The Original 59er

Well I got my wish, a fairly "ugly" win, but nevertheless, A WIN We were lucky with our penalty, personally I thought it was soft the moment I saw it and seeing it several times now after on TV, I haven't changed my mind, but generally I thought the ref had a poor game and made a strange number of calls on both sides. I suppose that is the standard you now get in the SPFL! I'm not going to get excited by Grieve yet, but what was very encouraging was his movement into space running the lines between the defenders and being a real pain in the a*s for the St Johnstone defence all night. I thought keeping him on for the full game was a brave call as I thought that he was slightly running out of steam towards the end of the game, but I like his competitiveness, his quickness of thought and action and he scored a striker's goal, so can't ask for anything more. Overall a good performance from the team, poor(ish) first half but better 2nd 45 minutes. I think Tait has lost a little bit of form / confidence, and made a few errors initially but got a bit better, again in the 2nd half. As I said yesterday, with Dundee winning at Hearts, it shows that there are no easy games in this league and just above Dundee there are 7 teams separated by just 6 points. It will be dog eats dog for the next 12 / 13 games.

Do you know what the 'tic players (colleagues) called him? ....................... 4 by 4 I'll let you ponder on that one for a wee while and then reveal if you haven't heard it before 🤣

True

Every game that our Saints play in is a potential banana skin! Saying that, every team in this league has the capability to beat every one else in the league, and that includes Dundee. In that regard I'm never sure we are truly safe until we have at least 40+ points on the board. So yes I agree this isn't a sure fire win, St Johnstone have turned a slight corner and watching their last couple of games on TV, they aren't that bad. I'd happily accept a 1-0 ugly win!

The reason I ask is that I have a very vague memory of carrying out work in Ferguslie Mill in the very early 70's and whilst it was only for one day, I still remember seeing all the working looms on the multi floor building. However I seem to remember that the top couple of floors weren't in operation with no-one around just remnants of the machines. I was standing in for someone in survey work we were doing for them (fire and rating surveys), but I can't quite remember all the details and I think my memories have been tainted by film and videos I have seen of the Mills in operation. I was certainly warned in advance by the senior surveyor that I had to be on my toes as both the machines and the women who operated them were VERY dangerous!

The Glasgow Herald Office was on the south side of that Square. Had to go into their office each Saturday morning with the takings I owed the Herald when I ran a paper round for 4 years by just delivering the Herald each morning. 4 Dozen and eight............. that number is etched on my brain as the standard delivery dropped off at my front door from the age of 15 to 18 at 6.00am 6 days a week. It was a very lucrative arrangement as opposed to working as a "paper shop" delivery boy.

What year did Ferguslie Mill stop operating?

Another one from the 40's / 50's of a scene taken quite often looking across at the High St and the La Scala in particular.

This looks like the late 19th / early 20th century - Causeyside Street, - I think this must have been taken looking south. The reason it's in colour is due to the fashion at the time of taking a black and white photo ('cause that's all they could take) and then painting over it with stylised colour.

Here's one from the 50's and obviously a fair bit has changed, but the Bobby is still on duty standing right in the middle of the Cross. That must have been the short straw for any traffic cop in these days, standing right in the middle of all these fumes!

I know the Hight Street had died a bit over the past few years, but this has to have been taken on a Sunday surely?

So how about something like this for next season?

It suggests Paisley Cross in the early 50's after a Saint's game .................... but there isn't a scarf in sight!? Maybe just a busy Saturday, but there are a lot of males visible, so maybe they were right.

1952 Paisley and Barrhead cinema ads from newspapers of the time

Early public transport photos from Paisley.

I had an SL90 in these days. Interchangeable engine parts with Opel cars as I seem to remember when I had to find a gasket in France!

It was really icy and the pitch was as hard as nails. It would never be played today, even on pitches without under-surface heating! However a great team performance and game, the crowd on the day (from both teams) really helped make the atmosphere.

I was young at the time and my Dad used to take me to see them in the late 50's and early 60's and lift me over the turnstiles .......................... those were the days! I agree Tommy Bryceland was really special and I remember Jim Clunie well, he brought great calmness to the back line and he commanded the box. He also turned into a well respected Manager and had a good record. It's really difficult to call, I really liked "cheeky" Bryceland at his best, I also liked Clunie and Baker, as he just instinctively knew where the net was. For sheer entertainment Ally MacLeod and his 4 goals at Iprox stands out as the best singular performance I've seen from a Saint's player so I think he must come into the reckoning as also must Bobby McKean who was a real ball player, fast and an entertainer. Of the more recent batches both Paul Lambert and John McGinn stand out and they have both shown that they could and can play at the highest standard.

I completely agree, any of them would be welcome. I accept that in some cases the opposition might have been less demanding than that of the Premier League, but you can only score against the players and opposition you are faced with. If what you are saying is that it is easier to score against inferior opposition, then theoretically we would have a lot more players with good stats, given we spent a reasonable amount of time in the 2 tier through the 60's and 70's, but we don't, so the best way to look at it overall is to assess games against any team and analyse the ratio. It makes Gerry Baker's stats all the more impressive!

