Heart of Midlothian v St Johnstone - Scottish Cup 5th Round, 10/02/2018

[sjc]

4 minutes ago, tree house tam said:

We've all worked with folk who just couldn't step up to the mark, who just didn't have the minerals for the job in hand, he's one of them.  Now is the time for the men in that squad to be exactly that, let's see who has it in them.

 

2 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Mores the pity. Must be disheartening for the other players to scrap for any ball, only to see Tanser squeal and duck whenever someone runs at him. 

Seems like the end of the line for more than a few in the Saints team if you ask me. Perhaps heard TW's team talks once too often and no longer going that extra mile for him anymore.....Do you chop the manager or set about changing what is an aging squad?

[RandomGuy.]

1 minute ago, sjc said:

 

Seems like the end of the line for more than a few in the Saints team if you ask me. Perhaps heard TW's team talks once too often and no longer going that extra mile for him anymore.....Do you chop the manager or set about changing what is an aging squad?

Tansers never went the extra mile for any manager, you suspect. He was signed because we suddenly remembered we only had one left back and we had a spare 50p down the back of the couch. 

Manager stays, unless he walks. Squads been ageing for a while and we're in the middle of the transition from the Anderson/Millar/MacLean players into the next one, the complete lack of investment means we're not getting players in of the same quality. It'll take a while to sort out but we'll get there, worst move at this stage would be punting the manager and starting from scratch. 

[tree house tam]

2 minutes ago, sjc said:

 

Seems like the end of the line for more than a few in the Saints team if you ask me. Perhaps heard TW's team talks once too often and no longer going that extra mile for him anymore.....Do you chop the manager or set about changing what is an aging squad?

Good few are out of contract at the end of the season. If we survive this season then we should have plenty in the budget for new players. Whether they'd want to come to Saints is another matter.

 

Wee Danny was in the saints end yesterday, could've done with him on the pitch tbh

[sjc]

1 minute ago, RandomGuy. said:

Tansers never went the extra mile for any manager, you suspect. He was signed because we suddenly remembered we only had one left back and we had a spare 50p down the back of the couch. 

Manager stays, unless he walks. Squads been ageing for a while and we're in the middle of the transition from the Anderson/Millar/MacLean players into the next one, the complete lack of investment means we're not getting players in of the same quality. It'll take a while to sort out but we'll get there, worst move at this stage would be punting the manager and starting from scratch. 

I agree with that.

[sjc]

1 minute ago, tree house tam said:

Good few are out of contract at the end of the season. If we survive this season then we should have plenty in the budget for new players. Whether they'd want to come to Saints is another matter.

 

Wee Danny was in the saints end yesterday, could've done with him on the pitch tbh

That's the worry. Saints are definitely in a relegation battle this season unfortunately. Fingers crossed they stay up.

[tree house tam]

2 minutes ago, sjc said:

That's the worry. Saints are definitely in a relegation battle this season unfortunately. Fingers crossed they stay up.

Tbf we do have players to come in, a Welsh international winger, a decent looking striker, as well as the likes of Easton and Scougall coming back from injury. Might not matter a f**k if Tommy plays them in the wrong positions though. 

[RandomGuy.]

Just now, tree house tam said:

Tbf we do have players to come in, a Welsh international winger, a decent looking striker, as well as the likes of Easton and Scougall coming back from injury. Might not matter a f**k if Tommy plays them in the wrong positions though. 

Scougalls out for the season, Tam..

Easton replacing Tanser would be a positive, McMillan replacing Johnstone will surely be an upgrade and Williams is our only actual winger so should provide something a bit different, which we need. Scrape a win or two, plus a few draws, before the split and hen pick up another couple of wins after that, and we'll maybe just survive. Still to play Accies twice. 

[tree house tam]

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

Scougalls out for the season, Tam..

Aye? Some twat told me yesterday it wasn't as serious as first thought. I hate saints fans.

[Widge]

Aye? Some twat told me yesterday it wasn't as serious as first thought. I hate saints fans.

Just look at the proof he’s provided and the sources quoted before you go believing it.

I’m not saying it’s not true, I don’t know, but there’s no mention of it anywhere.

[tree house tam]

1 minute ago, Widge said:

 

Just look at the proof he’s provided and the sources quoted before you go believing it.

I’m not saying it’s not true, I don’t know, but there’s no mention of it anywhere.

 

Why would I doubt Random? Has he been wrong before?

 

[RandomGuy.]

37 minutes ago, tree house tam said:

Aye? Some twat told me yesterday it wasn't as serious as first thought. I hate saints fans.

