Joe: Europa slump won’t slow Saints
ST JOHNSTONE defender Joe Shaughnessy has insisted there will be no European hangover when the Premiership kicks off.
The Perth side were knocked out of the Europa League at the first qualifying round stage by Lithuanians FK Trakai on Thursday.
Exiting continental competition so early is extremely disappointing for the Irish defender, who knows Saints should have advanced over two legs.
But he says the squad won’t be dwelling on the defeat as focus turns to the beginning of next season.
Shaughnessy, 25, said: “It’s disappointing to go out of Europe so early but we just need to pick ourselves up and go again.
“We have enough strong characters in our dressingroom so there won’t be any hangover from this.
“The focus goes back to domestic football and the aim will be to challenge for the top six again.
“I don’t know what the manager has planned for us, I’m sure he will be arranging games because it’s a month until the season starts.
“We’re pretty fit anyway so it’s just a case of keeping ticking over and building up to the season starting.”
Shaughnessy believes a slow start in last week’s home leg cost Saints a place in qualification round two.
Trakai, who are half-way through their season, followed up a 2-1 victory at McDiarmid Park with a 1-0 win in Vilnius.
Much discussion will now take place as to whether or not the introduction of summer football would help Scottish clubs in Europe.
And Shaughnessy said: “I can’t see us going to it.
“The season has always been the way it is just now and I don’t think they will change it. But I definitely think them being halfway through their season helped them in the first leg.
“It was our first fully competitive game for five weeks or so and it showed early on with the way we started the game.
“If we played them in October when we are a dozen games into our season we would definitely beat them.
“But that’s not the way our season works, they were sharper than us for half an hour in the first half of the first tie and they put us out.
“For three quarters of the tie we were better but the first 20 minutes of the first leg has killed us.
“We left ourselves a huge hill to climb to get back into it but it just wasn’t to be.
“The damage was done in the first leg but even after that, with the amount of possession we had and the good positions we were in, we should have got the job done over there.
“They had a few decent players, their striker was clinical and we were not that was the difference.
Saints dominated large chunks of Thursday’s match at the LFF Stadium in Vilnius but lacked a cutting edge in the final third.
Shaughnessy said: “It wasn’t really our night, nothing went right. We lacked a killer ball to open them up. It’s disappointing and frustrating.”