The best way to look at Saint's strikers is to analyse the goals scored record against all the games played by them over their period with the club (including cup games). ST wasn't prolific as I say with an average of 0.36 of a goal each game. The following puts it into perspective: Mark Yardley - 0.38 Tommy Bryceland - 0.41 Barry Lavety - 0.43 Frank McGarvey - 0.34 Dougie Somner - 0.45 Gerry Baker - 0.81 Anything over 0.40 would be a good return from a good striker. Stevie was valuable, a good leader of the line and he is a fan. Yes lucky we had him, but don't just assess him against three seasons.

Changing topic slightly, but still relevant to the upcoming game against Celtic, I thought that it might be worth a quick look through the past few seasons to see where we might end up if we stick to the current trend of a point a game (given that the Celtic game will see us at the halfway point). 20/21 - 38 games = 39 points= 3rd bottom 19/20 - 30 games = 29 points = 3rd / 4th bottom 18/19 - 38 games = 33 points = 3rd bottom 17/18 - 38 games = 39 point = 4th bottom 16/17 - 38 games = 38 points = 4th bottom (2nd bottom was 35 points and it was Kilmarnock from memory) 15/16 - 38 games = 36 points = 2nd Bottom So to put it in a nutshell, we have to wake up and smell the coffee since on the current trajectory we will be fighting at the bottom with at least one or two others in order to avoid the dreaded play-off. I'm not normally a negative sounding poster, but Top 6 my back side! 😨

That makes it 5.3 goals per season which certainly isn't prolific. Not saying that he wasn't an asset, but if you compare him to the names mentioned, he is not in that list as he didn't really hit the net often enough

I wrote this last week in another post: Posted December 6 We are like a stuck record (vinyl)........... Same old problem year on year. We have theoretically tightened up our defence and we have a capable mid-field but we have had no real poacher goal threat since........... let me think now......? Probably Mark Yardley (2003), Dougie Somner (1983), Frank McDougall (1984) or Barry Lavety (2004) who have been our most recent goal threats. Whilst these mentioned were good in front of goal, our best instinctive goal scorer still probably remains as Gerry Baker That is a sad fact. Yes there have been various players since Baker that have donned the black & white jersey who have been quite good in the penalty box but Gerry stands out like a Jim Forrest or a Mo Johnston. Baker's average over 3 playing seasons was 22 goals. Compare that with Lavety - 7 goals a season, Yardley - 8 goals per season, McDougall - 11 per season, Somner - 13 per season. So as much as we complain at not sticking the ball in the net, despite getting into scoring positions, we haven't had anyone that regularly hits the net for 17 years and probably more as Barry wasn't too proficient in his latter years. What we have are players who aren't sharp enough despite the training, because they have to work blo*dy hard to get into the scoring positions however they aren't instinctive so they don't anticipate to move into, or be in the position that true goal scorers do. An amusing example of this is Jota playing for Liverpool on Saturday - he got into the position then didn't have the composure to finish it off, instead he just didn't take a look or take a second and place the ball (if you haven't seen it, it's worth watching how not to try and score). So what Alnwick is saying is true. He was at Rangers and he will have seen natural goal scorers in action on a daily basis at training and in his occasional run outs for the 1st team. We haven't anything near that ability, but to find it you either have to pay quite a lot of money, accidentally find a gem who will leave you after a couple of seasons, or keep trying to find a journeyman who might just come good for a season or two. So far none of these has appeared for 17+ years and counting.........

We are like a stuck record (vinyl)........... Same old problem year on year. We have theoretically tightened up our defence and we have a capable mid-field but we have had no real poacher goal threat since........... let me think now......? Probably Mark Yardley (2003), Dougie Somner (1983), Frank McDougall (1984) or Barry Lavety (2004) who have been our most recent goal threats. Whilst these mentioned were good in front of goal, our best instinctive goal scorer still probably remains as Gerry Baker That is a sad fact. Yes there have been various players since Baker that have donned the black & white jersey who have been quite good in the penalty box but Gerry stands out like a Jim Forrest or a Mo Johnston. Baker's average over 3 playing seasons was 22 goals. Compare that with Lavety - 7 goals a season, Yardley - 8 goals per season, McDougall - 11 per season, Somner - 13 per season. So as much as we complain at not sticking the ball in the net, despite getting into scoring positions, we haven't had anyone that regularly hits the net for 17 years and probably more as Barry wasn't too proficient in his latter years. What we have are players who aren't sharp enough despite the training, because they have to work blo*dy hard to get into the scoring positions however they aren't instinctive so they don't anticipate to move into, or be in the position that true goal scorers do. An amusing example of this is Jota playing for Liverpool on Saturday - he got into the position then didn't have the composure to finish it off, instead he just didn't take a look or take a second and place the ball (if you haven't seen it, it's worth watching how not to try and score). So what Alnwick is saying is true. He was at Rangers and he will have seen natural goal scorers in action on a daily basis at training and in his occasional run outs for the 1st team. We haven't anything near that ability, but to find it you either have to pay quite a lot of money, accidentally find a gem who will leave you after a couple of seasons, or keep trying to find a journeyman who might just come good for a season or two. So far none of these has appeared for 17+ years and counting.........