 

35 minutes ago, Widge said:

 

Just look at the proof he’s provided and the sources quoted before you go believing it.

I’m not saying it’s not true, I don’t know, but there’s no mention of it anywhere.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43023870

[topcat(The most tip top)]

How many of the Cup winning team are still there?

 

[RandomGuy.]

17 minutes ago, topcat(The most tip top) said:

How many of the Cup winning team are still there?

 

Mannus, Anderson, Easton, Wotherspoon, Millar, Davidson, MacLean are all thats left, I think. 

Mannus, Anderson, Millar, Davidson and MacLean all out of contract this Summer.

[Stelling]

2 hours ago, RandomGuy. said:

Manager stays, unless he walks. Squads been ageing for a while and we're in the middle of the transition from the Anderson/Millar/MacLean players into the next one, the complete lack of investment means we're not getting players in of the same quality. It'll take a while to sort out but we'll get there, worst move at this stage would be punting the manager and starting from scratch. 

Did Brown not say that the wage bill is something like 30% higher now than the cup winning season? If so then the investment has actually been made, but the manager is hell-bent on spunking it on jobbers. It's never been a case of throwing money at a problem with Saints, but for all his positives we've quickly discovered that Tommy perhaps lacks the eye to actually identify the jewels that he's been hunting for so long.

There has been no change in the signing policy since we picked up those players you named, we've been shopping in the same market for decades. Anderson was freed by a rival club, Millar was a solid D1 player, and MacLean was a journeyman pinballing around the English lower leagues. Each one is the archetypal Saints signing that happened to come good. But before them came the barrage of dross like Sam Parkin, Scott Dobie, Nick McKoy, Carl Finnigan, Sean Higgins et al.

We've been living through the Wright era of dross for a while, the only difference is I'm not entirely confident that there's an end in sight. And the fact that he keeps going back to MOH and Swanson shows that he's not confident of uncovering anyone better either.

Agree that punting the manager isn't the right call, I think he's got enough in the bank to earn a poor 'transition' season or two, but how does the club solve the recruitment issue? It surprises me that a managerial team as experienced as TW, CD and AC haven't been able to call in favours from contacts. Newcastle, Hull, Man City, Reading, Bolton, Blackburn, Leicester, PNE, Everton, plus their combined international caps - that's a hell of a list of teams to have not made any helpful friends from.

[RandomGuy.]

2 minutes ago, Stelling said:

Did Brown not say that the wage bill is something like 30% higher now than the cup winning season? If so then the investment has actually been made, but the manager is hell-bent on spunking it on jobbers. It's never been a case of throwing money at a problem with Saints, but for all his positives we've quickly discovered that Tommy perhaps lacks the eye to actually identify the jewels that he's been hunting for so long.

There has been no change in the signing policy since we picked up those players you named, we've been shopping in the same market for decades. Anderson was freed by a rival club, Millar was a solid D1 player, and MacLean was a journeyman pinballing around the English lower leagues. Each one is the archetypal Saints signing that happened to come good. But before them came the barrage of dross like Sam Parkin, Scott Dobie, Nick McKoy, Carl Finnigan, Sean Higgins et al.

We've been living through the Wright era of dross for a while, the only difference is I'm not entirely confident that there's an end in sight. And the fact that he keeps going back to MOH and Swanson shows that he's not confident of uncovering anyone better either.

Agree that punting the manager isn't the right call, I think he's got enough in the bank to earn a poor 'transition' season or two, but how does the club solve the recruitment issue? It surprises me that a managerial team as experienced as TW, CD and AC haven't been able to call in favours from contacts. Newcastle, Hull, Man City, Reading, Bolton, Blackburn, Leicester, PNE, Everton, plus their combined international caps - that's a hell of a list of teams to have not made any helpful friends from.

It's a mix. TW has made some poor, pointless signings like Watson and Paton, but he's also made good signings, like MOH and Swanson. I can see logic in most of his dealings, even utter failures like Alston and Sutton were signings I was behind at the time. 

Talking about wage bills is all well and good but we need more than an extra £500 a week to offer players who are better than what we have. 

[Radford]

Probably not the thread for it but since the signings have come up, I think you need to break down the 44 of them to properly gauge.

Brown, Hendry, Hurst and McClean are young guys the manager has taken a chance on, no issue there.

