donport

I think when you get involved with any organisation surrounding the football club you have to expect to get shot at.
I was quite taken aback as to what happened during the 10000Hours bid, and I only got about 1% of the abuse that the likes of Richard took.
The guys at SMiSA, The Disabled Supporters Association and at the Fans Council are all giving up their own time to try their level best at making the club better. Like everyone else, they will make mistakes sometimes and do things that individuals won't like.
You'll never get all fans to agree on anything (apart from perhaps the sacking of Tommy Craig) but as long as the people making the decisions in these organisations are thinking things through and still aiming to do their best for the club then they'll always get my support.
Same as the people who run the supporters buses, same as the people who try and introduce atmosphere at the ground.
These people are all trying to do their best for the club and they're doing it for no reward.
I'd definitely like to see all the organisations work together more, I'm sure they could all learn from each other.

One of the reasons why i am not involved on committees of both Smisa and the fans council is the constant sniping generally amongst our support.I would love to assist but feel that i would end up punching someone on the throat for knocking the idea of assisting the club that i love.Cant we all work together to achieve our goal of the club returning to where we should be at the top end of Scottish football.We are all one,Smisa,Fans Council ,Disabled Fans,Supporters Clubs etc and again i will say it require to work TOGETHER to achieve our goal.

considering how the consortium maneuvered him out of the way when they formed Douglas St, can you blame him for not forking out?
Despite other reservations that i have about the bid, i don't see him not having a plan. My guess (only a guess) is that he will only sanction spending money already received and manage cash flow issues by avoiding them as far as is possible, which could actually see things pared down a bit in the short term.
His previous solo bid reputedly included a sum to be invested in the club, maybe that is factored in to the bid this time and is his "float"

This is because I don't agree with you?
Like it or not, and a few don't seem to like it, but whether I happen to run the forum or not, I'm still allowed an opinion the same as everyone else is.
My opinion is that Gordon Scott would be a good guy to have on the board. Your opinion appears to be that he wouldn't.
I won't resort to mocking or abusing you for that opinion, but I disagree with it, and I've given you the reasons why.

GLS was effectively site manager when the new stadium was under construction.
Those of us involved in the Final Chapter book were afforded the opportunity to get in and about the site as the build progressed (recording this process was an integral component of the book itself), and it was invariably Gordon who welcomed us and showed us around. His enthusiasm, attention to detail, and commitment was abundantly clear, and the hours he spent there are testimony to that.
Say what you will about the final product (and I am no huge fan, while appreciating the constraints the club was operating under),but the extent of his input was undeniable. Indeed, I'll take a punt and suggest that the stadium might have been further developed, and earning a higher commercial income had he still been about.
I've only met Gordon a handful of times, I'm not a mate, and have no reason to brown nose or butter him up. I'm simply passing on my direct experience,for what it's worth. We will require a new Chairman of the club soon enough, and if that is to be Gordon, I'm comfortable with that.

Let's face it we could sign Messi and some on here wouldn't be saying meh.

Those saying meh - who do you really expect us to be signing ? If we sign a U21 striker it's "we need experience" and when we sign experience it's "meh". We are where we are and we can't expect to really be signing anyone with a higher profile in our current position.

Did Clarkson not create some kind of record last season by scoring in 8 or 9 games in a row?
Let's give him a chance to show us what he can do.

I thought we offered a bit more today than we did when we drew 1-1 there earlier in the season but the difference there was that we got the first goal and were then able to sit back and defend what we had.
Today losing the first goal early on made it an uphill battle. I'd like to see it again as I thought Jamie should maybe have saved it but that might be harsh.
McGinn's dummy at the second goal was class and made the chance that he stuck away well.
Our goal looked a peach.
Second half we started brightly enough without creating much but the difference comes when they want fresh legs they can bring on Keatings and Stokes and those two combined to set up the winner that they deserved over the piece.
Next 4 games are huge for us, Alloa, QoS x 2 and Dumbarton.
Hopefully some player movement this week will bolster the squad and give us the spark we need to climb the table.

I always try and remain positive, which is not always easy. I think I'm what's commonly known as a "happy clapper".
We've been on a downward spiral almost since March 18th 2013. The worst hangover in history.
I wouldn't blame anyone for giving up their season ticket based on what has happened in the three years since we lifted that trophy, it's not been a whole lot of fun especially at home games.
Was talking to my mate at the u-20s game yesterday and we ended up going down memory lane and remembering the fun we at at Love Street as we grew up supporting the team and the amazing season of 99-00 which I can't imagine will ever be bettered in terms of the sheer enjoyment of every game. The bond between the team and the fans, and the management at that time was really special and the board were doing amazing things WITH the fans to help get us promoted with the construction of the PDE stand even though we were financially f**ked.
Whether we'll get a season quite like that again I doubt, but the good times WILL come back, I've absolutely no doubt about it. Just got to stick with it and be there when it does turn and we start winning games again.
Those good days are what make all the million shite days in between worthwhile and why I was a bubbling wreck at the cup final when Newton smashed home the third goal :-)

Good post Div as always balanced and realistic views.

