St Johnstone

Sam Miller
Fan writer

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

While relegation has felt like a looming possibility for the past three seasons, marked by constant changes in management, ownership, and player acquisitions, we should remember the incredible first 13 years back in the top flight.

That period was arguably the finest in St Johnstone's history, with half of those seasons ending in a top-six finish.

We also celebrated two Scottish Cup victories, a League Cup win and six European qualifications, including memorable results against Rosenborg and Galatasaray.

For a generation of supporters, this level of success has been the norm. However, those of us over 30 know first-hand that escaping the second tier can be a challenging endeavour.

With pre-season just six weeks away and half the squad already departed (the remainder potentially following suit if wage reductions aren't accepted), a significant rebuild is on the horizon. Only time will tell if a solid plan is in place to address this.

Personally, I'm not filled with sadness about relegation. The football has been difficult to watch since our cup-winning legends were broken up.

This feels like the right moment to hit the reset button, build a team capable of dominating the Championship, and hopefully secure a few more cup wins in the next decade.

We've achieved promotion and cup wins before, and we have the spirit to do it again. COYS.

Sam Miller can be found at Dogger Saints, external

St Johnstone manager Simo Valakari says he had to release 16 players from his squad because his side had "become used to losing" on their way to relegation and he hopes transfer-listed Josh Rae can also return permanently to Raith Rovers, where the 24-year-old goalkeeper had been on loan. (The Courier), external

Raith Rovers could make a move for Josh Rae after the goalkeeper was made available for transfer by St Johnstone. (The Courier), external

Read Wednesday's Scottish Gossip in full.

Tyrone Smith
BBC Sport Scotland Senior Reporter

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St Johnstone chief executive Francis Smith says the club's American owner Adam Webb has "no regrets at all" about getting involved, despite his first season at the helm ending in relegation.

US businessman Adam Webb took control at McDiarmid Park last summer. However, despite replacing manager Craig Levein with Simo Valakari last October, the club finished bottom and will play in the second tier next season for the first time in 16 years.

"No regrets at all, Adam and the investors are focused on making this club great again," Smith told BBC Scotland.

"So they are going to work hard, the ones that are on the board will work with us other directors to make sure the club continues to be a sustainable model.

"We want to get through the [next] season without making too much of a loss because we want to make sure that when we come back to the Premiership we are focused and ready to fight for top six."

Smith added: "Nobody has made a boob, they bought the club, they said at the start they are in here for the long haul.

"They are here to rebuild St Johnstone, build the infrastructure, give us the tools to be a successful club.

"It won't be this rebuild every year after year. Now we are at the bottom, we will rebuild and make it sustainable for the future."

Smith stressed the importance of getting promoted from the Championship at the first attempt and says Valakari will be given the tools to enable him to do that.

Since winning a remarkable domestic cup double four years ago, it has been a steady decline for St Johnstone, culminating in this season's relegation.

"We can only assess what we have been involved in, so we can only assess from August to now," said Smith.

"We have given extra money where we can, we have appointed a manager who has an enthusiastic approach to football, but again maybe it comes down to past recruitment and things like that that. Maybe we have not had the best players or the best value players to sell on.

"St Johnstone is a club that needs to bring in youth players that become either good assets on the park or sellable assets to allow us to work as a good sustainable club, that is what St Johnstone do.

"We will probably post a profit again this year from the Premiership and then going into the Championship we will look probably to make that loss.

"But we are focused on rebuilding the club, we have been making all these little changes around the stadium and the infrastructure and things like that and we have obviously backed Simo in January, we brought players in – was that too late? Potentially it was."

St Johnstone are set to hit Dundee with a £10,000 bill for damage caused to McDiarmid Park during Sunday's pitch invasion, the Perth club having found broken seats, graffiti and damage to the toilets in the areas housing the 3,000 visiting fans. (Scottish Sun), external

Read Tuesday's Scottish Gossip in full.

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Club legend Stevie May is one of 21 players set to leave St Johnstone this summer following their relegation to the Scottish Championship.

Forward May, who has spent this season on loan with second-tier Livingston, has won two Scottish Cups and a League Cup across two spells, making 267 appearances for the club and scoring more than 60 goals.

Captain Nicky Clark and fellow first-team regulars Graham Carey and striker Benjamin Kimpioka are also departing McDiarmid Park.

Clark and Kimpioka both scored six Premiership goals this campaign, with Carey netting six across all competitions.

