant.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Kyle

[Costanza]

Hear, hear Kyle, excellently put. Agree that putting the boot into Wright seems to be a bit of a “thing” now. A bit of considered analysis like you have given definitely shows that up.

[RandomGuy.]

51 minutes ago, Kyle said:

It's half an hour of Tommy Wright bashing really. Signing policy is all wrong, tactics and coaching are all wrong, we don't develop players from within and we don't sign players with view to develop them long term. It's a cacophony of misconceptions and a lot of the stats used to make Wright look worse than he is, completely ignoring anything that views us more positively.

Wright is getting a harder and harder time from people who I think should know better to be honest. He has one of the smallest budgets in the league and has to be pragmatic to keep us competitive, but the armchair statisticians and the 'analysts' on twitter are increasingly using that as an excuse to have a go at him and to have a go at Saints generally. The podcast above, for example, acknowledges that we have the 2nd smallest budget, but then in the next breath questions why more St Johnstone fans aren't calling for Wright's head when we're sitting 8th in the table. We've achieved European football qualification  3 times out of 5 under Wright, won the cup and had 3 successive 4th places finishes prior to this season. Surely the manager has earned the right to have a less successful season (by budget standards we're actually still above where we should really be) and be allowed to try again next season?

It also talks a lot of nonsense about Wright's coaching which seems to stem from that Norwegian Celtic fan in the summer talking about us only playing 1 match and training for 10 days prior to playing Trakai. Anyone actually paying attention will know we played 3 matches (all of which against other clubs in the same European qualifying round as us) and trained for 3 full weeks going in Trakai. That falsehood seems to have stuck - they're happy to ignore our league finishing positions, our excellent form towards the end of most seasons under Wright and how well organised we are generally as a side, albeit not for large spells this season.

They talk generally about this being the first season we've really had to overhaul the squad and it's a big test for Wright, which isn't completely untrue, but they say they don't think he'll be able to 'turn things around' and we'll struggle once they're all gone. Fair enough we've struggled to replace May, Swanson and O'Halloran individually but we've always managed to adapt to losing them and the collective has maintained our position in the league. It's perhaps not so good to watch, but generally speaking Wright has done exceptionally well trying to patch us the side after we lose important players. He's also managed to bring in Shaughnessy for Wright, Fisher and then Foster for Mackay and they've not been anywhere near as missed as I think a lot of his feared they would be (although they are missed). 

The failure to bring in young players/develop our own is just shite really. Clark, Comrie, Kerr, Gordon, McCann, Kane have all come from our youth team and played at times this season. In terms of signings in the past, Anderson, Craig, Davidson, Wotherspoon Easton, Millar - effectively the backbone of our team - were all signed as young players and have stuck with us for a long time. Most of whom have spent the bulk of their playing career here. What more can you ask really? We've more recently brought in Scougall, Alston, Tanser, McClean and Hendry with a view to developing them. Perhaps we haven't sold as many as we would have liked, but we've developed most of those players into top 4 players as our league placings in the past have shown. The more experienced ones are maybe regressing a bit now, but it doesn't diminish what they achieved for us in the past. We seem to be getting bashed for showing loyalty to players, who in turn show loyalty to us.

They say that our signing strategy is wrong because all we do is sign experienced players. This season we've signed Scougall (24), Tanser (23), O'Halloran (27), Johnstone (22), McClean (19), Hendry (19), McMillan (29). Willock (21), Williams (23). 4 loan players, but two of them are out of contract at the end of the season and we could easily have been looking to sign them permanently in the summer. There's plenty of other examples from previous windows too. Fair enough we've supplemented the squad with some experience at times, but it's certainly not on the scale suggested in the podcast.

I remember Wright was a relatively popular manager in Scottish football when he first came in, but I think his age, pragmatism and general moaning has turned a lot of people off him. His moaning certainly grates on me at times, but you can't really question the guy's record in his time at Saints. We're in for a bumpy ride this summer trying to replace excellent players with passable (and probably cheaper) alternatives and you have to fear that it may be beyond Wright to find replacements who are capable of playing at the same standard as the ones he is losing. He does, however, deserve the chance to do so and then deserves the time to make things work if next season starts slowly. 

 

Sorry, that's a bit of a rant.

Tl:dr

In all seriousness I enjoy the twitter pages tlike SPFL radar and Back pass Rule, but I've noticed a few of them randomly slate TW and use stats that clearly will never make him look good. The Murray Davidson radar a while back was a clear example. 

Edited April 25, 2018 by RandomGuy.

[JamesM82]

14 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Tl:dr

In all seriousness I enjoy the twitter pages tlike SPFL radar and Back pass Rule, but I've noticed a few of them randomly slate TW and use stats that clearly will never make him look good. The Murray Davidson radar a while back was a clear example. 

Stats guys have tended to praise Tommy Wright (at least before this season) because it has been apparent that Saints have had the knack of conceding fewer goals than the amount of possession and shots the opposition have suggest they "should". This has been put down to Saints being well organised defensively, as explained in this piece by "Backpass Rule" from this time last year.

https://thebackpassrule.com/2017/04/30/what-type-of-vodoo-is-tommy-wright-working-at-st-johnstone/