Now, who honestly can say that in summer 2000 any of these players were bad signings? We all know that some, such as Paeslack, McKnight and Bowman, actually turned out to be fairly useless, but they had looked fairly decent signings and proved to Saints fans that Tom Hendrie seemed to know what he was doing and was capable of signing players good enough for the SPL.
Of course, it tourned out that he wasn't, as the signings of Graham Fenton and Maikel Renfurm, amongst others prove.
Six years down the line and we're in the same place, with everyone going on about how great Gus MacPherson's signings are and how we'll be better equipped for the challenge than we were under Hendrie. He has made some great signings in two and a half years, with only emergency signing Chris McGroarty really being a dud. But why are people saying that Gus has more of an idea than Hendrie did?
Maybe it's because Gus played in the top flight for years before coming to us, or maybe it's just the understandable trait of people to imagine things are better now than they were then considering who Hendrie signed. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I'm not going to moan about the signings Gus has made this summer as I don't know enough about them and haven't seen them play yet. However, most folk seem to think they'll be good given Gus's track record. As proven above, Hendrie's track record was good yet many of his signings for the SPL turned out to be useless.
Let's hope that our trust in Gus is rewarded, and his signings don't turn out to be as bad, or worse than, most of Hendrie's SPL acquisitions were.