Double Winning St Johnstone FC Thread

[RandomGuy.]

7 hours ago, PauloPerth said:

To be fair the manager wasn’t the only one who wrote him off.

I wrote him off because it looked like he was a problem when things werent going his way in terms of lunging in. His lack of goals at the start of last season was something I predicted would happen and not something I was holding against him, but as time went on it looked like he had completely regressed back to where he was when he first joined. 

The loan spell with TW has saved his career IMO, got his confidence back and he returned in January with a point to prove. I think he knows he'll go through another poor run of goalscoring, and he'll need a manager to stick by him through it, and he'll have zero faith in Davidson to be that man considering how quickly he's been dumped before January. 

[tree house tam]

If only Davidson was dumped as quickly....

For what it's worth I would've punted Hendry as well but that would've been on the premise that we actually bought then played a preferred striker. I'd also have punted May and MOH. 

[Jamie_B]

21 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

I wrote him off because it looked like he was a problem when things werent going his way in terms of lunging in. His lack of goals at the start of last season was something I predicted would happen and not something I was holding against him, but as time went on it looked like he had completely regressed back to where he was when he first joined. 

The loan spell with TW has saved his career IMO, got his confidence back and he returned in January with a point to prove. I think he knows he'll go through another poor run of goalscoring, and he'll need a manager to stick by him through it, and he'll have zero faith in Davidson to be that man considering how quickly he's been dumped before January. 

I think the big thing since Hendry has returned is a level of maturity and control that he didn’t have before. He still plays aggressively but he’s cut out the lunging in and constant danger of being sent off.

It’s just a shame he had to go away for half the season to get that.

[RandomGuy.]

5 minutes ago, Jamie_Beatson said:

It’s just a shame he had to go away for half the season to get that.

This is it, really.

You could see why he was loaned out because he was struggling, but you've now got to question how much of a role Davidson had in him struggling and how much he was doing to help.

I'm still not sure how many players have actually improved under him either. Wotherspoon and Kane will undoubtedly be poster boys for it but Wotherspoon was great in 19/20 and simply continued that into 20/21. Hard to know with folk like Rooney I guess, another who had to wait half a season to get a chance.

[Valentino Bolognese]

3 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

This is it, really.

You could see why he was loaned out because he was struggling, but you've now got to question how much of a role Davidson had in him struggling and how much he was doing to help.

I'm still not sure how many players have actually improved under him either. Wotherspoon and Kane will undoubtedly be poster boys for it but Wotherspoon was great in 19/20 and simply continued that into 20/21. Hard to know with folk like Rooney I guess, another who had to wait half a season to get a chance.

In an alternative universe somewhere, Danny McNamara isn't recalled by Millwall early, Rooney stays on the bench and we don't win the cup double, Davidson gets emptied and we're not in a relegation playoff. 

[RandomGuy.]

2 minutes ago, Valentino Bolognese said:

In an alternative universe somewhere, Danny McNamara isn't recalled by Millwall early, Rooney stays on the bench and we don't win the cup double, Davidson gets emptied and we're not in a relegation playoff. 

McNamara is going to go down as one of the most over rated players to play for us.

I know he's doing well at Millwall now but he just done nothing for us apart from passing pretty triangles with Kerr and Conway for 90 minutes. We became more direct once he left and looked the better for it.

[andrewh]

2 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

McNamara is going to go down as one of the most over rated players to play for us.

I know he's doing well at Millwall now but he just done nothing for us apart from passing pretty triangles with Kerr and Conway for 90 minutes. We became more direct once he left and looked the better for it.

No disrespect to Danny, but I have to agree. We improved once he left and Rooney came in. Good player but definitely over rated.

[RandomGuy.]

3 minutes ago, andrewh said:

No disrespect to Danny, but I have to agree. We improved once he left and Rooney came in. Good player but definitely over rated.

Something that's maybe just clear looking back, tbf to Davidson, but it's stuff like this he needs to be spotting in training.

[RandomGuy.]

I wish everyone would stop comparing these games to the Cup Finals, you need a completely different mindset. Those games were nothing to lose one's, these aren't.

As an aside, it looks like we'll be without 6 of those who started the Final v Hibs (Kerr, Booth, McCann, Bryson, Wotherspoon, Kane).

[The Marly]

30 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

This is it, really.

You could see why he was loaned out because he was struggling, but you've now got to question how much of a role Davidson had in him struggling and how much he was doing to help.

