Alnwick pulls no punches for Saints
Goalkeeper says it’s time for Saints to put up a fight
JAK ALNWICK has warned his St Mirren team-mates to forget about their top-six aspirations until they end their seven-match winless run. The stand-in skipper, with Joe Shaughnessy suspended, gave a bleak assessment of the club’s fortunes as he urged his team-mates to step up after harsh words both at half-time and full-time of the goalless draw against Ross County in Paisley.
“I’m not going to say too much but at half-time there were from myself to certain people and from the manager to certain people and that’s it, that’s football”, Alnwick said of the blunt words shared in the dressing room.
“Sometimes you dig a few out at half-time just to get that reaction and I didn’t think we reacted in the second half.
“There are a few people who need to have a little bit of a reality check. Players need to start digging in and there’s times in the game where we need to be a bit more professional and get our shape.
“I’m going to forget about saying the top six, I’m sick of saying it, I’m sick of going ‘We’re going to get top six, we’re going to do this’. Forget about that, we need to win a game. It’s not about ‘we need this, we need that’, load of rubbish. We need to go and win a game of football.
“Take away performances because I think performance wise we’ve probably been miles better than what we were last season but points-wise we’re not so at the end of the day it’s football you put points on the board not performances.”
While it was another hugely frustrating night for Alnwick, he did pull of a number of top saves to earn his side at least a point. But he insisted there must be improvement in all areas of the pitch for the Buddies to end their run of seven without a win with only one goal scored in the previous five outings.
Alnwick reflected: “[I had to make] too many saves for a home game against Ross County. We’ll have a look back at it again but it’s not good enough at every single level. I said you want to be making those saves and win the game.
“We said before the game, ‘we win and we go into the top six, you lose the game and you could end up in the bottom two just about’. I think that’s eight draws this season so you can say we haven’t lost a game, but it’s a load of rubbish.
“I mean, no disrespect to Ross County, but they’re in the bottom two and they’ve come and I don’t know how many saves I’ve made – five, six, seven – and they’ve had one that’s deflected over the bar and it’s not good enough.
“It’s all departments, there’s no single player to blame or nothing like that, nothing on the manager to blame, we just need to sit down and start winning games. It’s as simple as that. We keep saying that [we need a reaction]. It’s pointless talking. The last thing I said before we went out was ‘Good start’. After 10 minutes we were absolutely terrible so I think it’s done saying stuff now and it’s time for people to start stepping up.
“There’s times this season where Jamie McGrath stepped up with his goal against Livingston, Conor Ronan with his wonderstrike at Rangers.
“I’m not saying about the strikers need to start scoring goals, it’s defenders when they go up for corners, it’s midfielders it’s wingers.
“We have got good characters in that dressing room, we’ve got a great gaffer and I’ve got no doubt that we will turn things round but instead of talking about it we need to start doing it.”