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Agree with all of that. Since world war 2 our mean average league position has been between 12th and 13th so we are really where we usually are. On that basis a regime that gets us above tenth is I think successful


However, if you take every club’s average league position and rank them in order, I think we are about 10th? (been a long time since I did this exercise!)

Every club’s ‘average league position’ is going to be lower than their rank.

Off the top of my head, my guess is that the rankings would be since, say the early 60s:

1. Rangers (now in liquidation)
2. Celtic
3. Aberdeen
4-6: Dundee Utd, Hearts, Hibs
7-8:Motherwell, Kilmarnock
9: Dundee
10? St Mirren, Patrick (maybe Dunfermline)? St. Johnstone maybe now catching up?

Motherwell’s position is inflated due to many years of financially doping, going into administration, avoiding relegation due to reconstruction and clubs due to be promoted not having a fit ground.

Kilmarnock also benefited from fortuitous extra finance while Dundee are also notorious financial doping cheats, as are Dunfermline.

IMO, after the top 6 plus probably Dundee, I see St Mirren as being in a group which can all claim to be ranked about 8th.

On the basis that 8th is the highest position we’ve managed in around 30 years, I’d say that we’ve vastly underachieved for various reasons.

We are certainly due a shot at being in the top 6 or thereabouts, as clubs like Motherwell, Kilmarnock and St Johnstone have all managed.
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8 hours ago, Kemp said:

The best we can really hope for is where Danny Lennon got us to, 9th in the league and winning a national cup. Of course, Stewart Gilmour fired him mainly because the finances are so tight he thought it a good idea to remove the manager's salary completely and just get by with a coach and a couple of players running things. It was a woeful decision but financial stress sometimes causes us to act irrationally.

It was 8th, twice in 4 years.

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55 minutes ago, Oldfellow said:

Would always rather be in the Premier but we need to find a way to progress in it. A few seasons of just surviving isn't going to bring in the crowds. A successful championship will but we all know how difficult it is to get there after relegation. 

So having a poorer team, in a lower division, with a smaller budget is better?

Surely - being a solid Premiership Team means we will have the chance of doing better in the cups, gaining bigger pay-outs for where we finish, from player sales etc. etc.

The point is we need to do better than be relegation contenders in the Premiership or a top Championship Team.    :turtle

Hamilton have a lower support than us and managed a stay in the Premiership for a number of years. They are now struggling but have been close to going down nearly every year.

Dee are woeful - if they go down, the chances are it will be like Partick Thistle all over again.

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35 minutes ago, Sweeper07 said:

So having a poorer team, in a lower division, with a smaller budget is better?

Surely - being a solid Premiership Team means we will have the chance of doing better in the cups, gaining bigger pay-outs for where we finish, from player sales etc. etc.

The point is we need to do better than be relegation contenders in the Premiership or a top Championship Team.    :turtle

Hamilton have a lower support than us and managed a stay in the Premiership for a number of years. They are now struggling but have been close to going down nearly every year.

Dee are woeful - if they go down, the chances are it will be like Partick Thistle all over again.

Money doesnt matter is the enjoyment of winning some game's and over the years the championship has been far more enjoyable. I for one would be happy to finish 3/4 in it every season...

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20 minutes ago, gstretchuk said:

the enjoyment of winning some game's and over the years the championship has been far more enjoyable.

Apart from when we’ve won the league, our Championship seasons have been awful. We were fighting relegation until Alex Rae kept us up. Then we needed Jack Ross to work an absolute miracle to keep us from League One football. The year after was great, yes.

Likewise, things were dire the previous time until Gus kept us up. We then had two very good seasons. 

Point is, relegation doesn’t automatically mean we will start winning. Our recent relegations have been followed with a major struggle in the Championship, instead of losing to good Premier teams we end up losing to those at the bottom end of full time football and the occasional part timer. Partick Thistle are the perfect example of why relegation can be a pile of shit.

