Jump to content

Double Winning St Johnstone FC Thread


Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Kyle said:

Kind of my take on it as well. If you sign players of the calibre of Kennedy and Wright then you can only really count on them seeing out their initials contracts with the club, if they haven't been sold in the intervening time. If either or both renew it's a massive bonus... and probably another chunk of the budget away as they'll no doubt demand pretty decent pay rises to stay.

Surely Drey won’t be inundated with offers. He had 3 good months, was injured for almost a year and has been absolutely stinking since he came back. I don’t even know if I want him to sign a new deal to be honest 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Dick Van Dyke said:

Surely Drey won’t be inundated with offers. He had 3 good months, was injured for almost a year and has been absolutely stinking since he came back. I don’t even know if I want him to sign a new deal to be honest 

I think Wright is still getting himself back up to speed. He's not really had a pre-season and I can only imagine the injury he had is a fucker to recover from, especially for someone who relies on pace as he does. I think he's showing signs of getting back to where he was, he was excellent against County for example, albeit against a pretty shite full back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is enough to highlight about our identification and recruitment approach without these bizarre claims that they sit counting down the clock before approaching players. 
If the agent won't talk to Saints, there isn't much they can do. 
Correct. The bizarre claims are coming from one person though.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, Dick Van Dyke said:

Surely Drey won’t be inundated with offers. He had 3 good months, was injured for almost a year and has been absolutely stinking since he came back. I don’t even know if I want him to sign a new deal to be honest 

I agree, he has the second half of the season to earn a new contract. However i think the club will take a chance and offer him a new contract in the hope hat he will return to his form of the past. Just like May, Swanson and MOH 😃

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Templar said:

I agree, he has the second half of the season to earn a new contract. However i think the club will take a chance and offer him a new contract in the hope hat he will return to his form of the past. Just like May, Swanson and MOH 😃

You don't like former players do you?

If Shaughnessy was available for nothing would you take him back?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Templar said:

I agree, he has the second half of the season to earn a new contract. However i think the club will take a chance and offer him a new contract in the hope hat he will return to his form of the past. Just like May, Swanson and MOH 😃

Swanson and MOH were successes in their second spells and MOH has been fine for the most part in his third too.

I'm not sure what your aversion is to us signing players who have been succesful for us before to be honest. Roddy Grant left and came back as an example, it happens all the time in football.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Kyle said:

Swanson and MOH were successes in their second spells and MOH has been fine for the most part in his third too.

I'm not sure what your aversion is to us signing players who have been succesful for us before to be honest. Roddy Grant left and came back as an example, it happens all the time in football.

Danny's a bit of an exception, there's more than football involved in that story surely.  He was a gamble but sometimes you have to take them. 

MOH has been fine without being spectacular, and certainly not a failure. 

It's hard to justify May, again a gamble but to me that one isn't working out. Not to say it won't ... but it proably won't. 

Wright clearly has ability and to me is more or less improving with every game. Agree he probably needs to kick on a bit in the second half of the season if he wants an offer. I also think the's struggled to work as well with Ralston, he's not got much to work with ahead of him either. To me he's getting a bit more physical confidence as he looked very challenge-shy in his first few games back and seemed to go into hiding. 

When you look at the team we have and consider who's at their level and who has further improvement in them Wright (along with McCann. Gordon, Hendry, Kerr) is one of them. 

As for Kennedy he's already our best player and I suspect he's rebuilt some confidence in his spell with us. Does he have improvement in him? Probably. Can he get much better by staying at Saints? For me that's doubtful, so of course he's going to be looking to get a move to a team that can offer him more in terms of development (and cash). It's a bit of a straw-clutch but keeping in with Tommy could be useful for the international career that he seems to put a lot of store in, so that might encourage him to stay, as might the fact that he knows he'll start regularly. These things might matter if it's close to a 50/50 call, we'll be blown out the water by an Aberdeen offer of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Merkland Red said:

You're in a shitey situation to be honest. You can't offer a longer contract in case they are a flop and you can't get rid of them. Due to contract length and the unlikelihood of them extending on the back of some stellar performances you're unlikely to e ver be in a position to sell the player either.

Situation become even shitier when you consider than we cant really make a competitive offer to extend contracts until we are certain what division we'll be in next year.  Happy to be corrected if wrong but I think most of our expiring contracts only ever get renegotiated once either in the Top 6 or confirmed safe from relegation.    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, RandomGuy. said:

You don't like former players do you?

If Shaughnessy was available for nothing would you take him back?

I have nothing against former players, the smiley was tongue in cheek. As said MOH has been more than useful in this spell and may well go on to better things. May needs a partner up front hence, he is not living up to his previous performances. Swanson is Swanson.

I would take Shaughnessy back in a heart beat. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All the debate about giving the OF three stands.....some of it is very interesting. For what it's worth, I don't have a real opinion on it, other than in an ideal world it wouldn't happen.

Saints have tried to encourage more people through the gates but the truth as i see it is they have more or less only been preaching to the converted.

It's a while ago now, but the Scottish Cup win in 2014 was a prime example of the club, quite literally, falling asleep - we had, what, 15/16k whatever it was, people at that final and it might be reasonably presumed that the majority had an interest/love/whatever with Saints that had for whatever reason died away and needed something like the SC run to pull them back in.

Sadly, the biggest opportunity Saints ever had as club was ignored/wasted - call it what you want - and the club fell silent for some weeks after that success. The feel good factor in the town and wider area and the genuine buzz in the build up, and immediate aftermath with the parade, should have been used as a foundation for Saints to try and get even some of those people to come back regularly. Even 10/15% of those at the final who weren't regulars becoming so would have been massive in the short term.

