Widge

It’s a contact sport, yes he’s missed the ball, but he’s not exactly kicked him, he’s flicked a foot and barely made any contact. Anyone who’s played the game can see and knows it’s not a foul though.

What the f**k is that being chalked off for, there is never a foul there?

Aberdeen come to Perth midweek in the middle of a storm, seen this script before. 1-0 Aberdeen probably from the halfway line.

I can’t pretend to know the person or even have seen the tweet at the time, but what I do know is he was getting it right from a lot of saints fans before the game kicked off. Didn’t know the context at the time, but clearly do now and even then he was refusing to admit any wrong doing. As for the match itself, don’t know if anyone else who was there felt it, but there was a weird atmosphere amongst the saints crowd all game. Like the support were turning on each other at one point and there was literally no support from the kick off towards the team.

Think we’ve been anything but sharp to be totally honest. Not playing for 4 weeks is showing with some of the first touches.

Think you're overselling Montgomery slightly to be honest. He's a good young player who was improving at saints no doubt both going forward and defensively; however I think he was made to look better in saints fans eyes due to how poor we actually were and the fact he'd occasionally beat a few players, which was few and far between. There's a part of me that thinks he was actually helped massively by Andy Considine in the early part of the season as he was defensively naïve. Would I take him back, yes absolutely as I think he's got the ability to improve on his game, but would I want to rely on him defensively for a full game probably not. He's far from the finished article.

By my counts the most recent person to fall into the category was Chris Millar who went 142 games without scoring a goal for us over the course of 5 seasons.

Whilst I cannot talk about marriage and kids having gone through neither, the last sentence I can totally understand. I've spoken on here about how my long term relationship came to an end last year and you're totally correct when you say it would be easier if you both didn't want to talk or it wasn't civil. Having someone or something to blame would 100% make things easier and having been there (still am tbh) trying to explain what's happened will be hard, not necessarily for you to explain but for others to understand. I think others before me are far more qualified to talk about divorce and kids and there are truly some amazing people on this site who are always happy to help, which is really a brilliant thing for anyone going through stuff. I hope you're doing alright first and foremost, but also the same for your family, can't be easy. Hopefully you've got friends and family around you to help out and talk to, it's something that I didn't do enough of and ended up throwing myself more into work (which isn't the answer). But definitely do things to take your mind off the situation as best you can, whilst also progressing the matters you need to. It takes a lot of guts to post what you have on an open forum, but I'm sure anyone in this thread, myself included would be more than happy to chat more about it, or listen to concerns or frustrations. But overall, hope you're doing alright and should that change for a minute, don't do it alone.

This thread is a prime example of the standard referees are setting on Scottish football. About 7/8 different referees have been named by fans of various clubs as being “the worst” or “just as bad”. Collum along with them isn’t biased at all, he’s just inconsistent and prone to some mistakes (as are all humans). Now I’m not sticking up for him, since he is an arrogant referee on the pitch and his handling of incidents does lead to issues, that’s what needs to be looked at by the SFA; however Rangers have absolutely no right to demand anything and the narrative that they’re hard done by can be disproven by 41 other clubs in Scotland. They should be getting hammered by the SFA for bringing the game and the referees into disrepute and frankly this is the sort of shite that lead to them striking previously. As I say, Collum is a poor referee, but then if he is, they all are which is the biggest issue.

This comment would work if Livi weren't the other team in the league to suffer from drainage issues on their pitch, but don't let that stop you looking for bites to a misconceived notion.

Can we not play it a week on Saturday? I know it’s the “break” but surely common sense would apply given there’s a full league card.

Not a rumour, pretty much been announced by the courier we’re signing Kerr Smith on loan.

Play is very, very generous to say the least, but he’ll stand out wide for the majority of the game.

The fact we’ve got a 16 year old who’s actually an attacking midfielder as our best option at right wing back currently tells you the state the squad is actually in. For all Fran has been excellent you just wonder what he could do further forward. Still I’ve got no doubts that Levein knows this and a right wing back will be sorted well before the end of the window since Drey Wright isn’t going to be back any time soon. Anyway hopefully a good game tomorrow, but I can totally see it descending into the Willie Collum show with both sets of supporters probably booing him off the pitch. Either way a win would be massive for us and a draw would be perfectly acceptable, be good to get the away win hoodoo off our back though.