Including loan players, the full list of players moving on is: Carey, Clark, Arran Cocks, Barry Douglas, Alex Ferguson, Kimpioka, Bailey Klimionek, Max Kucheriavyi, Cammy MacPherson, May, Ben McCrystal, Adam McMillan, Liam Park, Dominic Shiels, Matt Smith, Kyle Thomson, Andy Fisher, Elliot Watt, Sam Curtis, Stephen Duke-McKenna and Zach Mitchell.

We asked for your views on relegated St Johnstone's end-of-season defeat at home to Dundee.

Here's what you had to say:

Willie: Difficult to judge this cobbled-up team. A massive rebuild is certainly required and has to be in place to hit the ground running in what will be a difficult challenge in the Championship.

Stuart: Sir Alex in his prime would struggle to build that team into something. I am glad to see the back of that season and a majority of that squad. Hopefully it's a short stay in the Championship and we come back fighting.

Duncan: The performance was disappointing given you think we had nothing to lose, but maybe we needed something to lose (like Dundee) to really fire us up. At least we saw some young members of the squad on show. To be honest I do feel we have a nucleus of a good squad but need more quality, and hopefully with a good pre-season and not the panic buys of the previous four windows we'll be in good shape to fight our way back up.

Steven: Be very interested to see the release/keep list. Big rebuild needed for the past three/four years and best placed to do it now a league down.

John: Simo Valakari should not be trusted to bring Saints back up, after all he is responsible for us being relegated. Some of the younger players should have been given more game time rather than wasting time with playing players out of position.

Watch highlights of Tony Docherty's final game in charge of Dundee as Lyall Cameron's double downs St Johnstone and secures the Dens Park side's safety.

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Did you take in St Johnstone's defeat by Dundee or were you following from home?

Have your say on the match

St Johnstone manager Simo Valakari: "The quality was not there. That's how it has been and now we need to change that, make it better to be successful. We need to raise the levels and it comes through the hard work.

"From the start, we are the club who came down from the Premiership. We should be a favourite but it's up to us to be this favourite. Now it's even more pressure on us. You want to bounce back and it requires a different type of mentality."

Image source, SNS

Tyrone Smith
BBC Sport Scotland Senior Reporter at McDiarmid Park

It is the bigger picture that will be occupying the minds of the St Johnstone faithful and they will hope it won't be too long before they are dining back at Scottish football's top table.

Manager Simo Valakari has received the backing of the board and he will certainly be doing his utmost to make sure they return to the Premiership at the first attempt.

While that will be the main objective, the bigger goal at the club will be trying to find a way of halting what has been a gradual decline in recent times.

A lot of people have had their say, and offered their take, on what has gone wrong at the club since their remarkable domestic cup double four years ago.

The causes are likely multi-faceted but will need to be addressed soon to ensure a the desired rapid response.

Image source, SNS

Image source, SNS

• St Johnstone have won just one of their past nine league games against Dundee (D4 L4), a 2-1 away triumph in October this season.

• Dundee have won both of their past two away league games at St Johnstone, as many as their previous 13 in the top flight beforehand (W2 D3 L8).

• St Johnstone have won on the final day of both of their past two league seasons, beating Livingston 2-0 in 2022-23 and Motherwell 2-1 in 2023-24.

• Dundee are winless in the final game of each of their past nine top-flight campaigns (D2 L7) since a 2-1 win at Aberdeen in 2003-04.

• St Johnstone have been relegated after losing 23 league matches this season, with the last side to lose more in a single Scottish Premiership campaign being Dundee in 2018-19 (27).

Image source, SNS

St Johnstone boss Simo Valakari expects to be selecting from an unchanged squad, with Jonathan Svedberg (hamstring), Zach Mitchell (hamstring), Drey Wright (ankle), Bozo Mikulic (knee) and Sam McClelland (Achilles) still out.

Dundee are again without Jordan McGhee and Ethan Ingram.

Image source, SNS

Simo Valakari says the backing of St Johnstone owner Adam Webb "meant everything" as he looks to lead the club back to the top flight.

Saints' 16-year Premiership stay was ended in midweek when the 2-1 defeat by Hearts consigned the Perth side side to the drop.

Valakari, who took charge in October, remains as head coach after Webb insisted the Finn was "just getting started on the project to return St Johnstone to its glory days".

"It meant everything to me," Valakari said. "The first day he signed me, he put faith in me and I feel it most that I could not do it [keep St Johnstone up].

