Saints V Dumbarton

[Dare]

Thought the McAllister and Magennis were plus points from yesterday another being that McKenzie and Gordon did actually look like a partnership in central defence. Final third is a worry though - our loan players don't seem to give a f#ck - Jack needs to sort that out pronto

[Kendo]

Totally sick, scunnered and fed up. When do we hit rock bottom? Every time I think we cannie get any worse the team prove me wrong.

 

[insaintee]

Good to see the youngsters come on and do well. As Jack says, its player that want to play for the club that will get us out of this. 

Still a problem up front. We have Sutton, Clarkson, Shankland and Hardie; none of them are good enough. Time to do the same thing up front as Jack did in the midfield; dump the guys that have proved they are duds and bring in youth.  For me that means starting with Mclear up front next week playing just of Sutton or possibly try Baird up front. He's big, quick and mobile and defenders will not like playing against him.

[Lord Pityme]

14 hours ago, ScotstounSaint said:

 

Couldnt bring myself to post last night, probably it has all been said on here already?

but watching this interview Ross seems to be saying never mind having "lost" the dressing room, there are elements of it he hasnt even "found".... 

poor quality, dud auld pro's and another rookie manager are going to relegate us yet again. Why is it difficult to see that, or do the club seem intent on ignoring it..?

Edit: the bit on here where Ross said he went to the fans bar after the game to 'spread the word' that now is the time to come together is frankly quite astounding as he openly admits he doesnt have all the dressing room 'together' just some like the youngsters.

that indicates the others don't rate him, and remember at least half a dozen of them 'Mallan, Sutton etc..' came out and praised Rae before and after he got canned. Sacking Rae & Farrell after six games may well be the catalyst to our relegation! We are stuck with a manager now who openly admits the squad havent bought into him.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Lord Pityme

[Oldfellow]

1 hour ago, gc_SMFC said:

Sums up all of our 'youth' products. Technically not good enough, physically behind and mentally fragile.

Far too much focus and hope has been spent on playing football the 'right way', which has only produced a handful of players who fail to standout in an awful Championship side, was there not a hope we could one day field an entire team of our youth players? 

The sooner we rip up the half arsed approached we have to developing youth products the better. I'd rather see every penny spent on scouting.

 

I've never understood why people praise our youth system. It has produced a handful of players of premier league standard and revenue from sales probably only covers the running costs. Would we be any worse without it.

The one hope is that HIbs flog McGinn for a tidy sum and we get our cut. That could be the saving of us.

[southsidebud]

On a slightly different note - but still related to the Dumbarton game - I have a bemused question - are Dumbarton known to have a small 'Casual' element?

On the 1406 train from Glasgow yesterday there were firstly more Dumbarton fans than I expected - but also there was a knot (four or five) english fans who had had a few bevies and were making a bit of noise.

Then during the game there was a group of - what i assume were - Dumbarton fans ejected from the main stand by stewards - and as they left I heard the same english accents shouting a lot of abuse back to the rest of the fans.

Hardly World War III I know but still completely unexpected 'twilight zone'  episodes considering the relative size of yesterdays opponents. Anyone else experienced anything like it?

[Lord Pityme]

Can we please stop saying "we were the better team"......

the "better team" won three points, sit above us in the league, and does not have the worst record this season in the whole of the UK.... "better teams" win football matches.

[buddies1877]

There was several experienced candidates available. Guys who're proven at this level. Mixu, MacPherson... even Calderwood would have done. All would have taken the job.

He took them down and made them stronger? What are you basing that on exactly? I looked into this a bit more, it's actually the opposite. Here was the table on the day before Jacks first game in charge of Alloa (which was also Alex's first day in charge of St Mirren).

Alloa not in a great position certainly, but by no means doomed. Only 3 points behind 9th and 4 behind 8th. In a far better position than we are in now anyway. Here's the final table:

Alloa finish 10 points behind 9th and an astounding 16 points behind 8th. They went downhill from the day he was appointed and the gap to safety never got smaller, it got rapidly larger.

Fast forward to this season and he leaves them in 3rd place in league 1, behind Brechin City and Livingston. Made them stronger?!

As for your last part, I agree with it. We can't keep changing managers and Jack will almost certainly be here till the end of the season. That is one of the main reasons why I think we will be relegated.