Having been there last night, Craig Levein is spot on with what he’s saying when interviewed. We’re not looking forward enough (if at all), especially down our right hand side. Brown is being asked to do a job he’s simply not capable of doing and because of that teams block us off down the left and make us easy to play against on the right meaning we’re going backwards 90% of the time. The only times we got in behind Livi were on the left where we have some (not much) form of attacking intent. I’d actually have played Dare at RWB instead of Brown to be honest and let him just run, chances are we’d not have gotten anything but at least it would have caused some chaos and allowed more space for the likes of Smith and Carey to work in. The above comment also applies to Max, once again he was too passive and needs to look forward at every opportunity. It was staggering how badly that pitch played last night actually, the only person on both teams who I thought looked like they could control a ball was Matt Smith and even then you could see he wasn’t sure what his passes would do. That being said we didn’t create anything and a point was probably the fairest result. I don’t think the TV would show this, but in the first half the wind was brutal and it meant that we were penned in big time since Livis sole tactic of launching the ball forward was always going to be effective in that weather. I’d hoped that the second half would be the same, but it definitely died down a little which meant we didn’t get the same advantage not that we can play long ball football with our forwards. Just a pretty brutal game of football from two poor bottom 6 teams. Special mention to Kevin Clancy, who seemed to get almost everything 100% wrong. The Max booking was mental and at one point he gave a foul for Phillips cleanly taking the ball without even touching the man. He’s usually alright (in a 3/10 way) but tonight him and his assistants were clearly still on the bevvy, absolutely hopeless.

Sounds like we’ve been hit by a sickness bug in the squad which has meant that we’re forced into playing Brown and Olafunwa. Not ideal by any means, but shows that we need to bring someone in on that right hand side asap.

That’ll be Dan Phillips, who has been very good for us this season on the whole, but funnily enough seems to ever play well on a plastic pitch. No idea why, but regularly has a stinker on them.

Just having a player capable of finishing is massive. We can work on a lot of things, but finishing isn’t ever going to be one of them with the players we have currently. He’s a goal scorer and always has been, even if we weren’t sure about the deal to bring him in, it’s certainly not been a bad deal so far when he’s been fit.

A think today shows that we’ve still got to improve, the fact we won’t be bottom at Xmas was the goal and we’ve achieved that. Should also remember it’s our third game in a week and we played for an hour with 10 men on Wednesday night. We don’t exactly have a lot of choice to switch it up in the squad.

He’s contracted to Dunfermline and very much injured I believe, so I doubt it?

Got to agree with this wholeheartedly. We’d look so much better with an actual striker on the pitch. Not that we have any fit ones.

I think that last statement is 100% true. You’ve got supporters in the East stand demanding a substitution, but once again I think Levein is showing that he doesn’t have faith or trust in any of the bench bar Sprangler and Kane (Costelloe too, but suspect he had a knock). The fact we had 5 other outfield players on that bench and none were deemed good enough to come on is an indictment of the lack of depth we have. As others have said, Matt Smith is a genuinely talented footballer and is showing exactly why he had 19 caps for Wales. But he ran his heart out once again last night and was clearly burst, yet we have nobody to replace him with. Things will improve when we get both Wright and Clark back, McCelland and Considine too, but there’s still a fair bit of deadwood in this squad. Special mention to Liam Gordon last night, that’s hands down the best he’s played in about 18 months. Won every header, made blocks and clearances and has eliminated the silly long balls from his game. Hopefully he keeps the form up, maybe he’s just someone who feels better in a back 3.

I think that was why the cheer for the goal was so subdued. Everyone in the saints end expected it to be ruled out for something based on the way Hart reacted. So it was a surprise it wasn’t.

I think there were positives yesterday. Firstly, we once again tried to play football against a better side than us, yes we got caught high a few times, but Phillips and Smith's ability to take the ball in a tight area and spin a man is something we've missed since Chris Millar. Add to that, the fact that Jaisaymi appears to be able to play football as well it helped us get up the pitch quickly which was great to see. Secondly, not sure I can fault the back 3 or keeper at all. Luke Robinson is fastly becoming a very very important player for us and it's easy to forget he's still really young, he's improving every game either at centreback or left wing back. Gordon deserves praise as well for his recent upturn in form, he's gone back to the basics and testament to him that Kyogo didn't get a sniff all game essentially. No as easy as it is to be positive about the game, there are clearly still issues. Costelloe is not a wing back and the moment Johnston came on he was on toast the whole game. The biggest failing by the management team was not changing it, although I'm not entirely sure we had the options to. One that struck me was bring Dare on at RWB and shuffle everyone across one. I also would have brought Sprangler on in the midfield yesterday for Max after about an hour. He needs to work on his fitness, as he drops out of games, with Sven coming in we could have let Smith push up a little more and been more stable in the middle, as Sprangler's ability to shuffle side to side would have been effective against the Celtic onslaught. A final word on Max, he needs to be more positive. He's got ability and a lovely touch, but a couple of times yesterday he simply turned back into trouble and got crowded out, whereas nobody will fault him if he faces up a single defender in front of him and loses it. He may not have the pace to outrun a player, but he can learn from both Smith and Carey on how to use his body to swerve a man and go round them. Lastly, we desperately need a new striker based on both May's and Kane's recent performances. I know they've always been streaky and equally I'm not righting them off, but Kane doesn't look interested right now (wonder if he's off?) and May needs a goal to kick start his season. The sooner Nicky Clark is back the better, but we can't rely on him to stay fit and it doesn't seem like Jephcott is fancied at all.

What counts as a crap support? Saints regularly bring a really good away following in the Scottish cup and I don’t see this being any different. First game after the winter break, ground we’ve not been at in a while and a winnable/interesting tie.