We're hopefully clear of the days of the short-term fixes now he has young players coming through. I know he gets stick for not playing them enough but he's got far more in the squad than previous managers now at least. Short-term fixes: Banks (also a coach in fairness), Jahic, Clancy, Iwelumo, McFadden, Doyle, Krachunov, Smith. Argument that Dunne was that as well. If we are ever forced into a short-term signing, he's the standard you'd hope for if it's going to be instead of playing a youngster.

Panic signings ahead of a European deadline were Fallon and Tanser. You'd say a well built squad should prevent that but both came off the back of Tade and Scobbie leaving it late before opting to move on.

You can see the benefit of loans in that it allows you to get players you might otherwise not afford but over a quarter of TW's signings have been loans, too many probably. Dunne, Graham, Swanson, Fisher and O'Halloran were a success, Morgan and Gormley total disasters. Johnstone very disappointing too; so far he says optimistically.

That only leaves 18 players, plus McMillan, I reckon, not many "proper" signings over nearly 5 years and maybe that's been our problem?

Some guys didn't set the heather on fire but the likes of Lappin, Cummins and McDonald did a job, just not on the level of a lot of the stalwarts brought in by previous managers. The big failures have been McKay, Sutton, Coulson and Watson. The latter two had bad injury histories that they brought with them. In fairness to Watson as well, he looked alright when he played last season. The roaring successes have been Easton, O'Halloran, Swanson and despite current form Wotherspoon, Shaughnessy and even Foster, who was our second best player last season IMO. The decision to bring Liam Craig back was a good one. I think the problem hasn't been signing bad players, more not managing to bring in top players - but to be fair to him, he lost his best two signings to other teams - and not managing to find guys with the longevity of Mackay, Davidson, Millar etc...

My quibbles would be that he hasn't signed enough of these potential long-term players, especially recently, and he's maybe left it too late to try and find replacements for the older guys. McKay (and Shaughnessy) were brought in with Wright on his last legs, MacLean looks done and we don't yet know how McMillan will do and we have no like-for-like with Millar in the squad.

The club as a whole probably needs to have a better think and plan about the recruitment process.

Apologies for the tl;dr.

[tree house tam]

1 hour ago, Radford said:

Probably not the thread for it but since the signings have come up, I think you need to break down the 44 of them to properly gauge.

Brown, Hendry, Hurst and McClean are young guys the manager has taken a chance on, no issue there.

We're hopefully clear of the days of the short-term fixes now he has young players coming through. I know he gets stick for not playing them enough but he's got far more in the squad than previous managers now at least. Short-term fixes: Banks (also a coach in fairness), Jahic, Clancy, Iwelumo, McFadden, Doyle, Krachunov, Smith. Argument that Dunne was that as well. If we are ever forced into a short-term signing, he's the standard you'd hope for if it's going to be instead of playing a youngster.

Panic signings ahead of a European deadline were Fallon and Tanser. You'd say a well built squad should prevent that but both came off the back of Tade and Scobbie leaving it late before opting to move on.

You can see the benefit of loans in that it allows you to get players you might otherwise not afford but over a quarter of TW's signings have been loans, too many probably. Dunne, Graham, Swanson, Fisher and O'Halloran were a success, Morgan and Gormley total disasters. Johnstone very disappointing too; so far he says optimistically.

That only leaves 18 players, plus McMillan, I reckon, not many "proper" signings over nearly 5 years and maybe that's been our problem?

Some guys didn't set the heather on fire but the likes of Lappin, Cummins and McDonald did a job, just not on the level of a lot of the stalwarts brought in by previous managers. The big failures have been McKay, Sutton, Coulson and Watson. The latter two had bad injury histories that they brought with them. In fairness to Watson as well, he looked alright when he played last season. The roaring successes have been Easton, O'Halloran, Swanson and despite current form Wotherspoon, Shaughnessy and even Foster, who was our second best player last season IMO. The decision to bring Liam Craig back was a good one. I think the problem hasn't been signing bad players, more not managing to bring in top players - but to be fair to him, he lost his best two signings to other teams - and not managing to find guys with the longevity of Mackay, Davidson, Millar etc...

My quibbles would be that he hasn't signed enough of these potential long-term players, especially recently, and he's maybe left it too late to try and find replacements for the older guys. McKay (and Shaughnessy) were brought in with Wright on his last legs, MacLean looks done and we don't yet know how McMillan will do and we have no like-for-like with Millar in the squad.

The club as a whole probably needs to have a better think and plan about the recruitment process.

Apologies for the tl;dr.

Probably agree with all of that.

[The Real Saints]

Forgot to mention how angry I was when Scott Tanser lost the ball and casually jogged back to his own half in the build-up to Hearts' second goal. He is an imposter. I don't like him.