I think with regard the sale of the club that if someone is holding out hope that a new owner comes in and pumps millions into the club then they are going to be sadly disappointed. I love this club to the bottom of my heart but when all said and done we are a small club, operating within a market with very little opportunity to turn any sort of profit.
A showcase for selling players on would be the only viable model I can imagine any prospective "external" bidder finding possible which is the sort of thing Claude Anelka tried at Raith Rovers. We all know how that one went.
Whilst the club is permanently seen as being "skint" and "tight", it's really the case that we operate within our means. If a new board can increase the commercial activity around the club, and thus the income, then the playing budget would benefit but let's be honest here the club isn't sitting on an untapped goldmine here. Any increase is going to be through hard work, imagination and probably a bit of luck. The people who already invest in the club every week are not a bottomless pit of money and the surrounding area is hardly awash with huge successful businesses.
We have to be realistic as well as being ambitious.
The club has wasted a lot of it's financial resource over the last few seasons. Removing dud managers and terminating dud players contracts early doesn't come without a financial cost. If we were a little bit more successful with our recruitment then we'd start seeing more value out of the money we do have rather than squandering it on trying to repair the damage of previous failures.
Football is always very short term. A "results driven business" we are always told, and that is partly true, but there has to be a time when you look at the longer term picture too and understand that a club of our size is going to take some time to recover from the mismanagement of the past. Hopefully Rae & Farrell start making incremental improvements to the squad in the same way Gus did when he inherited a similar situation, and we start seeing results and performances gradually improve.

I said on another topic yesterday that I genuinely believe we are at the bottom of the curve. I think the new manager WILL get us going but it's going to take a bit of time and patience.
Look at that team yesterday for example. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that in an ideal world none of Baird, Kelly, Agnew, Howieson or Gallagher would be starting games for St.Mirren. Personally I don't think any of those are of the sort of quality we need to be competing at the other end of the table.
You could also put question marks over a few of the others too to be honest but they are the most obvious candidates for improvement for me anyway.
January is a tough month to gut a squad but hopefully the manager will be able to wheel and deal a bit in the next 9 days and get us 2 or 3 more in that will improve on some of those positions. Add Jim and then Jason into the mix and suddenly things start looking a bit better.
The off the field stuff will sort itself at some point, hopefully the news this week indicates that there is some life in that again but I reckon most of us are a bit punch drunk with false dawns regarding the sale so again we'll just need to wait and see.
It's certainly not a good time to be a Saints fan right now but there were worse days under Bone and Coughlin in my opinion, and I do believe, hand on heart, that we are going to see some improvement in the weeks ahead.
Chin up !

I hope that the club do the right thing at next week's home game v Alloa. They should honour the man who was arguably the greatest or one of our greatest players. It seems a great shame that Norwich haven't done so today.

Another thread turned into a heap of pish.

Sadly it happens all too often would understand it if there were joke flying around. To write something down that means absolutely nothing just for the sake of it tell you more about the person writing it.
Fingers crossed we have new owners with the enthusiasm to take the club forward.

Nothing wrong with a bit of heated discussion, but looking back it really has been arguing mostly about utterly pointless stuff.
I've more than played my part in that but I'm going to try hard to stay away from who said what type nonsense. Hopefully we can all get back to arguing about who is the best left back at the club and why they haven't put up the Hall of Fame boards.

Erm, I've already told you many times what Alex Rae was referring to in that quote. It was related to the departure of Alex Miller who left in a huff when Rae arrived and wanted to take over the reigns immediately.
The first time I told you that you claimed I was a shit stirrer.
The second time I told you that you claimed it was rubbish.
The third time I told you that, you ignored it, and posted your usual line about the Argentinian takeover.
This is now the fourth time I've told you that.
So, over to you maestro. Prove that I'm wrong. You said these quotes were "in the media darling" (your words, not mine).
So, before i pop you on the ignore list. prove it.
Again, show me links where Alex Rae has said he was on the verge of quitting over the appointment of his assistant manager.
Show me links where he said he wasn't being allowed to pick his assistant manager.
I think after asking 4 times now that we know the reason your only response to this is to bleat about the Argentinian takeover. It's because you've been caught lying, and not for the first time.

Cheers mate, you too.
Definitely long overdue a meet up with IronMan Mavis too, let's get that sorted in the new year :-)

Not at all. I'm merely highlighting why Danny was let go at the end of season 203-2014. It was on the back of two bad league campaigns. He also had a terrible first season as well but his second campaign was decent, albeit we really struggled for consistency, we played good stuff and built a very good squad, one that ultimately won silverware.
I'm not saying he was an absolutely terrible manager during his time with us, but he certainly wasn't the guru that some are making him out to be and it certainly didn't surprise me when he was allowed to leave.
Appointing Tommy Craig was slightly barking, and never worked out, and since then it's been a series of disasters.
I don't think we should go back for Danny, or Gus for that matter. Those ships have sailed.

