On the Wright foot
After victory over Killie Saints boss wants more respect for his team
Tommy Wright is getting bored of the same postmatch comments about his team.
The McDiarmid Park boss (far right) believes his squad of Perth players deserve more credit for the quality they possess, rather than being labelled streetwise or physical.
Saints opened up their Scottish Premiership account on Saturday afternoon with a 2-1 victory away at Kilmarnock.
Wright said: “It didn’t take long for the old stuff about being streetwise and all that to start again this season.
“I thought we played very well on Saturday, we nullified Kilmarnock for long spells and scored two excellent goals.
“But what was the focus on, us being streetwise, giving away fouls and grinding out wins.
“I think we’re better than that, especially when you score two wonderful goals like we did.
“The emphasis was on how Michael O’Halloran should have been booted to stop him scoring – they couldn’t catch him to kick him!
“We have heard it all before, all the stuff about how we’re a big, strong team.
“I reckon we’re probably the smallest team in the league height-wise.
“We don’t have many six-foottwo giants in our team.
“I just find it disappointing that every time we win a game people put it down to us being streetwise.
“You have to have a bit of quality to win football matches at this level but with us that gets overlooked.
“People categorise us as physical, long ball and all that stuff but it’s not true.
“We are worth more than what people say about us.
“I think I have every right to stand up for my team and how they play because if people say something often enough it sticks.
“We had a three in behind Graham Cummins of Stefan Scougall, David Wotherspoon and Blair Alston – all excellent footballers.
“People forget the quality we have and the good players we have.
“It’s a sad incitement for the rest of the league if we’ve managed to finish where we have over the last few years just from being streetwise.”
The action is coming thick and fast for Saints with Partick Thistle visiting McDiarmid Park in the last 16 of the Betfred Cup on
Tuesday evening.
Paul Paton is suspended for the Perth side but striker Steven MacLean comes back into the picture.
Wright said: “We have got off to a good start to the season and now we’ll focus on Partick in the cup this week.
“Partick are a good side with good players. We know it is going to be difficult.
“Both teams will want to progress, nobody wants to go out of the cup.
“Our aim will be to put on a performance which can get us through to the next round.
“In this competition, where we enter, we only need to win three games to get to the final. “That is what we want to do. “It’s the only way for clubs like St Johnstone to try and win something, through the cup competitions.”
Speaking on any possible ins and outs, Wright added: “Somebody will go out and hopefully on the back of that it will free up for something to happen later in the window.
“But there is nothing coming in wise going to happen in the next 24 to 48 hours.”