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Dear SMISA member Happy new year to all our members and we are feeling hopeful 2019 will be a more enjoyable one for everyone connected to St Mirren than the second half of the last year was. Your latest updates from SMISA are below. January £2 spend ballot It’s time for the latest vote on where you would like to spend the last quarter’s worth of the £2 portion of your membership. We have developed two projects, listed below, which both follow the theme of brushes (bear with us), of different kinds. There is £3,000 available to spend this quarter and as both projects would take the whole budget, we are asking you to pick one of the below options. 1) Stadium murals - This is a project initially suggested by members in a previous survey which we have looked at on and off over the past couple of years before eventually settling on a format we think works. We are proposing to commission an artist to create six giant murals around the stadium – each commemorating an iconic scene from one of the club’s major trophy wins. The murals would go on the walls on the inside of the stands (near the toilets and pie stalls) and we hope to have two murals in each of the three home stands (Main, West and Family). Not only would this be a permanent celebration of our greatest moments and bring the club’s history to life for future generations, but it would liven up the stadium’s grey breezeblock interior. They would be painted by Paisley-based street artist Mark Worst, whose eye-catching work round town will already be familiar to many – he painted the mural of the 1987 cup team in Brown’s Lane and the giant kingfisher on the gable end in Johnston Street. We have scoped out the project with Mark and he has produced a mock-up of an example mural, shown above, to give you an idea what one might look like. If the mural project wins, we would ask the members to vote for which trophy wins you want Mark to paint a scene from, and to suggest/submit any iconic images which mean most to you. From there, Mark and SMISA will work out which ones are suitable for him to paint. These will include an inscription/caption and SMISA logo. For logistical reasons and on the advice of the artist these will work best as a portrait of a relevant individual(s) (for example, winning goalscorer or captain/manager/player with trophy) rather than a team shot or large-scale scene. The murals won’t work on the outside of the stands due to the texture of the surface, but Mark advises they will work well on the flat interior walls. 2) Maintenance equipment for Ralston pitch - As you know, SMISA has invested £50,000 towards the new 4G astrograss pitch at the club’s training ground at Ralston, believed to be one of the best surfaces in Scotland. You can see the club’s head of youth Allan McManus thanking SMISA members for your contribution in this video. Given the surface is being heavily used by the club’s first and youth teams, and that these surfaces do wear down over time, the club are keen to keep it in good condition and prolong its life. With that in mind, they have asked if SMISA could contribute towards equipment to help maintain the surface – in the form of a mini tractor with extendable brushes. Our £3,000 would pay for the bulk of the cost, and the club would make up the rest. You can see a similar machine in action in this video. 3) None of the above - Members can also vote for neither of the above, which means the money would stay in the pot for possible use in the future. Your link to vote by secure online ballot will follow this email – whichever of the three options above has the most votes will win. Voting will be run until Friday 25 January.

My preference is the mural paintings. It's time we did something for ourselves and I think they'll look really smart if the work this guy has done in the town is anything to go by. Given the stuff in town is exterior facing it's going to get much more of a tanking than these which will be inside and protected from the elements. Don't think there should be much upkeep required? My second preference was to bank. Third preference was the Astro tractor. We've put quite enough in to that park without also paying for the tractor to maintain it!

I daresay he won't be the first footballer in history to play with contact lenses in Apparently this boy has been different class in training. Looking forward to seeing him in the Black & White!

Could just be the Scottish Cup presser? Hopefully something more exciting though!

Agreed on the three inured players but we can't just remove the other three because of internet rumours :-) Ferdinand may or may not stay, but I've seen nothing to suggest Cooke or Flynn won't be around. Team for Sat as things stand right now; Hladky P McGinn Erhahon Popescu Baird McGinn Hodson Tansey Flynn Jackson Cooke It's not great I grant you and we'd have next to nothing on the bench, but it's a team nevertheless!