Instead of a massive fanfare in the town - I'll always believe they should have been down in the centre the Monday onwards getting people to commit to buying Season Tickets, shirts, lotto, you name it - there was just silence. For weeks.

The season tickets eventually were announced I think about the end of June that year, fully 6/7 weeks after the final and by then much of the goodwill had died. It's not to say that any additional ST holders signed up that summer would still remain today, but it's not inconceivable to imagine a few would still hang around. The initial impact, financially, would have been brilliant for the club and the domino effect follows - pies, juice etc at the game.

Yeah, Saints have made efforts to put bums on seats, but really, nowhere near enough. They make little effort with merchandise etc - just ask the people at Campus and pass up opportunity after opportunity.

Really, and this isn't necessarily a critical view, but we're essentially an amateur football club playing full time football.

So, whatever their reasons for this decision, and whoever they might be blaming, the closer truth is they are to blame in equal measure for the situation we find ourselves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, scottmcleanscontacts said:

Really, and this isn't necessarily a critical view, but we're essentially an amateur football club playing full time football.

So, whatever their reasons for this decision, and whoever they might be blaming, the closer truth is they are to blame in equal measure for the situation we find ourselves.

This is the view i have of our club. It could be run so much better and far more professionally, but that's an extra cost. Deep down it's too big a gamble for wee Broon, especially as they've got away with it for so long. I think we need to just get used to it until they pass the club on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, tree house tam said:

This is the view i have of our club. It could be run so much better and far more professionally, but that's an extra cost. Deep down it's too big a gamble for wee Broon, especially as they've got away with it for so long. I think we need to just get used to it until they pass the club on.

The problem we have is the club and it's employees at the top do not believe for one second the way it's run is amatuer.

If you provide feedback you're just seen as a moany fan of the club. 

If that's how feedback is handled things will never change. If a normal business was as dismissive to customer feedback as our club has been in the past they'd already be out of business. 

Although it does seem on the outside with the new fans forums etc that they're trying to listen. They've had similar concepts before, there was the infamous "secret 7" etc. Was any feedback taken onboard and actioned? I don't think so..

Edited by Mr Positive, sometimes.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, tree house tam said:

This is the view i have of our club. It could be run so much better and far more professionally, but that's an extra cost. Deep down it's too big a gamble for wee Broon, especially as they've got away with it for so long. I think we need to just get used to it until they pass the club on.

I'm not convinced that the club has 'got away with it'. Or if we are, we've been getting away with it for a weirdly long time. Look at it another way: we've been, by some distance, the most successful diddy club in Scotland over the last decade. Profitable and hugely successful. Until this season, Saints were a case study in how to run a football club. 

Past performance, etc etc. But too often the criticism goes too far the other way. The complaints are often nebulous (what does more 'professional' actually mean practically?). Or when the arguments turn specific (we should have a director of football or a scouting infrastructure), the reasoning is equally vague: other clubs do it.

I'm not saying we should leave things as they are, more that change for the sake of it rarely works as planned. What have Dundee's various directors of football achieved?  Was Dundee United's well-established scouting infrastructure much help in their relegation season? Do Hearts fans believe a Director of Football, or its investment in a scouting network is worth much right now?

 

Edited by Mr Heliums
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, tree house tam said:

It feels like this is the wrong time to be moaning about how our club is run, off the back of our most successful decade in the business, but here we are.

Think of the diddies down the road lads, that always cheers me up.

And you're right as well.

I noticed you asked above what people mean by being more professional. @Mr Heliums

I guess people are just frustrated as many will see it of a chance to make real gains off the park too. Best decade on the park has not increased crowds etc. 

For me it's just summed up by own experiences and interactions with the club that have been at times mindboggling. 3-4 experiences but one example I think it was Dec 2018 I went into the ticket office to get a half season ticket as a Christmas gift. 

4 staff members in the ticket office and I had to leave without making a purchase because "none of us know how to do it". For me that sums up my feelings very accurately. 

 

Edited by Mr Positive, sometimes.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Mr Heliums said:

I'm not convinced that the club has 'got away with it'. Or if we are, we've been getting away with it for a weirdly long time. Look at it another way: we've been, by some distance, the most successful diddy club in Scotland over the last decade. Profitable and hugely successful. Until this season, Saints were a case study in how to run a football club. 

Past performance, etc etc. But too often the criticism goes too far the other way. The complaints are often nebulous (what does more 'professional' actually mean practically?). Or when the arguments turn specific (we should have a director of football or a scouting infrastructure), the reasoning is equally vague: other clubs do it.

I'm not saying we should leave things as they are, more that change for the sake of it rarely works as planned. What have Dundee's various directors of football achieved?  Was Dundee United's well-established scouting infrastructure much help in their relegation season? Do Hearts fans believe a Director of Football, or its investment in a scouting network is worth much right now?

 

Ignoring on the pitch stuff, then the main complaint I have is they dont try and keep you as a fan/tempt you to games.

My experience is causing that opinion.

I dont have a season ticket, but ever since the online ticketing has come in I've used it to buy tickets for home games, maybe once or twice I havent early on. Every time I do this I enter my name, address, email address and click a wee box asking I want to recieve emails from the club about promotions/offers/events.

I've had a Saints TV subscription since it came out. Requires your name, address and emain address again.

If I go into the club for a ticket for an OF game, they tell me I'm not on the clubs database. I've never once had an email from the club beyond them emailing me the match ticket. Never had anything through my door. To the club, I dont exist.

I'm a regular fan who's email address is known to them through two different services, and who tells them it every single week, yet I'd have no idea half season tickets were for sale if I didnt go onto their Twitter. They should be peppering me with emails, if I dont buy a ticket for a few games I should be getting those annoying "miss you" emails.

Stuff like that makes them come across as if theres a lack of real effort. Like the initial idea is there but it's never actually followed through.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...