TopCat

The only contract that could possibly be off the table is Tanser. Millar and Flynn weren't getting deals regardless and they don't play, Alnwick was leaving anyway, and i doubt any decision had been made either way on 34 year old Alan Power. No one else is out of contract. What has happened is that he's told players who are under contract for next year that they aren't part of his plans and they're free to leave in the summer. Which would be fair enough if we were safe, and i think he thought we were. To the surprise of no one, there was then a huge change in attitude and we went from a team who was hard to beat to one who loses every week We now need these same players who know they're leaving in a few weeks to dig in and get us the results we are going to need to keep us in the league. We are in huge trouble. Despite this, we still have a decent chance of staying up, we had so many points on the board before Robbo arrived that even he is going to struggle to relegate us.

I didn't assume it though, i said before it things may have got better or worse, we will never know. The players are certainly at fault, no disputing that. Robinson has came in like a wrecking ball and pissed them all off, now they're not trying. Blame is on Robinson for his burn it all down attitude, and of course the players for chucking it so spectacularly. We now need these same pissed off players who know they're not going to be here next year to keep us up over the next four (or six) games. That's why we are in deep, deep trouble.

Well that didn't happen did it Not a maybe or maybe not.

And the inconvenient truth 😉

A mere second in time? When Jim left we were 6th, one point behind 4th with a game in hand (Against Dundee, which we went onto win). Had the season been called at that point due to a 18th COVID outbreak, we'd have finished 4th. What second are you talking about? Call it one point behind 4th with a game in hand against bottom of the league if you want, the point is the same. Your second point is literally how league tables work. Your league position depends on how the other teams perform, are you saying that Ross County, United and Motherwell only made top six because Aberdeen and Hibs have been rubbish? Suppose you're right. St Johnstone are 11th because Dundee have been even worse than them. Killie just won the Championship because they were less rubbish than everyone else. You get compared to your peers, and a lot of them aren't very good, 'twas ever thus. Welcome to Scottish football. 'Compared to last season this was a real disappointment' We were literally on exactly the same on points after 25 games this season as the previous season That's the table on the day Jim left, 4th on PPG, and 13 points ahead of St Johnstone. Here's the table from the season before after we'd played the same amount of games: As the figures show, there hadn't been any kind of decline, we were motoring along just fine, comfortably mid table, for the second season in a row. Then Robbo got his hands on us, and dragged us kicking and screaming into a relegation fight. Lose on Saturday that gap from St Johnstone will have went from 13 points to 2 points in a 10 game period. An absolutely remarkable decline, and it's his fault.

i have been comparing things that actually have happened. You were pontificating on things that may or may not have happened, such as form maybe dropping off anyway if Jim had stayed. Certainly a difference there?

Exactly, and grinding out results is all that's needed to be top six, as we showed up to February, when we were 4th on PPG. The ability to grind out results in this league is the difference between mid table obscurity and relegation. We certainly have never been and never will be world beaters - no one in Scotland is. We were however a competent mid table Scottish top flight side, as the league in the last two years has consistently showed. Something we weren't for over 30 years prior and something it seems like we no longer are.

Has one of Fraser, Shaughnessy or McCarthy picked up an injury?

There's away fans in the home sections for all these games anyway, I had one sitting beside me the other week. Quite a nice guy actually 😁

Pretty simple really. Poor Livi, Aberdeen and Hibs got three games against a St Mirren team who weren't managed by Robbo. Lucky County, United and Motherwell only got two, and they filled their boots with three points in the other game, which was in the run up to the split. The latter three made then made the top six.

Well it was, if you take the three points they got from us off any of them they don't make the top six. Of course, there are other factors at play, i am not disputing that. One of the factors that helped them is they got to play Robbo's St Mirren instead of Goodwin's St Mirren.

Well in the final round of fixtures we play everyone again. In the final round we played Aberdeen, Livi and Hibs before Robinson, lost none of them and none of the three made top six. We played County, Well and Dundee Utd after Robinson, lost the lot and they all made the top six. Of course there are other factors at play, but i bet the fans of the three that missed out wished they got a shot at us under Robinson. Hibs in particular, that team they beat easily on Saturday played nothing like the team that went to Easter Road and beat them a few weeks prior. Oh well them's the breaks.