"We're all disappointed about the results, all disappointed about the outcomes. Of course, we need to understand that nothing is guaranteed in football.

"That's why, yes, it was good from our club, from Adam, to make it clear again that this is what we are, that's where we go and now we start working on it.

"When I first came here, we already started to work on two sides. We had this short term that we wanted to stay in the Premiership. I need to be very, very clear, we wanted really badly to stay in the Premiership and do the rebuilding in the Premiership.

"We could not do it, so now we are in the Championship and the rebuilding continues. On the football side, all the aspects of the club have been together, but now because we know where we are, we can open it. We only have one plan and we start working towards it."

Image source, SNS

"Gutted" Jason Holt admits St Johnstone have "clearly not been good enough" this season as he comes to terms with successive relegations.

The midfielder went down with Livingston last term and has now suffered the same fate with Saints after their demotion to the Championship was confirmed following the midweek defeat at Hearts.

"It's hard because as a player, you don't want any relegations on your CV," said 32-year-old Holt.

"Unfortunately I've been on the end of two. I think throughout your career there's going to be bumps in the road, there's going to be ups and downs.

"Certainly the last two years have been difficult because you're not winning a lot of football matches. You try not to, but you take that home with you and it affects everything.

"It's been challenging at times, but that's the life of a football player. There are bumps along the road. Unfortunately, I've been on the receiving end of a couple of bad ones.

"We're really disappointed and gutted but, overall, we've clearly not been good enough."

Holt expects a revamp of the Perth squad this summer under head coach Simo Valakari, whom owner Adam Webb confirmed on Thursday will be kept on.

"Naturally, I think if a club goes down, there's probably a bit of a rebuild," Holt said. "I don't know what that looks like, but I'm sure the club will have decisions to make over the summer.

"I think we're going to probably be one of the favourites (for the Championship) so there comes a different pressure in winning games every week."

Sportscene pundits discuss relegated St Johnstone's style of play under manager Simo Valakari.

Brian McLauchlin
BBC Sport Scotland Senior Reporter

Defeat at Tynecastle on Wednesday night brought an end to 16 years of top-flight football for St Johnstone.

But given the club's fortunes in the Premiership in recent seasons, should we be too surprised?

It was the 2020-21 season when Saints created history by winning both major cup competitions and finished fifth in the Premiership.

All looked to be rosy at McDiarmid Park with a squad full of Scottish talent who knew exactly how to win games of football.

But the warning signs were there early on the following season. Despite gallant away performances against Galatasaray and LASK, the European adventures were over by the end of August.

A run of eight straight defeats in the league between the start of December and the end of January saw the club plummet towards the bottom end of the table.

Although they reached the semi-finals of the League Cup, losing 1-0 to Celtic, there was huge disappointment when they fell at the first hurdle in their defence of the Scottish Cup to lowly Kelty Hearts.

Premiership survival was only achieved after play-off success over two legs against Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

The following campaign in the league was marginally better with a ninth-place finish. But early exits in both cup competitions left a huge sense of disappointment in Perth.

Davidson left the club towards the end of the season having been player, coach and then manager over a ten-year period.

After a short and unsuccessful spell for Steven MacLean, Craig Levein was tempted back into management.

St Johnstone had been purchased by Geoff Brown in 1986, and along with his son Steven, they turned St Johnstone into one of the best run clubs in Scotland, but they had now decided it was time for someone else to take over the reins.

And shortly after Saints secured their Premiership place on the final day of the 2023-24 campaign, the club was sold to a group of American entrepreneurs.

Levein was sacked in September, just a matter of weeks after the takeover was concluded, with Simo Valkari taking over.

And despite some brave performances, including a home win over champions Celtic, they were unable to avoid the drop.

Valakri said "there were no excuses" and the team were simply "not good enough".

He stressed "things need to change" if they are to bounce back to the top flight at the first time of asking.

The 52-year-old also says he wants to stay, but when asked if he expects to be at the club, he answered: "we will see".

The next few weeks and months in Perth will be telling, with some big decisions required by those in charge.

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St Johnstone's 16-year stay in the Scottish Premiership has come to an end, with a bleak season giving way to what has looked inevitable for some time now.

The statistics illustrate why they have dropped out of the top flight.

The Perth side struggle to get going in games and often left themselves with too much to do later on.

They have conceded 35 first-half goals in 37 games, more than any other in the Premiership this season. In addition, they have failed to score a first-half goal in 26 of their 37 games, more often than any other team in the Premiership this term.

