St Johnstone boss Simo Valakari has brought in eight new players, to add to the two he signed not long after succeeding Craig Levein.
He had more surgery to perform on his squad in January than any other manager in the Premiership – the league table told you that.
And it’s going to take at least another transfer window before he can unequivocally say: “This is my team.”
It was a fascinating month for a number of reasons, which Courier Sport explores.
Owners make their mark
If sacking the manager they inherited and replacing him was the first big test of the new American owners, the manner in which they approached their first full transfer window was the second.
It was unavoidable that the club’s recruitment business would be hugely informative about the Saints in America regime.
You could safely say that after they bought St Johnstone from Geoff Brown, they soon had doubts over Levein which would have fed into the extent to which they backed him in the final couple of weeks of the summer window.
There were no such doubts over Valakari.
Whether one point adrift at the bottom of the league or 11, it wouldn’t have looked right for Webb and his co-investors to not support their head coach in the recruitment market and fly a white flag of relegation surrender.
It would have sent out entirely the wrong message and raised doubts about the scale of their ambition.
Now that January has turned to February, those doubts have been assuaged.
The fan base, as much as you can ever speak of it as one collective voice, broadly has faith in the project and, combined with Webb’s media interviews and public appearances, has a clearer picture of the short-term and long-term visions.
The reasonable conclusion to be drawn is that the owners won’t be reckless spenders, but neither will they stand back and let a head coach they believe in bring a knife to a gun fight.
Changing landscape
Unlike the summer window, the January one plays out entirely against a backdrop of competitive football.
For St Johnstone, that added complications none of their bottom six rivals had to absorb.
Signings lined up by mid-December had changed their mind by late December.
A goalkeeper should have been secured for January 1st and that may have had an impact on what happened in the Tayside derby on January 5th. But after that defeat to Dundee, Saints had an incredibly tough job on their hands to secure the players they needed.
The rules had changed – for the players who were contemplating signing, and for Valakari, who now had to think more deeply about the worst-case scenario of Championship football next season than he would have cared to.
It’s against this backdrop that I believe they have struck as good a balance as was possible.
A loan goalkeeper (and one who didn’t need a work permit) made sense. The same applied to the chief outfield problem position of right-back.
But, even in these trying circumstances, Valakari needed to build a robust core of a team for life beyond the summer in the Premiership or Championship.
Without yet seeing Jonathan Svedberg and Daniels Balodis in action, their pedigree suggests that Bozo Mikulic, Balodis, Sven Sprangler, Victor Griffith, Svedberg, Jason Holt and Makenzie Kirk gives you that spine.
If Svedberg and Balodis are as good as Griffith and Mikulic, combined with two of the four outfield loans making a significant impact, Saints will have a great chance of staying up.
And, even if they go down, you can now say with some confidence that the rebuild for a swift bounce-back has begun rather than been kicked down the street until June.
Reliability
To tweak a terrace chant familiar to all St Johnstone fans, Valakari wants a team of Sven Spranglers.
Unlike the Austrian, far too many of the players in Levein’s squad were as liable to throw in a four out of 10 performance as they were an eight out of 10 one.
Valakari needs dependability – footballers who will be sixes even on their worst day.
Zach Mitchell, just 20, is about to take a step-up and Sam Curtis may well have a form drop-off at some point given he is actually a year younger.
But in the main, Valakari has signed experienced pros, several of them with leadership credentials, who still have fire in their belly to advance their careers.
That represents a definite shift in the squad dynamic.
You would like to think the team will be far less error-prone as a consequence.
And if mistakes are being made, Valakari can now turn to his bench and have more faith that he has got game-changers in waiting to come on.
Formation adaptability
At the start of the window, the go-to system for Valakari was a back four, a diamond in midfield and two up top.
At the end of it, the set-up that is working best is a back three, wing-backs and a lone striker.
In most positions, Valakari now has cover and choices to make.
And he’s also got scope to adapt if a change of formation is called for.
The chief reason form fell off a cliff so dramatically before and after Christmas was his midfield.
It was over-run by more physical opponents and when individuals started to play poorly there was no collective solidity.
Given the age, skill blend and sheer size of the players Valakari now has to choose from, it’s much harder to imagine midfield becoming an area of weakness again.
Potential problems
Seeing Ross Sinclair do so well in Paisley with his hands and feet was reassuring.
With Andy Fisher as number one and Sinclair a deputy with confidence restored, that position is now in much better health.
Valakari is one centre-half lighter than you would ideally like him to be if he’s going to persist with a back three, but Barry Douglas’ display in the middle of defence against St Mirren takes the edge off that concern.
Curtis isn’t the only option on the right side of defence, particularly in a wing-back formation. Drey Wright and Fran Franczak have both earned their manager’s trust.
Midfield, as discussed, has all bases covered. Again, Franczak is in the mix there.
Left-back/left wing-back could yet be a worry, though.
Getting Adam Montgomery, or somebody like him, would have really helped because Wright’s natural habitat is the other flank, the days of Douglas as an overlapping defender appear to be over and Andre Raymond hasn’t featured since being substituted before the half-hour mark against Dundee.
Saints could be a striker short as well.
Uche Ikpeazu is as far away from playing as he was when he signed, Adama Sidibeh hasn’t scored since August, and there has to be serious concerns over Benji Kimpioka’s appetite to impress given the clock is ticking down on his time in Perth and the manager chose to keep him on the bench two weekends ago then leave him out of his match-day squad entirely on Saturday.
And does Valakari even view Nicky Clark as a centre-forward these days?
Taylor Steven will have an important part to play – he impacted the game admirably with a goal against Motherwell and then with his football intelligence in Paisley. But he’s not a number nine.
Makenzie Kirk has, by some distance, been the biggest attacking success story over the last few months.
Take away Kirk, Mikulic and penalties, and you’re left with no Saints players having scored more than two goals since early October.
Valakari will need other forwards to step-up.
What next?
I would certainly keep an eye on the free agent market for a centre-forward.
But the main off-pitch focus should be tying up Sprangler and Mikulic on long-term deals.
They are ticking every box for a captain and vice-captain leadership partnership, whichever league St Johnstone find themselves in next season.
Verdict
Valakari needs a high transfer window success rate if Saints are to preserve their Premiership status – much higher than when Callum Davidson made eight mid-season signings three years ago.
Even after winning back-to-back league fixtures, they remain the favourites to go down.
The predicament was so calamitous post-Dundee and the squad so unbalanced, however, that survival isn’t the benchmark.
Making a fight of it is.
Saints supporters have a right to be optimistic that will now indeed be the case.
And, perhaps even more importantly, they should have belief that the owners will look at what worked well behind the scenes (a lot) and assess how they should adapt, possibly restructure, for future windows.
In general, there was a plan and they stuck to it.
More of this, please.
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