Ando not wanting a drop fight
STEVEN ANDERSON found himself in a relegation scrap in his first season as a St Johnstone player.
And after years of top-six successes and a Scottish Cup win the defender doesn’t fancy one this term.
The Perth club haven’t won in six league starts and face leaders Celtic tomorrow.
And Anderson, who moved to McDiarmid Park from Dundee United 14 years ago as a raw teenager, said: “When I first joined we were battling against relegation to the Second Division.
“In the end we stayed up by finishing third bottom but it was horrendous. So we don’t want to get into another situation where you’re struggling.
“Boys need to step up. Every single one of us needs to do our jobs better.
“It’s not just one or two people, we need to work for each other and drag ourselves out of this run.
“The character is there, we have a lot of experienced players in the dressing room so that’s not an issue.
“But it’s about stopping talking about it and going out and doing it.”
Anderson believes one result can transform their season. The centre-back added: “We need to get back to being a horrible team to play against and be hard to beat. I don’t think we have been hard to beat this season and I never thought I’d say that about a St Johnstone team.
“That’s what it’s all about, become that team the opposition hate playing again. It’s easy to sit here and say it but we need to go out and do it.
“There are a lot of games to play so there’s plenty of time to turn it round. But we’ve had a lot of chances to do that already and haven’t done it.
“So we need to do it now. If we can get a win it doesn’t matter how, the confidence will come back. When you’re on the kind of run we’ve had you need something to change it.
“This is one of these games where the onus is on Celtic to go and beat us. We’ve done well when we’re underdogs there in the past so who knows, this might be the kind of test we need.
“We’re going to have to dig in and fight.”