The Tommy Craig Must Go Thread

[oaksoft]

Do you really think what you've seen so far this season indicates such a turn in fortune?

Headsoft more like Oakie boy!

We've been here twice before since 2012. It's as though you have no memory.

[DLBud]

We can't afford NOT to sack him IMO.

If this form continues we could well be 1,000 fans down per game toward the end of the season but let's assume only 500 of those are not ST holders and are worth about £15 per game. With about 12 home games to come that equates to c£82k. Now that might not sound like a lot of money but bear in mind that's about 15% of a good home crowd (3,500) each game and it's a bigger number than you think initially.

Now, if that wouldn't be enough to pay him off then also consider the difference between finishing rock bottom and the safety of 10th place is £170k in prize money and the case to fire him surely becomes stronger, no?

Christ, even finishing 11th would probably guarantee us an extra £75-£100k based on our share of the playoff attendance pot.

He needs to go now, while there is still some fighting chance to avoid the increasingly inevitable outcome.

[pozbaird]

You reckon Teale and Goodwin will take over the reins with no increase in pay?

I think that's almost certainly not going to happen.

I think they would - one is a senior player who doesn't feature much any more, the other a senior player and captain currently on a 'final warning' for his latest misdemeanour.

Relegation would do neither Goodwin nor Teale any favours, and it would affect their younger team-mates and friends big time. If the only way to punt our proven managerial failure is to get him the hell out of the place and ask his assistants to do their utmost for the rest of this season, I don't think they'd start by saying 'show us the money'.

[belfast billy]

But under a different manager somebody who had a bit of clue what to do

[billymehmet1]

Because that's not a cost neutral option I'm afraid.

DoF will attract a higher salary and we'll either need a new manager or pay someone like Teale more to step up.

Either way it's less money for players in January.

We're going to have to pay his salary in full anyway so surely by changing his role similar to way Aberdeen handled craig brown at Aberdeen. For me seems the sinsibkeveay to do it without having to pay him off or send him sitting in his house And we pay him for this

[belfast billy]

Yeah and we've been here before several times over the last few years.

How many times have we been on 6 straight defeats and then turned in 4 wins and a draw in the following 6?

It's happened twice in the last two seasons at roughly this time of the year if I remember correctly.

Yeah and we've been here before several times over the last few years.

How many times have we been on 6 straight defeats and then turned in 4 wins and a draw in the following 6?

It's happened twice in the last two seasons at roughly this time of the year if I remember correctly.

but under a different manager somebody who had a bit of a clue how to go about things

[Fergie87]

"Most folk say he's a decent coach"... Not Michael Stewart, Billy Dodds, Kevin Thompson, Lewis Guy, Tommo...

[div]

We found the money and the balls to bin Tom Hendrie who was in year 2 of a 5 year contract when the club was absolutely broke so I fail to see why it would be impossible to bag Tommy Craig in 2014.

[Bud the Baker]

We found the money and the balls to bin Tom Hendrie who was in year 2 of a 5 year contract when the club was absolutely broke so I fail to see why it would be impossible to bag Tommy Craig in 2014.

Was he not on gardening leave from the ICT defeat in September 2002 until the financial windfall from an away tie against Celtic in the Scottish Cup later on that season allowed us to come to a settlement?

No chance of a windfall this season, unless we can shift McGinn or McLean in the January transfer - it all comes back to the rock/hard place scenario.

[Kemp]

Oaksoft, have actually been to any of the games?

This is not a situation of us being inconsistent, dull, weak in certain areas......the team is playing as if they have no idea at all what they are doing. We are losing 3-0 or 4-0 to really mediocre teams. I honestly think we would be in the relegation zone in the Championship with Craig in charge.

One of the benefits of losing our old stadium to move to this crappy legoland effort now is supposedly the sound financial footing it puts us on. Time to make some use of that by sending Craig off to pasture (no pay off until we can afford it) and getting a decent manager in.

[oaksoft]

Was he not on gardening leave from the ICT defeat in September 2002 until the financial windfall from an away tie against Celtic in the Scottish Cup later on that season allowed us to come to a settlement?

No chance of a windfall this season, unless we can shift McGinn or McLean in the January transfer - it all comes back to the rock/hard place scenario.

And that may be the only way to go.

Either way we're going to end up with a weaker team in January I think.

We should be CERTAIN as fans that this is really what we want.

We may well regret this.

[norrie82]

Tommy deserves until the end of the month. His team will be fit then and if still no better then fine but at least allow him the opportunity to show us his best team on the park.

[pod]

We found the money and the balls to bin Tom Hendrie who was in year 2 of a 5 year contract when the club was absolutely broke so I fail to see why it would be impossible to bag Tommy Craig in 2014.

The BOD wasn't trying to sell the club at the time.