If you're wanting a positive spin on those tables you can see how rapidly we made up the ground on Morton, Dumbarton and QOTS over the period from late December to the end of the season. Safety is clearly achievable, but only if the football club is managed properly between now and the end of the season, on and off the park. The issue is I have no faith that it will be.

Lol yeah exactly great choice of managers available....

As for your comparing the battle at the bottom is a lot tougher this year so getting those stats out is pointless trying taking into consideration the opposition teams are a lot stronger we are the Alloa and Livingston this year.

Do you think Alloa last year could of went to face this Celtic team and hold them out till the 85th minute ??

[Stu]

38 minutes ago, southsidebud said:

On a slightly different note - but still related to the Dumbarton game - I have a bemused question - are Dumbarton known to have a small 'Casual' element?

On the 1406 train from Glasgow yesterday there were firstly more Dumbarton fans than I expected - but also there was a knot (four or five) english fans who had had a few bevies and were making a bit of noise.

Then during the game there was a group of - what i assume were - Dumbarton fans ejected from the main stand by stewards - and as they left I heard the same english accents shouting a lot of abuse back to the rest of the fans.

Hardly World War III I know but still completely unexpected 'twilight zone'  episodes considering the relative size of yesterdays opponents. Anyone else experienced anything like it?

Think those would be the same folk I was referring to at the end of my post:

15 hours ago, Stu said:

I think he was asking where the replacements would come from, which is a fair point. We can pin our hopes on January all we want but whose to say there will be better players available in our price range that can improve us that are willing to come to us. Rae managed to bring in some decent guys to do a job last year but we weren't marooned to the bottom of the table at that point. January might be too late for us anyway.

A ridiculous individual error cost us today, however as someone pointed out this isn't the first time this season. There's only so often you can get away with saying "Well, you can't legislate for that". And as much as I agree he should be dropped, it's not always been Langfield that's making the mistakes - Gallacher isn't exactly averse to making a ridiculous costly error either.

Anyone know what was going on in the main stand today? Think there were some folk from England up watching the game and they upset the regulars. There was lots of silly shooshing noise in the second half before they got booted out shortly after the goal and they departed calling folk mutants.

 

[Drew]

Oh dear, seemingly Jack Ross has lost the dressing room, our development system isn't worth having, and, despite having much less possession and far fewer chances than us, Dumbarton were the better team.

FFS, happy days

[southsidebud]

4 minutes ago, Stu said:

Think those would be the same folk I was referring to at the end of my post:

 

Yep. One of their comments I overheard on the train going to the game confirmed to me that these guys were - at least ostensibly - Dumbarton fans. After seeing a St Mirren fan it was along the lines of - 'I hope we f**k 'em today'.

Very strange  

[Port Saint]

That's now both Alex Rae and Jack Ross who have come out and said there are players who don't have the heart or desire to win. That is our biggest problem and hopefully a few of the rats will desert the sinking ship in January.

 

[Tommy]

7 minutes ago, southsidebud said:

Yep. One of their comments I overheard on the train going to the game confirmed to me that these guys were - at least ostensibly - Dumbarton fans. After seeing a St Mirren fan it was along the lines of - 'I hope we f**k 'em today'.

Very strange  

There was a small group of fat middle age English guy in the court bar prior to the game making a lot of noise and being a pain in the arse.

[ScotstounSaint]

Has anyone considered that perhaps we appeared to be the "better team" and had so much possession because Dumbarton let us have the ball and were happy to play on the break/wait for our total liability of a keeper to make his obligatory mistake?

[southsidebud]

18 minutes ago, renfrew said:

There was a small group of fat middle age English guy in the court bar prior to the game making a lot of noise and being a pain in the arse.

The plot thickens...

[dr rotund]

We should have won that game yesterday and poor Langfield is mostly to blame but the rest of the squad aren't exactly setting the heather on fire. Jack Ross is here for the long haul and we need to get behind him and the team. It is unfortunate that we need to wait another 7 or 8 weeks before we can change the squad but it's a certainty that there will lots of movement within our squad.  I'd send the loan players back because they're not producing and either hope that Ross can get a few decent loans of his own our persist with our own young players.

[ged62]

We should have won that game yesterday and poor Langfield is mostly to blame but the rest of the squad aren't exactly setting the heather on fire. Jack Ross is here for the long haul and we need to get behind him and the team. It is unfortunate that we need to wait another 7 or 8 weeks before we can change the squad but it's a certainty that there will lots of movement within our squad.  I'd send the loan players back because they're not producing and either hope that Ross can get a few decent loans of his own our persist with our own young players.