I honestly don’t understand why there’s a few here who think after relegation, things will be nice and lovely with lots of wins again. The reality is it probably won’t.

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1 hour ago, Sweeper07 said:

So having a poorer team, in a lower division, with a smaller budget is better?

Surely - being a solid Premiership Team means we will have the chance of doing better in the cups, gaining bigger pay-outs for where we finish, from player sales etc. etc.

The point is we need to do better than be relegation contenders in the Premiership or a top Championship Team.    :turtle

Hamilton have a lower support than us and managed a stay in the Premiership for a number of years. They are now struggling but have been close to going down nearly every year.

Dee are woeful - if they go down, the chances are it will be like Partick Thistle all over again.

Didn't say that. I'll repeat. Better in Premier league. 

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10 hours ago, Kemp said:

The current set-up in Scotland isn't a good fit for us. We are pretty much on a par with Inverness and Partick Thistle and will always sit around 10th to 14th in the overall hierarchy.

A 16 team league would allow for a sustained stay in the Premier and maybe a bit of freedom to make the odd gamble and push higher up. A 10 team league would allow us some time in the Premier, but more time in a Championship with a couple bigger clubs and therefore bigger crowds.

In terms of crowds and finances though around 12th or 13th is where we are.

We will therefore be a yo-yo club. I don't see a huge problem with that actually, as 2000 and last season were by far the two best years I've had supporting St Mirren.

Clubs like Inverness have shown you can have a few good years getting 2nd, 3rd or 4th place finishes, but eventually, you will return to more or less where your financial standing in the overall hierarchy is.

The "problem" for fans like a couple of the posters above is they don't seem to be able to accept where we are and therefore what our results are likely to be. It is certainly possible we could establish ourselves in the top six like St Johnstone, but to do that we need to increase our off-field revenue by approx 1m pounds as they have. I saw one poster getting very excited about the TV revenue from the new Sky deal. Had to laugh. It is a slightly better but still not a good deal when we compare to leagues of a similar standing in Europe (or Gary Lineker's salary for presenting an English highlights show). More importantly, it won't make any difference to our standing in Scottish football as other clubs revenue will also increase, wages will adjust accordingly, and the better players will still end up at clubs slightly above us. Money is illusionary, and that TV deal is of absolutely no use to us for winning football matches.

The only way to improve our standing in Scottish football to the point where we will actually enjoy being in the Premier League is to put ourselves at a comparative financial advantage over clubs of a similar size. Exactly as Motherwell and Dundee have done by cheating and stealing, Kilmarnock have done by having a rich benefactor willing to service their debt, or St Johnstone have done by building a successful revenue stream away from football activities. In our case this could be hospitality, accommodation, fitness centres etc. 

This won't happen to us any time soon for a few reasons;

- Gordon Scott isn't actually interested in doing it. (He'd have started by now if he was).

- Tony Fitzpatrick doesn't have the skillset to do it

- Campbell Kennedy is incompetent.

- SMISA don't have any say on the running of the club, and their vision extends to doing manual labour around Ralston.

The commercial side of the club has been stagnant for years, and probably performs as badly as our scouting operation which I believe for a club of our size is the worst in Scotland outside of Falkirk.

The only really well run part of the club has been the Academy under the leadership of David Longwell, without which we would probably be in League 1 by now. The money generated from the sales of key players was used to win us the league last season (alongside the performances of academy players). However, that money is not a constant, predictable revenue stream. We will probably bank a little from Kyle & Ethan and from what I understand that will be the end of it for a while.

So, to answer the original point raised, you might as well enjoy being in The Championship because that is where we are going to spend a lot of our time. There are advantages and disadvantages to both leagues, with home games generally being better in the Premier and away games better in the Championship. The Premier isn't that much fun though unless we can actually compete. This season, for example, is f**king murder.