[billyg]

Tommy deserves until the end of the month. .

He deserves f**k all , he should have had the decency to leave amicably by now , he's taking the c**t out of the club and the support , get him to f**k !

[Dibbles old paperboy]

Tommy deserves until the end of the month. His team will be fit then and if still no better then fine but at least allow him the opportunity to show us his best team on the park.

There are only 3 games until the end of the month:

14th December : Celtic v St Mirren

20th December : St Mirren v Motherwell

27th December : Dundee v St Mirren

Given that our talisman has picked up another groin strain at the weekend, how much longer can we wait for him to be fully match fit and can we only judge Tommy Craig as manager once he has had a month of Thommo fully match fit? Plummer may or may not make the next game (we've been saying that since October) and Wylde is due back in a week or two but it will take them a few weeks in the first team to get back up to full speed and who knows by then we could have McLean out injured. While TC has had a bad run of injuries and suspensions to put up with, he signed 3 strikers and none of them are an able deputy for Thompson or even a reasonable SPL standard back up striker. If we wait until all the current injuries clear up and then allow a few weeks for players to get match fit and gel we are looking at the end of January by which time we will have played another 10 league games. I don't see much changing results wise in the next few games if we have Thompson,McGinn, Osbourne, Goodwin, Plummer and Wylde all coming back from injury or long suspensions we will be starting with over half the outfield team not fully fit.

Tommy started the season with very few defensive options and lost Plummer to injury and Goodwin for one third of games due to suspension. Tommy gave Goodwin a new 2 year deal despite knowing his disciplinary record and the direction that was going in last season. Tommy signed Osbourne despite knowing his injury record - another risk where so far he has missed more games than he has played and it has coincided with Goodwin being suspended. Tommy also gave Teale a 2 year deal as a player despite him missing almost all of last season through injury and chose to leave him on the bench when we were on a losing run and fielding some of the youngest least experienced St Mirren teams in decades.

All teams have to contend with injuries and suspensions throughout the season. TC chose to load the team with lots of U20 players untried at SPL level and bring in lots of signings who had either not played in the SPL or if they had (Ross Caldwell) had not been a success - the only tried and tested SPl standard player he signed was bringing Tesselaar back to the club.

[Dibbles old paperboy]

The problem I have with giving Tommy Craig more time is he has no track record of getting team's out of a mess or achieving anything as a No.1. Alan Pardew led Newcastle into Europe for the first time in years before having a slump and could always argue he wasn't backed in the transfer market etc, Danny Lennon could point to finishing 8th, winning the cup and bouncing back from bad runs before. Tommy Craig is a 64 year old manager who has 4 league wins to his name in his managerial career to date.

[irvine_buddie]

And that may be the only way to go.

Either way we're going to end up with a weaker team in January I think.

We should be CERTAIN as fans that this is really what we want.

We may well regret this.

We're all pretty certain thanks It is literally at the point where whoever we get in or promote to manager can't do much worse.

[Sergie's no1 fan]

And that may be the only way to go.

Either way we're going to end up with a weaker team in January I think.

We should be CERTAIN as fans that this is really what we want.

We may well regret this.

The board will be regretting appointing TC as manager anyway.

Kelly,Naismith, McGinn and McLean are half the players they were under DL. Even Kello has regressed.

It is all about fine margins. Results wise we have mainly been beaten by the odd goal, performance wise we have been awful and should be cut adrift at the bottom. After 3 games we were all checking the County score, normally that happens in Feb-March time. Total collapse right from the start of the season.I believe even a half decent manager would be able to organise and install a bit of belief in that team, the players look completely lost. We have the spine of a decent bottom half Prem team. The board need to act now before its too late.

Also I wouldn't trust TC to sign any more players in January. We should try and punt Ball and Marwood to whoever will take them. Send Dury and Plummer back to City because just now they are a waste of a wage, amazing to think Drury is our joint top scorer!

[beyond our ken]

The board will be regretting appointing TC as manager anyway.

Kelly,Naismith, McGinn and McLean are half the players they were under DL. Even Kello has regressed.

It is all about fine margins. Results wise we have mainly been beaten by the odd goal, performance wise we have been awful and should be cut adrift at the bottom. After 3 games we were all checking the County score, normally that happens in Feb-March time. Total collapse right from the start of the season.I believe even a half decent manager would be able to organise and install a bit of belief in that team, the players look completely lost. We have the spine of a decent bottom half Prem team. The board need to act now before its too late.

Also I wouldn't trust TC to sign any more players in January. We should try and punt Ball and Marwood to whoever will take them. Send Dury and Plummer back to City because just now they are a waste of a wage, amazing to think Drury is our joint top scorer!

