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The St. Mirren FC 2023/24 thread


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9 minutes ago, FTOF said:

 

Played on Monday night. I'd never actually heard of him from our under 18s, though seems like he has been scouted by some top teams and as it reads, he had a trial down at wolves who are keen on him. He is only 16, though hopefully if he's ready, he can play some part this season here and there.

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Youngster signs professional deal, and before we’ve seen him for five minutes in the St Mirren first team, he’s signed by Manchester City, or a Sampdoria-type club, where he’s touted as a star of the future.

Welcome to the modern world. Me? I don’t necessarily want the next superstar. I want solid Shuggie Murray or Van Zanten types - who we all like, get behind,, they do a job, but are going to sail under the radar of other clubs somewhat and we have them for many seasons. 
 

As I say though, welcome to the modern world. Bring back Jim McLean style contracts and forget Bosman ever happened IMHO*

 

 

 

 

 

*Welcome to the modern world.

Edited by pozbaird
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21 minutes ago, pozbaird said:

Youngster signs professional deal, and before we’ve seen him for five minutes in the St Mirren first team, he’s signed by Manchester City, or a Sampdoria-type club, where he’s touted as a star of the future.

Welcome to the modern world. Me? I don’t necessarily want the next superstar. I want solid Shuggie Murray or Van Zanten types - who we all like, get behind,, they do a job, but are going to sail under the radar of other clubs somewhat and we have them for many seasons. 
 

As I say though, welcome to the modern world. Bring back Jim McLean style contracts and forget Bosman ever happened IMHO*

 

 

 

 

 

*Welcome to the modern world.

While I can agree with you. We need a few of these players to go for big money to allow the club to grow and attract better players. 

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37 minutes ago, AW saint said:

While I can agree with you. We need a few of these players to go for big money to allow the club to grow and attract better players. 

Indeed, look at Motherwell (I know, I know)...Turnbull, Scott, Hastie and Campbell were sold for over £5M.

Edited by Arch Stanton
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To be fair, the whole "youth team player leaving before even starting a game" thing has been going on for decades, it's just nobody ever really knew it cared as it wasn't reported in the press very much. Even at saints I'm sure a fair few of our best "youth graduates" to the first team actually came to us from somewhere else. McLean and Broadfoot immediately spring to mind.

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27 minutes ago, Arch Stanton said:

Indeed, look at Motherwell (I know, I know)...Turnbull, Scott, Hastie and Campbell were sold for over £5M.

Motherwell supporters online (but not so much on here) seem to take it as an insult that we appear to just basically follow in their shadow but in all honesty, why wouldn't we?

We were the first club to go down the fan ownership/community club route of the two but Motherwell honestly showed us up a bit in terms of how it really should be done in the early years. I think of all supporters on here, some of the most praise for Motherwell and how they present themselves off the park has come from St. Mirren fans as it was really how we'd envisioned our club being run as well given we're the two closest sides in the top flight in terms of ownership structure.

The young players breaking through and being sold side of things is nothing new to us though - we've got a pretty rich history of producing solid, sellable talent  - but by and large it can be argued that we always hang on too long and end up criminally underselling them under the 'any transfer fee is better than none' chain of thought. Wee club mentality.

The days of accepting £200-300k for a good young prospect are surely over. We were getting fees like £300k back in the 90s for Ricky Gillies, Burton O'Brien and David McNamee back when we were a 1st division side with £2.5m of debt and not a pot to piss in. That was 30 years ago and yet I still don't ever remember us once getting anything close to half a million for a player in the last 30 years. Again, we should be looking at Motherwell as a drop off point as to what you should be doing in valuing your assets.

Bringing over guys like Lasley is hopefully going to not only bring a bit of savvy off the park (and I think every St. Mirren fans has been well impressed by any interviews he's conducted so far), but that bravery to dig in and hold out for what we think a player is worth.

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1 hour ago, AW saint said:

While I can agree with you. We need a few of these players to go for big money to allow the club to grow and attract better players. 

