LargsBud

All those reasons you mentioned are not as strong as the desire to stay up when your are fighting for your life. Every footballer under the sun has some reason to win a game of football so to be pedantic about it, of course they want to win. But a team fighting for their life vs a team with nothing to play for definitely has some effect on the game.

I do agree that that national team is not what it used to be for a lot of players now. But I think the answer is to be a lot tougher on them. Don't allow them to pick and choose when they play for Scotland when it suits them. The current approach of allowing this clearly isn't working. Players are human beings aswell and aren't completely unaffected by criticism. They should be singled out for turning the country down and they can then deal with the barrage of public and social media criticism which will result from it. Currently the SFA jusy play along with these crackpot excuses to keep the criticism off the players. This only encourages them to pull out and lets them hide beind their excuses.

I'm still a big fan of international football. I go to a lot of away games and there is still a strong appetite for it among the core support. I'll be going to San Marino but not Kazakhstan. I think we've seen cycles like this before. It's just cos we are shite at the moment. McLeish hasn't handled the call offs well. He hasn't shown strong enough leadership and the players dont respect him. They aren't scared to call off. Something that infuriates me about international football is when new managers come in and give it the cliche "everyone is starting from a blank slate". That's basically saying to players like Matt Ritchie "It's okay for you to undermine the last manager and pull out of Scotlands biggest game in years, just don't do it to me"..Then he's surprised when the same players pull out when he's the manager. You need to show stong leadership from day 1. Players who have pulled out for the previous manager shouldn't get a clean slate as soon as an new manager comes in. If you do that you undermine the last manager and provide an opportunity for these guys to do it again.

I said the clubs should come out and condemn it. How is that accepting it? I don't think it's as deep a problem as you think it is. There is a media frenzy about it at the moment because it's topical and there were a few high profile incidents. Its something that will just always exist on some level and there's nothing that can be done to stop that. Any knee jerk reactions by punishing clubs would just be detrimental to the game but I think we are agreed on that part.

If by fix you mean stopping it completely then yes it is impossible. Take yesterday's Birmingham derby for example. 30k people there. If one drunken idiot out of 30k people decides he wants to run onto the park there is absolutely nothing stopping him. It doesn't happen every week. In fact I've never seen it discussed on MOTD before apart from last night so it's hardly as widespread as we're made believe. Clubs can only condemn it and move on. Nothing else can be done.

This issue is something that is never going to be fully resolved. It's like saying you want world peace, it's never going to happen. Unfortunately this notion is too much for many people including pundits and the media to understand. There isn't always an answer to every problem. Sometimes you just need to live with it. There has been trouble at the football since Jesus was a boy and there will always continue to be. The idea of punishing clubs for society's problem is beyond ridiculous for so many reasons.

The media are so predictable on this. Almost every media outlet was in uproar about her asking to come back and spouted propaganda against her return. The media were almost unliaterally in full support of the governments decision Now a fortnight later and the baby's died it's now all the foreign secretary's fault for not letting her in. You couldn't make it up!

Worse than if he had left with 2 months to go in the season? We might have thrown away the title if that had happened. It's never a good time to lose a good manager that you want to keep. But some times are worse than others. I think leaving at the end of a season is the least bad of all the times he could have went.

Hope all the St Mirren fans who were raging at JR for the "bad timing" of his departure can now see what actual bad timing is. Leaving with 2 months of the season remaining when you're on the brink of a treble treble is bad timing. Winning the title, getting promoted and leaving at the end of the season is NOT bad timing.

Why? For calling it as it is? He's been to Ibrox as a manager plenty times before. I'm sure it's not the first time he's been subject to that. Not saying it's okay btw but he should have chosen a time when he got a good result to make that point.

Meltdown of the year last night. Got to love Scottish football for the amount of meltdowns we've had this season. It's funny how the sectarianism hasn't came up at any other of the many times he's played the OF over the last few years. Only the time they get gubbed 5-0 out the cup.

This part annoys me. If she had her citizenship revoked before the baby was born this situation wouldn't be an issue. Why have the British Government been so unaware of this? Do we seriously believe they didn't know she existed up until a week ago when some journalist done an interview with her? We're supposed to have the best intelligence services in the world. Her citizenship should have been revoked the day she set foot in Syria.

There are a few nutters at every football club in the world. Most other chairmen keep their emotions aside rather than dragging the club publicity through the mud.

Gordon Scott has made an absolute laughing stock of the club today with that statement. I'd love to know what the f**k he expects it to achieve. We are getting lambasted from all angles on social media due to his personal vendetta against one section of our support. If an incident happened and the law was broken let the police deal with it like every normal person. Wading in due to his own personal grievances has just embarrassed our club on a nationwide scale

This part just isn't true. There have been no flares or fireworks. What planet are they actually on? There have been smoke bombs but there is a big big difference between flares/fireworks and smoke bombs.

They are all on loan so it is going to be another full overhaul again in the summer. Regardless of which division we are in.

I don't think any sensible person is suggesting that we sack the whole management team. That's never going to happen at this stage. The answer is to replace Kearney with MacPherson and keep everything else the same. It's MacPhersons team anyway so there won't be the argument of it not being his team levelled against him. We're only 3 points from safety. 1 game. All is not lost. I definitely think we will roll the dice again at some point between now and the end of the season if results don't improve.

This season has been one of the worst and most depressing seasons I've had watching St Mirren. Last season was flat out the best. There are two extremes so quickly one after another. I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same so it's understandable why people say they enjoy the championship more. You can bang on about having more money, spending more money on better players etc blah blah blah but that doesn't make it any more enjoyable to watch. I enjoy absolutely nothing about going to tynecastle and pittodrie and watch us get shagged 4 or 5-0.

He seems a nice guy and I think everyone really hoped he would do well. The problem is that we haven't seen any improvement at all. If anything it seems like we are going back the way. Tonight was a must win and we've f**ked it.

Unbelievable the hatred on here for one of our most successful managers in living memory.

How is it his fault that Kearney can't seem to motivate the players, get his tactics right, get his in-game management right or pick the right team from the start?

I do hope that's joke. Things are bad enough. And remember the new players that have came he's the one who recommends them. He's director of football. He couldn't direct a seal to water. Exactly...It's his team so it would be a smooth transition. Nobody could label it not being his team against him.

Just give the job to Gus now ffs. Should have done that 6 months ago.

Obviously every team has some motivation to win a game of football. The incentive to keep a winning run going or keep a glimmer of hope of top 6 alive can't be compared to the incentive to fight against relegation.

I view it more as can't lose rather than must win. Stop the rot and set us up for Utd in the Cup at the weekend. The problem is that we are running out of "winnable" games. Motherwell at home is arguably the easiest game we've got left. Dundee and Hamilton are both fighting for their lives like ourselves and will be right up for it when we play them. Motherwell aren't really playing for anytning.