Dibbles old paperboy

Aye you might find imbeciles posting "already worse than Stubbs" on matchday threads.

Was mixed up with the dates being used by English premiership and championship.

The chairman has been quiet of late. St Mirren 2 Dunfermline 3 St Mirren 1 Edinburgh City 0 East Kilbride 0 St Mirren 0 (East Kilbride win on penalties)

The more worrying aspects from Goodwin's interview today are: Gary MacKenzie has a new (minor) injury - after two games. The good news is he should be ok to play on Tuesday. There is no sign of any new signings joining before the final League Cup group stage match... and I think there are only about 3 weeks left of the transfer window. Goodwin has also pointed out that other premiership teams have used the league cup group stages to blood youngsters and new signings in and give game time to their squads. We have such a small squad at the minute we are playing virtually the same starting XI, and if we do make another 4-5 signings in this window they'll be trying to get their match fitness and gelling with their new team mates at the outset of the league campaign instead!

There are any number of good reasons why Jim Goodwin might publicly downplay the number of signings we need to make. Last year our squad was too big. Stubbs wanted rid of over half the players he inherited (after he was sacked he said maybe 3 players were good enough for the premiership) but couldn't offload most of them and made 11 signings on top of Jack Ross's 2 summer signings, and then Oran brought in Ferdinand, Jackson, Lyness and Hammill before the January window - 17 signings before Christmas from 3 different managers. We made another 10 signings in January. 27 new signings in 1 season folks! Last season we had 6 different goalkeepers starting or on the bench over the season. The best reason, to my mind, for Goodwin signalling he only wants to sign 4-5 more players is he wants to break the trend in the GLS era of signing 27 players in one season and burning through over 80 players in 3 seasons. He's probably being realistic about how few of our contracted players will be easy to shift to other clubs without a financial hit to us. The second half of last season showed us that if the McGinns, Gary MacKenzie, Jack Baird, Kyle Magennis, Ryan Flynn and Danny Mullen have some quality additions alongside them they are serviceable players in the bottom half of the premiership at the minute. They probably aren't able to carry a team with younger inexperienced players though. I'm sure Goodwin will think some of those guys are fine at our level and others he'll move on as contracts end. If he can sign 4-5 mid-table players on top of signing Djorkaeff and Andreu I think we will marginally improve and finish 8th - 10th this season. If our next 4-5 signings are hopeful punts in the dark we are more likely to finish 12th. Goodwin could well be aware the budget is tighter than we are letting on and trying to lower fans expectations about the number of signings he thinks we can realistically complete before the window closes. If he came out publicly and said we need 10 new signings, he would be sending out a public vote of no confidence in the players he has inherited. That didn't work well for Stubbs last year (or Terry Butcher at Hibs). If he said we needed 10 new signings and we only made 6 would fans begin to question his ability to identify and persuade players to sign fr us if he fell 4 players short of his announced target number of signings (or alternatively listing a high number of signings could pile pressure on the board or Tony Fitzpatrick or cause tension between himself and the board straight off). I'm sure Goodwin remembers only too well what happened when Tommy Craig went on holiday and he and Gary Teale brought in the likes of Ross Caldwell, Calum Ball, James Marwood upfront and hopefully he has learned a lesson and is trying to go for quality over quantity... 3 forwards signed in 2014/5 season but none of them were at our level... we'd have been better signing 1 pricey striker for our budget who has half decent than signing 3 cheap options and hoping 1 or 2 of them made the step up!

Goodwin said we've signed Andreu and Djorkaeff and still need another 4 or possibly 5 players in and recruitment is vital.

... or we have less money for new squad members after paying Heaton off [although I am sure GLS will tell the fans it only cost buttons for another mutual consent pay off].

I'd like to think that when a boss has been in place for less than a month and signed a grand total of two players there would be no meltdown at all after a bad result.