A fair few of those goals have been avoidable, too.

The Perth Saints have conceded 10 goals leading from errors, the top flight's joint-worst record along with Dundee.

Too often, they concede when they shouldn't.

Their cumulative expected-goals (xG) against is 54, but they have conceded 12 goals more than that, suggesting they are susceptible to letting soft goals in and not forming the type of solid rearguard they were associated with for much of their top-flight stay.

The Saints have also dropped 20 points from winning positions, the fourth worst in the league and another damning indictment of a side who have often seemed devoid of confidence and belief.

We asked for your views on St Johnstone's 2-1 defeat against Hearts.

Here's what some of you said:

Dunc: Not a lot you can say about the way it has all ended. Radical surgery required, and Simo Valakari must be allowed at least one window going forward. There should not be many on the retained list, and perhaps only Graham Carey and Drey Wright offered new deals. The rest released or contracts terminated and loanees, thanked and returned to their parent clubs. Gutted, but we knew it was coming. The last three seasons were a shambles. We would, at times, have been hard pressed to beat a Sunday League pub team.

Gordy: Again, the simple answer is that Valakari should not be allowed to continue in the Championship. His team selection could at best be described as eccentric, and playing out from the back has been a notable failure and tested to destruction. Beyond that, the 3981 miles between Atlanta, Georgia and Perth has been allowed to become too great structurally by the new owners. They have not committed enough attention to the executive dimension of the club. Although in mitigation, the deterioration reaches back into the later days of the Brown regime. Relegation has been at least four seasons in the making.

Euan: There's never been a better time to remember the 2021 cup double and reflect on how good a month May has been to us recently, what a fantastic high to measure the lows against.

Paul: This game was a repeat of many others, Saints start well, look the better team, but lack that cutting edge. Then, poor defensive play or individual mistakes give goals away, and they are left chasing the game. I hope Simo stays, he brings positivity and a clear way of playing, we just need to overhaul the squad and start building for a promotion campaign.

John: We have the right man in place. A busy few days ahead weeding out the unwanted players and keeping the ones we'll need. Hopefully, plans are already in place for a few much-needed signings. The Saints will rise again.

Donald: This is down to Craig Levein, playing inexperienced goalkeepers, whose mistake at the start of the season probably cost six points. Also loss of two key central defenders left that part of the team decimated. Keep Simo, rebuild and look for an immediate return to the Premiership next season.

Watch highlights as Hearts win 2-1 against St Johnstone in the Scottish Premiership.

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• Alan Forrest has scored in each of his last 3 games in the Premiership (3 goals), his longest scoring streak in the competition.

• Lawrence Shankland has assisted 8 goals in the Premiership this season (1 in this game), more than any other Hearts player.

• Hearts have won their last 3 games in the Premiership, their last longer winning streak was from 2nd January 2024 to 17th February 2024, a run of 6 games.

• Graham Carey has scored his fourth goal in the Premiership this season, netting for the first time since 15th February 2025 against Kilmarnock.

• Graham Carey has now scored 4 goals in 13 appearances in the Premiership against Hearts.

Well, St Johnstone fans, the great escape is finally over.

On a brutal night, the Perth Saints' relegation to the Championship was confirmed by defeat at Tynecastle coupled with Ross County's late equaliser at Dens Park.

Where do the failings lie?

Is Simo Valakari the man to take the club forward and lead the charge for promotion?

Where now for this proud football club with such rich top-flight history?

We want your thoughts on the club's predicament. Use this link to have your say.

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St Johnstone manager Simo Valakari: "It was not good enough for a long time because the table doesn't lie. It really, really hurts.

"We are crying tonight and tomorrow but always looking forward. This season is history. We need to change things and get this beautiful club back to winning ways.

"It's hard to play in relegation battles but it's even harder to play for promotion. That's what our aim is and that's what we start doing the day after tomorrow. It's a big, big job and will require a lot of effort every day.

"We can't have off days. We already started preparing, but we wanted to fight to stay in the Premiership. No excuses, we were not good enough.

"Numerous things need to change - some big, some small. It's more how you sustain this level and effort every match. Our weaknesses have been too big."

Asked if he expects to stay in charge next season, Valakari replies: "Things need to change and we are starting this change. We can't continue anymore like it has been three or four years flirting with relegation. It needs to go back to being successful and being more stable.

"I don't need to make any decisions. I want to stay. I want to rebuild this club and be successful with this club."