Wouldn’t hurt us, that’s for sure. Just commenting on the way the modern game is. Motherwell fans are talking on their thread about one of their latest crop of young players likely buggering off after ten minutes too. Put it this way, if I were a young fan these days, I wouldn’t be spending £70 or so on a new shirt with my favourite player’s name on it. Play safe, get Thommo’, Guni, Shuggie, or if you have lots of cash for the letters, Newtonnnnnnnnnnn! 😀
 

Edit to add, we all want St Mirren to be succesful, right? We all want us to make that top 6 finish, maybe Europe, have a cup run and not get pumped by the Uglies, right? In my opinion, we aren’t going to achieve that with young players who bugger off after five games. If we get cash for them, fine and dandy, but we need good solid players all over the park to ‘push on’. Gogic… more guys of that ilk. In defence, midfield, and up top. Just my opinion, as an old fart used to seeing guys like Fitzy, McAvennie, Somner, McGarvey and Co NOT bugger off after five minutes. We used to get hours and hours. 😎
 

Ach, it is what it is. The modern world. 

Edited by pozbaird
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13 minutes ago, pozbaird said:

Newtonnnnnnnnnnn! 😀

A new girl in my team at work is married to Conor Newton's best mate (I know, right?). Once I found this out I insisted on making her watch the Final goal. She couldn't have given less of a shit. However, it did emerge that her husband was also at the final in 2013 to support Conor so he's good people, in my book.

 

Good story, Steve. 🙄

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Conor Newton is always one of those guys I wonder if he knows what a legend he is at the club. He's probably the guy from that team you hear about the least, yet he was the man who won us the cup. I don't know if this makes sense, but guys like Thommo, DVZ, Samson, Goodwin, Mair, McAusland, McGowan have always been about since then, McLean, McGinn and Dummett as well, still high profile players and have been about the club, and been at games a few times since. Isma and Carey get linked with a move back every transfer window, but Newton there's never anything. Scored the goal that won us the cup, was one of the best players on the pitch that day, played for us for another season, then dissapeared.

We should put him in the hall of fame or something.

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41 minutes ago, Coventry Saint said:

A new girl in my team at work is married to Conor Newton's best mate (I know, right?). Once I found this out I insisted on making her watch the Final goal. She couldn't have given less of a shit. However, it did emerge that her husband was also at the final in 2013 to support Conor so he's good people, in my book.

 

Good story, Steve. 🙄

Not long after the 2013 Final, I was on holiday in Las Vegas, and was sitting with a beer at the big curved bar in the main lobby area in Ceasar’s Palace. Four or five guys walked into the lobby and one of them was Conor Newton. Definitely him. He took a couple of photos on his phone before they all headed off through the casino. You’ll need to ask her if her husband went on holiday to Vegas with Newtonnnnn! and a few others in 2013 or 2014. 😎

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1 hour ago, glenburn bud said:

There’s so much more money involved with youth players these days. It’s definitely in the clubs interest to big up these players, especially when it comes to EPL clubs showing interest.

Rangers just lost one of their promising youth players to Aston Villa the other week and a settlement of 350k was agreed for development after at first it looked like there was going to be next to nothing.

McAllister was sold as soon as he was entering the end of his contract to Derby. He had been scouted a lot by top teams from his youth days, just like Dylan Reid and Ethan Erhahon have. 

Using Motherwell again as a reference, they have done very well for years integrating youth players into their first team and then making them very good sellable assets. It's the type of model I'd hope through time we could adapt too, though we are always a team who is either near the bottom 2 or just missing out on top 6. 

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19 minutes ago, GAD said:

Conor Newton is always one of those guys I wonder if he knows what a legend he is at the club. He's probably the guy from that team you hear about the least, yet he was the man who won us the cup. I don't know if this makes sense, but guys like Thommo, DVZ, Samson, Goodwin, Mair, McAusland, McGowan have always been about since then, McLean, McGinn and Dummett as well, still high profile players and have been about the club, and been at games a few times since. Isma and Carey get linked with a move back every transfer window, but Newton there's never anything. Scored the goal that won us the cup, was one of the best players on the pitch that day, played for us for another season, then dissapeared.

We should put him in the hall of fame or something.

Conor Newton was interviewed in the 1877 Club last year, I think he was left in no doubt re the esteem he is held in although I agree in general with your point...it may be something to do with the fact that he is still playing, even at a lower level that has limited his visits. I often wondered where his career may have gone had he come to us permanently rather than Rotherham.