Clubs like St Johnstone and Kilmarnock are operating on levels of turnover higher than ours, and will therefore continue to bring in better players than us. The best we can really hope for is where Danny Lennon got us to, 9th in the league and winning a national cup. Of course, Stewart Gilmour fired him mainly because the finances are so tight he thought it a good idea to remove the manager's salary completely and just get by with a coach and a couple of players running things. It was a woeful decision but financial stress sometimes causes us to act irrationally.

The biggest shame for me is that it would appear (and I may be wrong here, but I doubt it), that the 1m pound bounty from John McGinn's transfer will have been spent this season on a massive turnover of incompetent players and managers. This could and should have been used to bring in further investors to build the facilities that would allow us add the further revenue streams that we need if we are ever to put ourselves at a sustainable comparative advantage over the other clubs that look to finish between 3rd and 9th in the Premier League.

I do enjoy a day out to Ayr through.

I showed this to four Celtic supports at work and asked did they prefer winning week in and out in the league, or watching European games where they are often outclassed.  The answer was European every time.  They did coin a phrase I had never heard before by labeling Kemp an unambitious glory hunter.

 

The championship is a horrible league, and relegation to it will cost many of the staff their jobs, both playing and non-playing.  If we also take the scenario that Dundee United are promoted and Thistle relegated, That would give us a league consisting of the following.

 

Arbroath, Inverness, Ross County, QOS, Alloa, Ayr, Dunfermline, Morton and Falkirk.  These teams combined traving supports in Paisley for two visits will be less than that of Hibs for their two visits.  Unless Morton are on a good run.  The playing budget will be slaughtered and we will be in the lower half of the league. Add in the atmosphere at home games will go to pot and the away end will be mostly closed.  Sorry no give me top flight football every time  

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50 minutes ago, gstretchuk said:

Money doesnt matter is the enjoyment of winning some game's and over the years the championship has been far more enjoyable. I for one would be happy to finish 3/4 in it every season...

Sounds to me like we want us to be at the level of say Morton or ICT so that we win more games than we lose . . .

Fans support through the good and the bad and St. Mirren have some of both like most other teams do.

I would rather we won and lost the same amount of games in the Premiership and safely stayed up each year rather than won 3 out of 4 in a lower league. But if the other option was that we could win more than we lost in the Premiership, of course I would choose that... We just might be on that trajectory - it doesn't look like it now, but who knows the future? 

Sounds to me like your life lacks success!   :headbang

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3 hours ago, Iamhammer said:

I showed this to four Celtic supports at work and asked did they prefer winning week in and out in the league, or watching European games where they are often outclassed.  The answer was European every time.  They did coin a phrase I had never heard before by labeling Kemp an unambitious glory hunter.

 

The championship is a horrible league, and relegation to it will cost many of the staff their jobs, both playing and non-playing.  If we also take the scenario that Dundee United are promoted and Thistle relegated, That would give us a league consisting of the following.

 

Arbroath, Inverness, Ross County, QOS, Alloa, Ayr, Dunfermline, Morton and Falkirk.  These teams combined traving supports in Paisley for two visits will be less than that of Hibs for their two visits.  Unless Morton are on a good run.  The playing budget will be slaughtered and we will be in the lower half of the league. Add in the atmosphere at home games will go to pot and the away end will be mostly closed.  Sorry no give me top flight football every time  

It is no surprise that Celtic supporters and "Wendy Saints" are both too f**king thick to read the whole post and understand it :lol: 

I don't want us to be in the Championship, I am just explaining the reality of where we are as a club. I want us to be competing for European places and winning the Scottish Cup. It just simply isn't going to happen unless we can get ourselves in a better financial position.

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1 hour ago, Kemp said:

It is no surprise that Celtic supporters and "Wendy Saints" are both too f**king thick to read the whole post and understand it :lol: 

I don't want us to be in the Championship, I am just explaining the reality of where we are as a club. I want us to be competing for European places and winning the Scottish Cup. It just simply isn't going to happen unless we can get ourselves in a better financial position.

You hit the nail on the head and I am with you on this . . . central issue is generate more income, improve as a club . . .