Of course they made it over the course of the season, but the three wins against us were in the run up to the split. Had any one of them lost to us they don't get enough to make it. Poor Hibs and Livi had to play us before Robinson got appointed, and missed out as a result 😁

Yeah from memory neither United, Motherwell or County were in the top six when they beat us. They all made it though, because they beat us.

We literally didn't have to beat them to make top six, we were in the top six having not beaten them. Motherwell have won just one game since Boxing Day (against us of course) and they're in the top six. You remember the County game very differently from me incidentally: More posession, more shots on goal (27 ffs), more shots on target. We weren't great that night but if anyone deserved to win it, it was us. We had two shots on target on Saturday by the way, the drop off has been unreal.

So in summary, you can't compare them because they were different games of football happening at different times. But if you did compare them Robinson is doing worse.

Yep he was a great signing by Jim. He's the best goalie i've ever seen at Saints and i'm not surprised he's getting a big deal down south. Good luck to him 👏

That's part of the variable we have considered. You're spot on, we used to have a manager who the players loved playing for and as such he had them punching above their weight. We were 4th on PPG the day he left, that was not the 4th best squad in the country. Last paragraph is pointless waffle. Things may have turned worse? Maybe. Maybe they'd have got better. Most likely they'd have stayed about the same, and we would now be in the top six and fighting for Europe. We will never know. Yeah why compare anything? Might aswell just close football down because it's all pointless anyway This forum man 😆

Might aswell do away with league tables then if nothing is directly comparable 😆 So if Robinson wins his last four games (he won't) against teams from the bottom half he will still have a lower PPG than Goodwin? My word, never realised it was that bad!

Well you could pick the worst eight game run from that eleven game sequence and it's still more than the three points that Robinson has got. You're right though, they aren't really comparable. Particularly now when we are in post split world and we are coming up against the worst other five teams in the league, and three of them are at home. Robinson has so far delivered a worse run than Goodwin's worst, with an easier set of games.

We'd been leaking goals like nobodies business before the weekend (14 in 4 games) so you can tell Robbo thought we need to keep a clean sheet for starters. He stuck five at the back and three in deep midfield. Of course we still lost without keeping a clean sheet, and the flip side was we hardly created a single chance. In the games we had lost just prior (rangers excpeted) we had been scoring (2 v Well, 2 v Hearts and 1 v Dundee Utd), but he took that threat away on Saturday, without plugging the gap at the back. I felt one of the main reasons for that was Ronan playing in a much deeper role, which doesn't suit him. Connor is one of the best Saints players I've ever seen, the team must be built specifically to maximise his game winning ability, after all he has won us games himself several times. We must get him further forward on Saturday, where he can best hurt St Johnstone: Alnwick Fraser-Shaughnessy-Dunne-Tanser Gogic-Power Jones-Ronan-Henderson Greive Squad wise we are stronger than the Saintees. If our attitude is right we don't lose (we haven't lost any of the three previous games between us this season). My problem is i just don't think the attitude will be right and the Saintees will want it more than we do, and as such we will lose again. I hope I'm wrong!

He has been, he wasn't getting a game at QP so no point in him being there. Definitely one for the future, not the present.

Mutual consent is as it says on the tin really. Say the value remaining on Erwin's contract was £50k, we may have offered him £25k to leave, there's been a bit of negotiation and he's taken £30k. So it will be less than the value of the contract, but still a lump sum. Our golden era of the mutual consent was Danny Lennon, he was giving them out like sweeties toward the end of his reign. Good to see Lee doing well abroad, i feel his game may be better suited to outside Scotland.

The Motherwell game when we were winning till the 94th minute? County was 0-0 with nothing in it, didn't think either team deserved to win that. None of the performances this season under Goodwin (apart from Dundee at home) were anything like as bad as what we've seen in the last month IMO.

But they haven't though. Six draws and five defeats is not a shocking run. It's a bad run, but we still aren't losing most games. Eight defeats out of nine certainly is a shocking run. You must see that the current run under Robinson is much worse than the run from October to December?