Mannus is focused on league safety
Safety first was the message from Alan Mannus as St Johnstone suffered another Premiership disappointment onWednesday.
The Perth club were comfortably defeated 2-0 by Kilmarnock at Rugby Park and remain perilously close to the bottom teams in the division.
Mannus says Saints must put their full concentration towards manoeuvring away from the relegation zone ahead of this weekend’s Tayside derby with Dundee.
“At the beginning of every season, we always say if we can avoid relegation then that is the main thing,”Mannus said.
“If we do that, then we look to the top six.
“But in the last few weeks it’s been a case of not getting ourselves into the relegation area.We’re not that far away from it.
“We can’t look at the top six
Lee Erwin doubles the Kilmarnock advantage Alan Mannus at all because we need to be completely on getting as many points in the next few games to stay away from teams below us.
“We’ve got expectation because of what we have done with top six finishes and Europe. It has been a brilliant time for the club.
“But how long can that be maintained? We are going to keep trying our best to maintain it.
“At some point, with the size of the club we are, it gets harder and harder. We’ve managed to do it up until now.
“At the minute our focus is completely on avoiding the relegation area. Over the course of the season we know we haven’t been good enough.
“But we have a chance to pick up points and distance ourselves from teams below us. We want to end up in a better and safer position.”
Mannus knows the importance of Saturday’s trip to Dundee, adding:“If we can beat Dundee then we distance ourselves and get the points in doing so.
“They will be looking to do the same thing.
“We need to be on our game and not giving away cheap goals, which we have done too much this season.”
The McDiarmid stopper conceded twice during the week but could do little to prevent either, the first a penalty scored by Kris Boyd.
The Northern Irish internationalist said:“They get the penalty and score to put us in a difficult position. Then the sending off makes a hard game even harder.
“We played around 60 minutes with 10 men and worked hard. They had loads of possession as you would expect but didn’t have brilliant chances.
“I would have to see the penalty again because of the way he has gone in. I guess the sending off is correct if it’s last man and Jason catches the player.
“But it comes from us losing the ball in the midfield. You can trace every goal back somewhere.
“It’s small, basic mistakes that we are making. We are getting punished for them in every game now.
“Earlier in the season, maybe we weren’t and were actually punishing teams ourselves for the same kind of thing. It’s just the way football works sometimes.”