The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
If Saints get nasty then the results will be nice, says Craig
McDiarmid Park men must return to being the team no one wants to play
It will take the return of a nasty St Johnstone today to produce the nicest of results for their supporters, according to Liam Craig.
Saints have lost their last four matches at Dens Park – and have been beaten twice already by Dundee in this campaign.
And, after all too many un St Johnstone type performances in 2017-18, Craig wants to see the old one again in today’s Tayside derby.
“We have to get back to being that nasty, horrible team that nobody likes to play against,” the midfielder said.
“I don’t feel we have been as hard to beat as we have been in the past and that’s massively disappointing.
“Can I put my finger on why that has slipped? I can’t and that’s one of the most frustrating things.
“Obviously the squad has changed a bit in the last year or two and right now we have a load of experienced players out injured.
“This season we have introduced a lot of younger players so it’s up to the senior ones to show them the other side of the game.
“They are all good footballers but sometimes you need to dig in and fight, that’s what this club has been successful at.
“But that’s down to the senior boys dragging them along with us. We have to lead by example on that.
“We have to battle to get that platform to go and play. In the past we have had games where we’ve gone down to 10 men but we’ve managed to battle our way through it.
“This squad has always had that, the willingness to dig in and grind it out, and we need to get it back.”
Craig has been at Saints long enough to know the importance of this fixture – even without the significance of this afternoon’s contest in terms of the two clubs’ Premiership standings.
“We feel things should have gone differently for us against Dundee this season,” he said.
“At Dens Park the first time we had a good goal chalked off and then in the second game we were reduced to 10 men.
“But that’s in the past now. There is nothing we can do about it and all we can influence is this weekend.
“Our record at Dens Park hasn’t been great in the last few years and that’s something we have to improve on.
“We always take a good crowd down there but we haven’t given them much to cheer about.
“It hasn’t always been like this because when I first came here we had a good record there, but in the last couple of seasons we have struggled.”
If their record at Dens is a statistic that doesn’t fill the Saints’ players with pride, so, too, is the one that shows they are the lowest scorers in the league with a mere 25.
“We need to start scoring more goals,” Craig admitted. “That’s a massive thing for us because we haven’t hit the net nearly enough.
“In the past we have had players like Stevie May, Fran Sandaza, Mikey O’Halloran and Danny Swanson who got to 15 or 20 goals in a season.
“But in the years we didn’t have someone like that, we were able to spread the goals around.
“There was a season where almost everyone scored and there were a few boys sitting on six or eight goals.
“That makes a massive difference and I have to look at myself in that because I haven’t scored from open play this year.
“My game has been built on getting goals, whether it’s six or eight a season, but I haven’t done it this year.
“So it’s not just down to the strikers, it’s a collective thing and we need to all chip in with goals.
“We have only scored two goals from set pieces this season, which is incredible considering how well we used to do with them, so we need to turn it around.”
Craig added: “The top six is probably going to be too much of an ask for us to get in there.
“People are talking about the slide we are on but we have proved people wrong for years at this club.
“If we can go to Dens and get a result this weekend then it will give us a good boost going into the next few weeks.”