You might be over-estimating the importance of the debate at my end in fairness. We actually disagree on Kearney - massively. I took the view that he and the club recruited well, finished the season strongly and had he been allowed to keep a nucleus of the squad together and try and add better strikers we'd improve this season. We probably agree that the club didn't do their homework on appointing Kearney though... same mistake as they made with Stubbs. I'm not a fan of the club deflecting blame on to Kearney, or players who don't sign for us. There has been a shady pattern to how well we've been run since GLS took over (promising to improve things from the old board).

Goodwin hasn't signed Rogers, Coulson, Kpekawa, King or splashed out £75k on a signing who would look poor against League 2 and non-league opposition. The squad Goodwin has inherited was augmented by players from Derby, Brighton last season, Popescu and Muzek along with Hladky made us harder to beat. Take away the quality we brought in on loan last season and we are back to debating whether the rest of the squad can beat relegation again (or could win the Championship without Lewis Morgan).

You appear to have remembered a post by Wendy Saints... Our due dilligence on Stubbs was dire, and the same could be said on Kearney's views on commuting... and on our latest signing target not wanting to leave Holland.

I don't know you but do remember your posts in the second half of the season.

I know you were never an Oran fan but I doubt that very much. Players that Oran was on record as wanting back this season if deals could be agreed: Hodson, Muzek, Popescu, Dreyer. All 4 were decent for us last season, knew the club and the league. We're now starting again with trying to recruit a first choice left back and cover for full back and central defence options, have no wide players and are two strikers down on last season as well. Thank goodness the chairman appointed a technical director to bring continuity to our player recruitment so that changes in management would hardly be noticed! We have a reduced budget despite increased prizemoney and increased season ticket sales because we've had over 80 players come and go in 3 years since the chairman took over and are on our 5th manager, 4th assistant manager, not sure if we are appointing a 3rd first team coach or not.

Quite big in Scotland behind Aberdeen, Dundee United, Celtic and about the same as Rangers under John Greig and Jock Wallace!

Ferdinand and Hodson finished the game against Dundee United... and Nazon featured part way through before his red card! 6 out of the 9 players I listed played in the final game of the season (Dreyer, Jackson and Lyons picked up injuries in the final few games of the season but were all starting XI players)

Not overly optimistic Mullen and Cooke represent a better goalscoring threat than the lukewarm Simeon Jackson and erratic Nazon either.

The bulk of the side that finished last season apart from... 1. Hodson 2. Muzek 3. Popescu 4. Dreyer 5. McAllister 6. Lyons 7. Jackson 8. Nazon 9. Ferdinand... so far replaced by 1 back up goalie and Andreu and Djorkaeff.

How long would you have given Stubbs?

I'd be really disappointed if that was the case. While Oran was still manager he said he wanted to get Muzek signed. Obviously must have been over-ruled then. Muzek's replacement has been doing well though.

Rightio. Muzek and Hodson turned our deals down, Popescu deal falls through at last minute due to his representatives wanting more cash at the last minute, Tony drumming up bids for Hladky. I'm sure we're offering top whack. Heaton paid off too. The decent signings will be getting announced any month now.

Clearly one of Goodwin's top targets. Looks like we have lost out due to the cash we were prepared to offer.

Stubbs took training sessions while not being fit for work (in most people's eyes), blew the budget on duds, fell out with the board, lost the dressing room instantly, showed little interest in the academy players, and was reaching a stage once our epic qualification from the group stages of the League Cup had been achieved where most games were dead and buried before half time. Perhaps you could go on record about what signs you saw which showed he would turn things around or tell us how long you would have kept him as manager when we couldn't register 1 shot on target at home to a Livingston team who were starting the match below us in the league?

I think if you were signed by Alan Stubbs who gave the impression he was surprised our budget wasn't higher throughout his short reign (and who was used to the Hibs and Rotherham budgets) and you are the biggest transfer at the club in over 25 years there is a reasonable chance the buffoon while have handed you one of the better deals at the club.

No. Cooke, King, Kpekawa, Heaton, Coulson, Rogers were all signed before Stubbs said he was wanting to add some marquee signings.

I meant to say £200k for Mallan (supposedly) - but I think TF said the McAllister deal was worth up to £400k with add ons (I'm sure the upfront fee was nowhere near that) - fairly sure Morgan's deal was quoted at £300k though.