Hello and welcome to the McDiarmid Memo, an exclusive weekly take on St Johnstone FC from Jamie Beatson.

It’s an election year – both in the UK and Stateside – so something you’re going to hear around about this time next year are reflections on the first 100 days of the new UK government, followed shortly by the same kind of analysis of the incumbent of the White House.

It seems to me that this is an idea we can steal for ourselves – and by happy coincidence Craig Levein’s first 100 days in charge of St Johnstone came and went on Tuesday of this week.

I’ll start with the positives. Very obviously, Levein came in with a mountain to climb. Relegation looked all but inevitable – almost certainly with a disastrous 12th-place finish – and a team looking devoid of the ability to dig themselves out of a hole.

Things have certainly moved on from the nadir of the 4-0 thrashing in Paisley that saw the end of Steven MacLean. While we’re still nowhere near safety – and indeed now sit 10th, with Ross County within touching distance having games in hand – we’re in a much better position than where we were. With the league being one of fine margins, a couple of wins could propel us to safety – or indeed a fight for the top six if we can string some sort of form together.

We are definitely harder to beat now, and it is clear that Levein and Andy Kirk have identified some of the glaring issues in our team, not least the absolute lack of any pace in the side. There is still an overhaul ahead for the squad in the summer, with multiple players out of contract and the management team certain to want to shake things up. How that plays out remains to be seen.

That’s the positive case after 100 days of Leveinball. But there are negatives, for sure.

We’re far too reticent to go out and try to finish games off. We’ve dropped far too many points from winning positions. For example, we’ve played Motherwell three times and Livingston twice. We have never been behind in any of those games and have led four of them. All five have ended in draws.

Convert even two of those into wins – and without question we should have won two of the games against Motherwell, and never looked in any danger in the home game against Livingston until VAR stuck its oar in – we would be sitting in seventh, a point behind Dundee. Turn four into wins and we’re knocking on the door of high-flying St Mirren in fifth.

Is that a mindset thing? Negativity in not going to finish games off? A lack of character? Probably a bit of everything above.

There are also still some fairly massive issues in the defence. So many goals have been conceded from second balls from set pieces – see as a classic example Dundee’s winner at Dens – and Liam Gordon has been involved in far too much of the nonsense that has got us into trouble this year. At the other end we still struggle to link play through the midfield and into forward areas. There is a tendency for certain players to get game time far in excess of what their performances merit.

Ultimately, scrapping our way to survival is the main goal this year. Entertainment is, unfortunately, secondary. Levein has undoubtedly made staying in the Premiership far more likely than it was four months ago. But there are some concerning signs in there. It would be good to get close to or over the line as soon as possible and see something a bit more expansive in terms of the product on the pitch as we bring the season to a close.

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Sunday’s penalty incident encapsulated everything that is wrong with VAR – and not for the first time in the past few weeks.

Take the rights and (very) wrongs of the actual decision – not a single person in that stadium knew what the referee was being asked to check when he went to the monitor, and even after he pointed to the spot the crowd in the stadium was none-the-wiser.

It can’t be right that the paying punter – the one shelling out £25 to walk through the gate, the family paying £70+ to take themselves and a couple of kids along – can go home after a match without knowing why a game-changing decision has been made.

It isn’t the first time – it wasn’t until I was able to watch a recording of Sportscene the following day that I knew why Graham Carey’s volley against Aberdeen had been disallowed.

The implementation of VAR has been a car crash. A complete disaster for the match-going fan. The astounding thing is that there seems to be very little will to do anything about it. If fans start walking away – and the chat from people about doing just that is getting louder and louder – this is going to be a huge reason why.