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I think yesterdays views are based on the fact that yet again we created so few chances in another game. People can bleat on about possession as much as they like but possession means nothing if you do nothing creative or incisive as we did yesterday. One chance is sometimes all you need to win the game. Saints got a chance took it and walked off with three points. For all the time we had the ball we apparently mustered up 2 shots on goal and half of the game was against ten men. You can't dress that up as anything other than poor from ICT and and really solid defensive display from Saint Johnstone.

An interesting statistic from this weekend: We had more possession against St J than Celtic had against Dundee United, only they created over 20 chances and scored 5. Statistically, we apparently created 8 (although I can only really remember 2 or 3) and scored none. Statistics can always be misleading, but this one is not: Having the ball is an important aspect of the game, but using it effectively is much more important. Likewise, this is an entertainment business and what we saw on Saturday was anything but entertaining. Injuries are a major issue without question, but a massive improvement is required for Tuesday...and more importantly, for league business on Saturday.

Knocking the ball about sideways across the halfway line does not equate to playing a team off the park. Just an awful, awful performance from ICT. Lots of the ball, lots of sideways passes 30 - 40 yards from goal but with absolutely no cutting edge against a Saints side that got men behind the ball and challenged us to break them down knowing full well that we didn't have the guile to do it. I don't think anything happened in the first half. Missed the sending off at the start of the second and the longer the game went on without ICT making the man advantage count the more you could see Saints sneaking something with a last minute winner. No idea if the penalty award was fair or not. Devine seemed to make a complete arse of things and as soon as he started struggling you could sense something big was going to happen - a bit like Tremarco in the SCF against Falkirk. I'm struggling to think of a worse ICT performance under Hughes. Apparently we had something like 70% possession. I bet about 0.0000001% of that we actually did anything of note. I can barely remember an attack of any sort from us and as for a save from Mannus? I don't even think we managed that. Even with a man advantage it was Saint Johnstone who looked more likely to score on a counter. We simply couldn't create anything of note. Seems to be a few off the field issues affecting things just now and that certainly appears to be translating into some very sub par performances on the pitch. The sooner the uncertainty about the manager is resolved the better.

While a pretty poor game to watch, we were better in the first half and played any football that was played. Sending off changed the game as St Johnstone just sat in and said break us down. We couldn't do that and got caught with a possibly soft penalty (would need to see again to be sure). A lot of negativity from posters but it has to be remembered that we have so many players missing that it has been hard to get a settled team or options to change things when things are not going well as was the case yesterday. Even when Hughes put Vigurs on, he was simply dreadful with his passing which was pretty poor from a lot of players yesterday. Don't agree with Renegade about putting players on the bench just to fill places though, it does nothing for their development to my mind. The injury crisis is proving some things however about our squad (and I realise this is only my opinion) but to me, Devine is proving a disappointment. His passing is poor, often under no pressure, he gets pulled out of position too easily and seems to lose concentration too easily. Polworth is another whose passing is poor, tackling is almost non existent and just appears to be lost at times. Was very surprised Williams was substituted ahead of Polworth. Until we get some players back, we are to easy to play against at times and teams are sussing this out. Finally, a word on the referee. Sure he didn't cost us the game but I thought he was really poor. Cannot comment on the ordering off as on the other side of the park but Mackay took an age to walk and was shouting abuse including swearing at the fourth official, their number 9 was constantly swearing and shouting at the referee but despite numerous warnings from the ref was not booked. Meekings booking was a joke and he missed some blatant fouls against us. To me he looked out of his depth. Have we any good referees left in Scotland!.

I think yesterday's views were clouded by a last minute penalty, the first half we actually played not bad at all but so did the Saints, After watching them pull apart Rangers so easily in a Cup match, I thought defensively we did well and the game was pretty open. The ref was more interested in letting the game flow and freekicks were few and far between. The second half was totally different, with the early sending off you would assume we could go on and win the match but all the Perth side did was to leave one man up front and the rest of them camped inside their own half and rarely came out of it, add to that extremely slow substitutions and booting the ball out of sight for throw ins to run down the clock. If we had 70% possession over the 90 minutes, then we would have had 55% in the first half and 85% in the second. Tuesday night TV or go to the match? I'm opting for real live football, Its far better than the TV and theres even a deal on for under 16s to get in for free. With a 7:05pm ko time it's certainly doable on a school night.

We lost. It's 3 points dropped. I thought it looked very much like a draw tbh. With neither side being able to break down the other. We did have a greater desire to want to win the match but just couldnt pass it through them. It was 0-0 till near the end which in my book means a point each is on the cards, If we were winning 1-0 with a few mins to go and lose 2-1, I would call that dropping 3 points. Or perhaps having numerous attempts saved and being worth of a victory. A point each would have been fair. Hope you enjoyed your Baxters soup. :-) I would imagine the faith will be fully restored by Tuesday night.

hopefully it's so long john.......... the luckiest manager in Scottish football history. took over a team that just missed out on Europe due to a last game of the season defeat at dingwall. got lucky in his run to Europe as after xmas Dundee utd went into freefall and st johnstone were just too far back to catch us. got even luckier in the Scottish cup semi, we should have been 2-0 down and a down to 10 men for the second half. lucky in the final to be playing a " lesser team", although they certainly didn't look like that in the 2nd half. lucky a headed clearance up the park let Watkins in on goal where a weak shot was palmed out by the goal keeper into the path of a player who had legged it from his own box on the million to one chance he would get the chance he got. when he lost players like mackay, shinnie and Watkins he replaced them with dud midfielders while everyone was shouting for a striker to be bought. if it wasn't for the chairman finding miles storey we would still be waiting for hughes striker lopez " to come good". when we won the cup all the celebrations were done at the corner flag area. everyone from there to the half way line, probably half of our support that day, were waiting cameras in hand to get a photo. every cup final I ever saw on tv has the winning team showing the cup to all supporters wherever they were in the ground yogi walked from the corner to the half way line, head down, hearing hundreds of fans screaming for a photo, ignored them all and at the half way line gave a couple of fist pumps to the Falkirk fans. will never forgive him for that.

Some harsh words spoken on this thread. Emotions obviously running high, not surprising after a mugging like that. Basically we played Saints off the pitch for the majority of the match and came away with nothing. We could and should have 6 points against them this season, as it is we have 1. That's football sometimes. The only criticism that I agree with was our inability to translate an extra man and 70% possession into any decent efforts at goal. Our build up play was unnecessarily intricate and long winded. When your opponents are camped in their own half and playing for a draw - they're happy for you to dominate possession and knock the ball around in your own half. Instead of trying to score the perfect goal we should have shown much more urgency and directness. The more balls you play into the box, even bad ones, the better odds of one finally breaking your way and ending up in the net. As it was, we never asked any questions of an underperforming Saints defence. Ironically, the closest we came was from a long ball over the top to Story, who easily outpaced Shaughnessy and Anderson only to lob over the bar.