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I’m away to watch the footage of Newton’s strike at Hampden again. Just to make sure, from the camera behind him, it didn’t actually curve wide of the post. One of these times it will go wide. I’m convinced. Three feet wide, at least. 😎

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2 hours ago, djchapsticks said:

The days of accepting £200-300k for a good young prospect are surely over. We were getting fees like £300k back in the 90s for Ricky Gillies, Burton O'Brien and David McNamee back when we were a 1st division side with £2.5m of debt and not a pot to piss in. That was 30 years ago and yet I still don't ever remember us once getting anything close to half a million for a player in the last 30 years. Again, we should be looking at Motherwell as a drop off point as to what you should be doing in valuing your assets.

Bringing over guys like Lasley is hopefully going to not only bring a bit of savvy off the park (and I think every St. Mirren fans has been well impressed by any interviews he's conducted so far), but that bravery to dig in and hold out for what we think a player is worth.

This is actually something that was quite interesting to fact check on our thread after Robinson popped up with the claim that "He has got a great ability to find to players you’ve never heard of and produce gems that have been sold on for millions of pounds" when you announced Foyle

No shade on either Robinson or Foyle but when you actually look at the money we brought in from player trading the majority of it came from Academy players rather than "gems" Foyle had discovered. Basically the only players signed when Foyle was in situ who were sold for money were Heneghan, Bowman, Kipré and Watt. Both Moult and Johnson were via our previous HoR, a guy called Gary Owers.

Anyway, none of that is a dig at either Robinson or Foyle, it's just a bit of context as to why we were actually looking at it as a point of conversation.

Les Hutchison took over in 2015 and that was the first step towards fan-ownership, so using that as a starting point here's the list of players we've sold in that period and "reported" fees (FWIW: Foyle became our HoR in August 15 and was at the club through to May 21 - albeit he'd handed in his notice earlier than that):

Spoiler

21/22 - Tony Watt (Dundee United) - £150k - Transfer
21/22 - Allan Campbell (Luton) - Undisclosed - Transfer
20/21 - David Turnbull (Celtic) - £3m - Transfer
19/20 - James Scott (Hull City) - £1.5m - Transfer
19/20 - Reece McAlear (Norwich City) - £250k - Transfer
19/20 - Jake Hastie (Rangers) - £350k - Development Compensation
19/20 - Stuart McKinstry (Leeds United) - £400k - Transfer
18/19 - Ryan Bowman (Exeter City) - £30k - Transfer
18/19 - Cedric Kipré (Wigan) - c.£1m - Transfer
17/18 - Louis Moult (Preston North End) - £500k - Transfer 
17/18 - Ben Heneghan (Sheffield United) - £350k-ish - Transfer
16/17 - Marvin Johnson (Oxford United) - £750k-ish including sell on - Transfer
16/17 - Stephen Pearson (Atletico Kolkata) - £100k - Transfer 
16/17 - Ben Hall (Brighton) - £210k - Development Compensation
14/15 - Lee Erwin (Leeds United) - £500k - Development Compensation

Total = £9.09m + Campbell's 'undisclosed' fee.

Kyle Semple also moved to Rangers and for 'a five figure fee' but I've left that one off as I don't think I've seen that number anywhere else beyond Reddit and The Twitter.

Basically 8 (9 if you include Pearson) of those 15 were products of the Motherwell Academy.

Edited by capt_oats
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14 minutes ago, capt_oats said:

 

No shade on either Robinson or Foyle but when you actually look at the money we brought in from player trading the majority of it came from Academy players rather than "gems" Foyle had discovered. Basically the only players signed when Foyle was in situ who were sold for money were Heneghan, Bowman and Kipré. Both Moult and Johnson were via our previous HoR, a guy called Gary Owers.

 

I'm happy with that.

Find these guys in the lower leagues who you *might* sell for comparatively modest money or who might give you 2-5 good years of service at the club whilst continuing to develop youth players to sell on for the bigger money.

People will point at Robinson and say he lucked in at Motherwell by having a talented group coming through close to each other that could be sold but in all honesty, this is also the most optimistic I can remember St. Mirren being about youth prospects in a very very long time. Erhahon, Henderson, Reid, Offord and Jamieson are all first team ready or thereabouts.

We also have Luke Kenny, Fraser Taylor, Murray Campbell and Aiden Gilmartin (away to Cowdenbeath for the season) who will be knocking the door of the squad this season or next.

Not suggesting for a second all of these lads will make it or it's even an exhaustive list of who will be playing for the first team but it's quite exciting seeing so many boys coming through at the same time, particularly as it is through ability rather than necessity. 

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