Forget the blunder we still didn't put the ball in the back of the net.

[proudtobeabuddy]

We need a win soon. While watching that game yesterday it was obvious that we are a team totally lacking in confidence. The longer we go without a win the harder it is to play with more freedom because of the fear factor.

[proudtobeabuddy]

7 minutes ago, ged62 said:

Forget the blunder we still didn't put the ball in the back of the net.

Yep!

[norman]

For  me three moments really summed up our season. Obviously Langfield's howler is the main one, but Sutton not reaching that ball at the back post from Clarkson and Hardie's unbelievable miss are just as unforgivable. For both those guys that is their bread and butter, especially Sutton who seemed completely asleep when the chance came along.

You can't blame Ross for that yesterday. He picked the best team for the job, and made substitutions that should have rescued the game, but once again these players he is lumbered with let him down.

[DLBud]

Can we please stop saying "we were the better team"......

the "better team" won three points, sit above us in the league, and does not have the worst record this season in the whole of the UK.... "better teams" win football matches.

But we were the better team.....

[Isle Of Bute Saint]

Ross has been in charge 4 games. In that time he has given the players a chance to show what they can do. He has realised Hutton is shit and dumped him. Gave Walsh a chance and dumped him. Same for Hardie and Shankland. He promoted two inexperienced players who were the best two on the park today and has said they will now be regulars because of not only their ability but because they have a feeling for the club. We had 20 attempts on goal today (BBC) but Ross was not responsible for our experienced keeper passing the ball 15 yards to an opposition forward when under no pressure and losing a goal in a game we were dominating. He also was not responsible when Hardie had an empty net but somehow managed to hit the crossbar instead while only a couple of yards from the goal line. Ross is trying to sort out the clusterf**k that Rae left him and has taken positive steps to do so. He needs more than 4 games before folk start calling him a dud.

Great post mate.

[Geordie Saint]

9 hours ago, southsidebud said:

On a slightly different note - but still related to the Dumbarton game - I have a bemused question - are Dumbarton known to have a small 'Casual' element?

On the 1406 train from Glasgow yesterday there were firstly more Dumbarton fans than I expected - but also there was a knot (four or five) english fans who had had a few bevies and were making a bit of noise.

Then during the game there was a group of - what i assume were - Dumbarton fans ejected from the main stand by stewards - and as they left I heard the same english accents shouting a lot of abuse back to the rest of the fans.

Hardly World War III I know but still completely unexpected 'twilight zone'  episodes considering the relative size of yesterdays opponents. Anyone else experienced anything like it?

If anyone sees me at next weeks diddy cup game it wasn't me. Honest!

[Lord Pityme]

5 minutes ago, john scott said:

If anyone sees me at next weeks diddy cup game it wasn't me. Honest!

Naw.. we know it wisnae you. There wasnt a flat cap, or whippet in sight, and none of them were reading Andy Capp...

[Stuart Dickson]

Positives. I thought McKenzie and Gordon looked competent. And although I didn't think either McAllister or Naismith had an excellent game I was impressed with McAllister dropping back and covering Naismith when Naismith went forward. It was very noticable and it deserves mention because as that kind of cover down the right doesn't happen all that often at St Mirren. I could see why Jack Ross would play a 4-5-1 yesterday. He's tried to keep things a bit more solid, but it didn't really work. After the first 20 minutes when Sutton was fairly well supported, the performance levels dropped and all too often Sutton was left isolated. Another positive was the fact that there was less passing the ball around the back four before passing the ball back to Langfield. Most of the passing seemed to have a purpose although the build up play was often too slow and it allowed Dumbarton the opportunity to get their shape back. However in saying that it was that f**king about at the back between Irvine and Langfield that caused the goal so it hasn't been completely eradicated. 

I don't think there were any players who particularly impressed with their overall play. Sutton grafted hard without support and the supply from the flanks wasn't great at all. Mallan was still poor, and his set pieces haven't improved at all Clarkson and McGennis were functional if not stylish. 

Langfield would obviously be slaughtered for his mistake. It was amateurish and it's the kind of mistake he's made often all throughout his career, but the fact is that even if Langfield hadn't f**ked up St Mirren still wouldn't have won. You need to score more than your opponent to win, and St Mirren just aren't capable of converting the two or three chances that their creative play generates. They need to up the creativity and get a better supply to the front line.