I'm still not sure how many players have actually improved under him either. Wotherspoon and Kane will undoubtedly be poster boys for it but Wotherspoon was great in 19/20 and simply continued that into 20/21. Hard to know with folk like Rooney I guess, another who had to wait half a season to get a chance.

McNamara deserved to keep his place.  On Rooney's few appearances in the first half of that season he wasn't great. 

[RandomGuy.]

1 minute ago, The Marly said:

McNamara deserved to keep his place.  On Rooney's few appearances in the first half of that season he wasn't great. 

He played RWB once before McNamara left and that was away to Rangers, he'd never played CB at Championship level never mind Premiership level before joining us either.

[PauloPerth]

Rooney played right back for over half a game at Kilmarnock on one of the rare occasions we went to 4 at the back.

The 2-1, MOH last minute winner match.

[The Marly]

8 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

He played RWB once before McNamara left and that was away to Rangers, he'd never played CB at Championship level never mind Premiership level before joining us either.

Fair enough.  Not many people,  including yourself,  were clamouring for him to come in and replace McNamara though.   Davidson has made plenty mistakes and I've already said it's time he was gone, but managers can't pick a team on hindsight. 

[RandomGuy.]

25 minutes ago, PauloPerth said:

Rooney played right back for over half a game at Kilmarnock on one of the rare occasions we went to 4 at the back.

The 2-1, MOH last minute winner match.

He played centre back with McNamara at wing back. There was an article after the match where he talked about learning the centre back role.

23 minutes ago, The Marly said:

Fair enough.  Not many people,  including yourself,  were clamouring for him to come in and replace McNamara though.   Davidson has made plenty mistakes and I've already said it's time he was gone, but managers can't pick a team on hindsight. 

He shouldn't need hindsight though, he should be seeing it. We scored 3 goals in our first 10 games last season, the right side was where all our play was, and McNamara was neither scoring or creating. You think Rooney wasn't looking like a wrecking ball in training considering how he'd played for ICT beforehand? It's his job to identify weaknesses in the side and how to rectify if with the players he has.

I still think he could resolve a lot of our current issues by changing shape and having Middleton on a wing.

[Valentino Bolognese]

30 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said:

It's his job to identify weaknesses in the side and how to rectify if with the players he has.

I think that this has been my thinking and why I made the narrow point about MacNamara / Rooney. It seems that when good things happen, they are more by luck than design. 

- The above point. I do actually think Danny Mac was a very good player but more 'looked a footballer' than actually effective. Stats will be interesting but seem to remember thinking he was effective defensively.  Point being though it was Millwall that gave us Rooney, in a sense. 

- Kane out for the season / forced recall of Hendry. If Kane was fit, would we have seen Callum's goals? I suspect not, which would have put us doon automatically.

- Booth injured, and Brown emerging as a decent inverted wing-back

- Crawford out for the Aberdeen game, Hallberg much more effective in a more advanced position. 

There may well be others but that's just off the top of my head. 

[PauloPerth]

1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:

He played centre back with McNamara at wing back. There was an article after the match where he talked about learning the centre back role.

Yes, and we switched to a back 4 during the match with Danny Mac pushed into midfield.

[RandomGuy.]

2 minutes ago, PauloPerth said:

Yes, and we switched to a back 4 during the match with Danny Mac pushed into midfield.

Are you sure?

I thought we only changed to a back four after he was replaced by Wotherspoon? We never had anyone but Tanser on the left until that.

[PauloPerth]

Was when we were chasing the game as I think we went 1 down.

Booth played part of the game I thought; maybe came on for Tanser? 

The young striker came on and had a part in our winner, can’t remember seeing him play again for us and he’s been released since.
 

[RandomGuy.]

8 minutes ago, PauloPerth said:

Was when we were chasing the game as I think we went 1 down.

Booth played part of the game I thought; maybe came on for Tanser? 

The young striker came on and had a part in our winner, can’t remember seeing him play again for us and he’s been released since.
 

Aye Tanser came on for Booth in a straight swap. Other subs were Wotherspoon for Rooney, then Robertson (who's doing really well with Edinburgh City) on for Conway.

[Dick Van Dyke]

1 hour ago, PauloPerth said:

Yes, and we switched to a back 4 during the match with Danny Mac pushed into midfield.

I’m positive we only went to a back 4 when Rooney went off. That was not long after killie had a man sent off.