Update from Alan Wardrop tonight on his usual email about the 1877 club at the weekend;

Don't think there is much of a split on Alan Stubbs. Most fans acknowledge that he was an absolute car crash of an appointment. By the same token though I don't think many of us complained too loudly when he was given the job. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. On Gordon, I'd always expect the Chairman to get some flak from certain supporters, no matter what. Stewart Gilmour took the club out of the clutches of a con man, got rid of all our debt, got us a brand new stadium and a training complex. We won the Championship twice, and we were in the top flight for over a decade, during which time we reached two national cup finals, winning one. We also reached two other national cup semi-finals. And he STILL got hate!

That sort of stuff mate, yeah. Guess these boys would have to sort stuff out at home too! What I'm trying to say is that neither being at training doesn't need to be a negative thing. Guess we will find out in the next few days!

No mate, I meant positive reasons for them not being at training

Brad Lyons deal is done. Not sure what the story is with the two Slovakians as apparently neither trained today. Could be many reasons for that, wouldn't read too much into it, unless they've buggered off back home!

The goalkeeper trained with us all week before signing. Lyons trained with us Thurs & Friday. The two Slovakian lads both trained and played in a bounce game yesterday. I believe Gus has also been out to see players in Eastern Europe, as is his remit. I don't think we're signing players blind. There's never any guarantees though, particularly bringing players in from outside of Scotland. Every signing is a risk!

Disappointed that Eck didn't leave on a high after being such an important part of the title winning squad. Interesting move to go part time - assume that was a conscious decision on his part. Wish him well!

I'm not saying this is going to be our team going forward, I'm merely saying as things stand, right now, this is probably our strongest XI. I don't think for a minute that Ferdinand is going to stay, and I'd be staggered if Cammy Smith isn't gone in the next few days. New arrivals will come in and the team will look very different!

Rogers P McGinn Erhahon Ferdinand Baird S McGinn Tansey Hodson Smith Jackson Cooke It's not great but it's a team! Arguably our strongest available line-up considering Magennis and Mullen are injured and Eck is persona non-grata. 8 of those started our last league game (Hammill, Jones and Lyness the exceptions).

The manager has said he wants a first team squad of 21 or 22 and that the number of players coming in will depend on the number going out. If we assume that Heaton being out on loan removes him from the squad (even accepting we will be paying at least some of his wages) As of right now the first team squad consists of; Danny Rogers Jack Baird Ethan Erhahon Adam Eckersley Lee Hodson Anton Ferdinand Paul McGinn Gary MacKenzie Cole Kpekawa Ryan Flynn Jim Kellermann Kyle Magennis Stephen McGinn Cammy MacPherson Greg Tansey Cody Cooke Simeon Jackson Danny Mullen Cammy Smith That's 19 players. You can do the arithmetic yourself. We'll be looking at 2-3 additions at the moment, and hoping that we can move some of the above out the way to make room for more.

The full story of what happened under Stubbs will come out at some point I'm sure. Fitzy could probably write his second novel just on the goings on over the summer!

Well if you make stuff up in your own head that's up to you, but I suggested nothing of the kind.

Sorry, who said he was taking the club to court?

We are running a list on the homepage if you want to refresh your memory!

I'd imagine he needed a solicitor to sign off his compromise agreement?

Your dishing more pish than the sun and the daily ranger. Is that right mate

Salty!

More departures imminent, taking us up to double figures for the month!

If at least some of the players are, as looks likely, coming from outside the UK it makes sense to try and get them in as early as we can but as with every January transfer window it's not quite as easy as it looks to get players in. A team might agree to loan a player out or a let a player leave for example but only if or when they have signed someone they are after first, so we end up in a chain waiting for things to happen that are outwith our control. Similarly agents are all looking for the best deals for their players so they wait and see if they can get better offers elsewhere. It's all part of the game and every club is playing it. We might have to wait for certain players right up to the end of the month and that will mean going into the Cup game on 19th and the Celtic and Hibs league games at the end of the month with a squad that is still work in progress. Rebuilding a squad in January is far from easy. We've still over 3 weeks to go. We all need to be patient, and that includes me too

You could argue that Cammy Smith has played the best football of his career with us, after failing to really set the heather on fire at Aberdeen or on loan at Dundee Utd. Andy Dorman didn't really do an awful lot with his career other than in the purple patch he had with us. Junior Mendes was terrific for us either side of a terrible spell at Dunfermline. It does happen, sometimes