Image result for hit the nail on the head

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For those who seem happy to be in the championship. Remember there has been more than one occasion where we verged on the drop below that tier. And not so long ago either. Why are those people so sure we are better equipped than Partick? Better equipped than Dunfermline? Better equipped than Falkirk? And as for winning more games. Those three, or at least two out of them, plus ICT and QotS, who we don't have a great record against, Morton, one or more of Ross County, Ayr and Dundee Utd. NO! Not for me. I don't want us to be scrapping for points while the funds get squeezed. Get ourselves established, even in the bottom half, preferably in the third quarter of the top league and take it from there.

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Spoiler

Any league is great when you are top of it and shit when you are bottom of it. To be honest I like to see us winning regardless of the level of opposition but I would say losing in the Championship felt worse than losing at this level. This season seems worse as JR had us riding a wave of euphoria, from that high the slump has been acute and rapid, it feels like we have lurched from crises to crises, defeat to defeat which has been pretty hard to stomach.

 

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7 hours ago, gstretchuk said:

Money doesnt matter is the enjoyment of winning some game's and over the years the championship has been far more enjoyable. I for one would be happy to finish 3/4 in it every season...

You talk absolute rubbish.lets stagnate and win a few games v Morton and the likes ? No we have a set up that is premier league in our stadium and training ground. We need to be in the top league and fighting to finish 7,8,9 why can’t we ??

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Just now, norrie82 said:

You talk absolute rubbish.lets stagnate and win a few games v Morton and the likes ? No we have a set up that is premier league in our stadium and training ground. We need to be in the top league and fighting to finish 7,8,9 why can’t we ??

Because playing the ugly 2 ruins the whole experience, would rather not be in a league with them...

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2 minutes ago, norrie82 said:

You talk absolute rubbish.lets stagnate and win a few games v Morton and the likes ? No we have a set up that is premier league in our stadium and training ground. We need to be in the top league and fighting to finish 7,8,9 why can’t we ??

a bit harsh,the poster is entitled to his/her opinion

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Just now, gstretchuk said:

Because playing the ugly 2 ruins the whole experience, would rather not be in a league with them...

Get a grip I’d rather be in our top league playing against big teams and big crowds. This year we blew it in the summer and it’s led to this mess but I am still of the belief we are a top tier side in stature and we need to try and be an established side. I want to be playing at Tynecastle and Easter road and being on tv etc. I don’t want a shitty championship game at home on a Saturday night covered by Alba with barely 2000 in the park.  In the championship where is the atmosphere unless your winning it and you generate your own. We do not want to be playing Alloa or Arbroath as with respect it’s absolutely shite. 

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This league is tough but it's the place to be. The biggest crowds and the best players, the best stadiums. Don't know why anyone would want to do anything other than play in the top league in the country.

Did I enjoy last season? Of course I did. This season was always going to be difficult. On the plus side I have been able to watch players from our top teams playing against us. 

It takes two teams to hold a game of football. I support Saints but e.g. the young lad Hastie scored a great goal against us midweek. Terrific. 

My only regret was that it wasn't a Saints player doing it . But..enjoyed Hammill scoring from his own half at Easter Road!

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It is no surprise that Celtic supporters and "Wendy Saints" are both too f**king thick to read the whole post and understand it default_laugh.png 

 

 

I didn’t read ANY of your post so there was nothing for me to understand.

 

I tend not to read your posts because they are usually full of shite.

 

What I do understand though is that you are very stupid. :lol:

 

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, norrie82 said:

Get a grip I’d rather be in our top league playing against big teams and big crowds. This year we blew it in the summer and it’s led to this mess but I am still of the belief we are a top tier side in stature and we need to try and be an established side. I want to be playing at Tynecastle and Easter road and being on tv etc. I don’t want a shitty championship game at home on a Saturday night covered by Alba with barely 2000 in the park.  In the championship where is the atmosphere unless your winning it and you generate your own. We do not want to be playing Alloa or Arbroath as with respect it’s absolutely shite. 

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.

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