St Johnstone owner Adam Webb believes the summer planning at McDiarmid Park has been “night and day” in comparison to when he walked in the door 12 months ago.
Big recruitment mistakes were baked in by the time Geoff Brown sold up to Webb and his co-investors at the start of July, with the first team recruitment strategy unclear under then manager, Craig Levein.
The American lawyer admitted that the timing of the handover worked against the Perth club and contributed to their subsequent Premiership demise.
But now that Saints are facing a Championship campaign for the first time in nearly two decades, he is confident that clear thinking and decisiveness will be building blocks for success.
“The plan this summer has been much better,” said Webb.
“There’s no one more knowledgeable at running a Scottish football club than Geoff but he was in a tentative position all of last spring.
“We didn’t know when the SFA was going to approve the sale.
“It was a very topsy-turvy period and that’s a horrible time for that to occur.
“That meant a lack of guidance, oversight, leadership – whatever you want to call it – which obviously didn’t help the situation.
“We took charge July 5, days before the first game.
“Many important decisions had already been made.
“You have certain momentum, inertia for good or for bad, that’s already in place.
“It was night and day this year.
“We had a plan and knew what we wanted to do, whether that was in the Premiership or Championship.
“I believe it will bear fruit and the benefit of that planning and co-ordination will be seen as opposed to be a real lack of guidance and leadership for the football department last summer.”
‘Toxic’
Expanding on the contrast from 2024 to 2025, Webb pointed out that any comparison starts with a numbers game.
“We can all go back to last summer’s window and critique a lot,” he reflected.
“There were problems going into it with far too many players already signed.
“That was a giant mistake.
“I certainly don’t think we will ever make that as a club again.
“Not on my watch.
“I believe that when you have 10 players who have no hope of playing, there’s going to be resentment and problems in the changing room.
“It’s just not a good environment.
“You should never have 30-plus players at our level.
“We don’t have the luxury to do it and it’s psychologically damaging on the morale of the team.
“It’s toxic.
“Last summer, not enough was done to clean out the ranks.
“We started the season with 33 players signed. That’s not good. And of all those, we did not have an experienced goalkeeper.
“What I’ve learned is to stay more on top of the recruitment.
“We’re aspiring to have a much smaller group. Luckily, Simo (Valakari) agrees fully with that.
“I won’t micro-manage what Gus (MacPherson), Simo and the guys are doing.
“But I do want to be involved, to make sure we have a plan and there’s no confusion about that plan.
“We are inherently going to be a little bit younger.
“My preference, if you have two guys of equal quality, is let’s try for the younger guy.
“They’ve got a higher ceiling and sometimes you can make a good bit of money as a club selling them on if they really do blossom.
“Simo has the same inclination, but you don’t head into the Championship without experience.
“He will have a smaller, tighter squad that really buys into what we do.”
Self-analysis
With Saints toiling on the pitch for four seasons in a row after their cup double, there was a creeping inevitability to relegation being the conclusion.
That doesn’t mean Webb has avoided introspection.
“Every time we felt we were overcoming problems, others would set in,” he said.
“But I’ve been very pleased with some of the developments as a business and organisation.
“My big concern was that I, as an owner, didn’t do enough.
“After full analysis and getting insights from others, the takeaway was we did pretty much everything we could do.
“I’m not beating myself up that everything collapsed due to a lack of decision-making or resources from ownership.
“It was going to happen eventually.
“We weren’t going to stay up forever and had been bouncing around the bottom for the last several seasons.
“It was a combination of events that the ownership couldn’t have done much to head off.
“Hopefully the few things that we can improve, we’ve learned enough to make those improvements.”
New coaches
Nineteen players have left McDiarmid since the final game of last season, with Valakari also choosing to refresh his backroom team.
Andy Kirk and Alex Cleland parted company with the club and a new foreign coach is set to begin work next week when pre-season begins.
“That was absolutely up to Simo,” said Webb, regarding the coaching shake-up.
“He wants to head in a different direction and it’s understandable.
“Once you realise you’re the guy, you’re being backed, you have to bring different results.
“It wasn’t gelling last season.
“You look at players, size of squad and your assistants and analysts.
“Simo has made changes. He is excited to bring in some fresh perspectives.
“It’s a really good, cohesive plan. We still have new personnel to announce over the next few weeks.”
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