I also would argue that marwood, Ball and Drury have all regressed under TC, Poor as they were when he signed them-they have all got worse under his regime

When a manager makes poor signings and they actually get WORSE under his coaching regime, then I'm afraid it is time for a change

[aldo_j]

Think it all comes back to what they discussed on Sportsound last night. Craig is respected as a coach, and probably rightly so, but it appears that the Man Management side is completely lacking and that's where he falls down as a manager.

Don't really know what Teale and Goodwin can offer the setup as yet. Both young coaches, maybe with an experienced manager alongside then maybe they'll flourish.

[The Original 59er]

I see we have reached the dizzy heights of 113 pages, at an average page rate of 20 posts that makes 2,240 posts on this subject (ignoring numerous other TC must / should/ has to/ bu**er o** as soon as possible threads)!

Can the Mods please tell us how many pages DL or GMcP generated on the same subject............. it might be important to know this as the BoD's may wait for a certain threshold to be broken to actually act!

[irvine_buddie]

The board will be regretting appointing TC as manager anyway.

Kelly,Naismith, McGinn and McLean are half the players they were under DL. Even Kello has regressed.

It is all about fine margins. Results wise we have mainly been beaten by the odd goal, performance wise we have been awful and should be cut adrift at the bottom. After 3 games we were all checking the County score, normally that happens in Feb-March time. Total collapse right from the start of the season.I believe even a half decent manager would be able to organise and install a bit of belief in that team, the players look completely lost. We have the spine of a decent bottom half Prem team. The board need to act now before its too late.

Also I wouldn't trust TC to sign any more players in January. We should try and punt Ball and Marwood to whoever will take them. Send Dury and Plummer back to City because just now they are a waste of a wage, amazing to think Drury is our joint top scorer!

I would keep them, especially Plummer as he looked pretty good before getting injured. Drury has been dissapointing but I'd imagine we aren't paying that big a chunk of their wages so we might aswell keep them.

[pozbaird]

I see we have reached the dizzy heights of 113 pages, at an average page rate of 20 posts that makes 2,240 posts on this subject (ignoring numerous other TC must / should/ has to/ bu**er o** as soon as possible threads)!

Can the Mods please tell us how many pages DL or GMcP generated on the same subject............. it might be important to know this as the BoD's may wait for a certain threshold to be broken to actually act!

Picture the crisis board meeting that Div has been summoned to...

SG: Ok, Dave has his spreadsheet with him, so what's the lowdown then?

DIV: Well, I only have figures for Wee Angry, Wee Clueless, and Auld Fud. Can't go back to Coughlin or Hendrie for an accurate guide, internet not so prevalent in those days.

SG: Good stuff Dave, so give it to us straight.

DIV: Well, there were 2,357 'get tae' fcuk' posts for Wee Angry, 3,789 'get him tae' fcuk back tae' Cowdenbeath' posts for Wee Clueless, and so far, 4,903 'get the auld useless fud tae' fcuk' posts for the auld useless fud.... Plus 235 'keep him 'til the end of the season' posts from Oaksoft... that isn't you, is it Stewart?

SG: Is it fcuk me. Gie's peace Dave. Right - that does it. Get Tommy in here NOW!

Edited December 9, 2014 by pozbaird

[stlucifer]

Picture the crisis board meeting that Div has been summoned to...

SG: Ok, Dave has his spreadsheet with him, so what's the lowdown then?

DIV: Well, I only have figures for Wee Angry, Wee Clueless, and Auld Fud. Can't go back to Coughlin or Hendrie for an accurate guide, internet not so prevalent in those days.

SG: Good stuff Dave, so give it to us straight.

DIV: Well, there were 2,357 'get tae' fcuk' posts for Wee Angry, 3,789 'get him tae' fcuk back tae' Cowdenbeath' posts for Wee Clueless, and so far, 4,903 'get the auld useless fud tae' fcuk' posts for the auld useless fud.... Plus 235 'keep him 'til the end of the season' posts from Oaksoft... that isn't you, is it Stewart?

SG: Is it fcuk me. Gie's peace Dave. Right - that does it. Get Tommy in here NOW!

O.K. then Tommy. Have you still got those negatives?

Right then. Keep up the good work!

[Sergie's no1 fan]

I would keep them, especially Plummer as he looked pretty good before getting injured. Drury has been dissapointing but I'd imagine we aren't paying that big a chunk of their wages so we might aswell keep them.

Thats the problem, he has been injured since the Thistle game at Firhill iirc? Not much use to us sitting in the stand every week.

Drury gets in great positions to score, he must have had about 10 very good chances this season. He isn't a winger though, maybe try him up through the middle playing off Thommo/Ball .

If we are paying pretty much 0% of their wages then they are worth keeping. With such a small squad with poor back up we literally can't afford passengers, against ICT we had 4 passengers at least on the park never mind off it.