Murray needs to go, I completely agree with that.
The board however need to look at the bigger picture. They will, I imagine, be looking at the matches ahead that "could" provide us with a run of point wins that hoist us up the table a bit, generate some confidence and at least get us away from the relegation battle.
That would buy us some breathing space.
They will be weighing that up against the financial cost of removing the manager now, and bringing in a replacement.
I would reckon if we could be guaranteed survival this season (I know I can't believe I'm saying it either) then the board would probably prefer to see Murray stay until at least the end of the season. It's the easiest option for them given that they hope new owners will be in place by next summer, and it is the best option financially for the club.
Of course if we were to lose on Saturday or a couple of the "easier" games then the call is a harder one to make and they will have to pull the trigger to try and take us out of the nosedive.
It's an easy call for us fans all to make to shout "sack the manager" but the financial implications of that action must come into the boards thinking.

Can't disagree with any of that.
I was at all three games in the last week and we were abject pish in every one of them.
The fans have been patient, but there is absolutely no sign of any progress being made under Ian Murray and for that reason he's got to go.

" WHEN Alex Ferguson realised the scale of the shambles he’d inherited at St Mirren he came to two conclusions.
One, that he had to shake the place up from top to bottom, no matter how many players or directors it riled.
And two, that wherever he wanted to take the club, he’d get nowhere unless he dragged the fans along with him.Now 41 years on, a new Saints manager facing similar challenges has blown the second before he’s given himself a proper crack at overcoming the first.
It’s a mistake from which Ian Murray might never fully recover.
Because when he told the freezing band of travelling supporters who’d booed Tuesday’s scrambled 1-1 draw at Raith Rovers that “I know more about football than they do”, he lost the best allies any gaffer can have.
Ask Fergie. In his early days, when the team was rank rotten and the directors were stuck in the 1930s, he went round Paisley bawling through a megaphone to sell the idea that we WERE worth watching.
I’ve been listening to his memories of these times in the audio version of his latest book — though, to be honest, it’s all as fresh as new paint in my mind, because I was there.
As a 13-year-old, I was one of those who hung on a budding genius’s every word as he turned gates of 1,500 into close on 15,000, turned chumps into champions.
Fergie genuinely did create a 12th man. Murray, unfortunately, has left today’s side down to ten.
See, just as the self-styled office joker turns out to be the unfunniest person in the universe, and anyone who starts a sentence “no offence, but...” is about to offend everyone within a five-mile radius, a true expert doesn’t have to tell you how much of an expert they are.Yet that’s what a young guy under pressure has tried to do.
Prefixing his statement by saying he “wasn’t being patronising” only made punters feel more patronised. Later admitting he picked his words poorly only made him look desperate.
Sorry if he reads this and feels like I’m having a pop, but it’s just the way it is.
I was at Stark’s Park on Tuesday and not even the last-gasp free-kick from Stevie Mallan that rescued a point could disguise how poor a display it had been.
At times like these, a smart manager pulls the punters closer to him. He asks them for patience. He thanks them for giving up their time and their money to be there for a horrible midweek fixture.
Even if he doesn’t believe it, he tells them how wonderful and invaluable they are.
It’s either a sign of just how much pressure Murray is feeling right now, or how little he gets the situation, that he misjudged his post-match comments so badly.
As for the assertion itself, that he does know better than the fans? Well, it’s another argument altogether. And one you’d need to be a very confident man indeed to win.
I mean, how does he know who’s in the away end? How does he know he’s not being booed by a Uefa Pro-Licensed Coach?
The assumption that all fans are less educated about football than someone who happens to earn a crust from the game is a dangerous one indeed.
For instance, the previous Friday I’d been at another fairly woeful 1-1 draw, this time at home to Morton.
Within half-a-dozen seats of me were Tony Fitzpatrick and Tommy Turner, two guys who skippered the club to titles, who played more than 1,000 career games between them — and who were both raging at what they’d just witnessed.
Does the manager know better than them? Do THEY have the right to complain?
Fact is, it doesn’t take a professional to know the most basic things are going wrong; like a team going in 1-0 up at half-time, as we did against Morton, then coming back out 15 yards deeper and inviting an equaliser which eventually came.
You don’t need badges to understand this, just as you don’t need to have been in the dugout to know how meekly St Mirren went down at Ibrox on Saturday.And you don’t need the manager’s permission to shout the odds about it.
I hope Ian Murray turns things round and at the very least gets into the promotion play-offs, because the last thing we need is more upheaval.
But if he does, he’ll have to go at least as far as reading the title of Fergie’s manual on management. It’s called Leading. Not Ostracising." Bill Leckie's view in today's Sun

Never mind Mallan in January. It'll be 2500 fans away in December if this pish continues.

Another Ian Murray defeat and thumping to one of the poorest Rangers teams in living memory. They are not good enough for the top league as St. Johnstone recently proved and if we had a decent side and manager we could have beat them like Hibs did.
Yet again - the obvious stats - We had 2 shots on target (One of which was a pass back from a Mallan free kick), Rangers had 10; We scored 0 goals, Rangers got 4.
I understand that the BOD felt this might be an opportunity for Murray to get to a final - for the fans though this must be Murray's final game in charge.
He is the biggest dud in Saints managerial history. Calls will be to boycott and be directed against the Board if they do not take action by the close of play on Monday.
Message for Mr Murray - do the decent thing and resign!!!