Fast start could be crucial for Saints’ hopes of play-off glory

St Johnstone’s season is about to reach a dramatic conclusion.

The 2021 double winners will either be consigned to the Championship by Inverness Caledonian Thistle or they’ll cap a second half of the season improvement by grasping their play-off lifeline.

Courier Sport’s Eric Nicolson looks at four key categories that will determine which it is to be.

● Energy – There’s a good reason that no club has ever gone the full distance in the Premiership play-offs and emerged as the last team standing.

At the end of a long season, six games in 19 days is a gruelling schedule.

For Inverness you can add into the mix that the fourth of those was dragged out to more than 120 minutes, a man and then two men light.

Yes, they’ve had a week to soothe tired limbs but there can be little doubt that the freshness disparity between Caley Thistle and St Johnstone is a significant one.

By securing the play-off place a week past Wednesday night, key Perth players were rested at Easter Road last Sunday for their final league game.

It should also be noted that Inverness were slow starters in the quarter-final and semi-final first legs.

Had Partick Thistle taken their chances in the first of the four halves, they may well have won.

The same applied to Arbroath. This isn’t a match that Saints should be looking to ease their way into with a ‘we’ll do the job at home’ mindset.

They need to go for the jugular and make their opponents – who will have a soon to be 38-year-old at the heart of their defence – feel as if there is a physical chasm that can’t be bridged.

● Availability – With two players suspended for the first leg (Danny Devine and Wallace Duffy) and another one likely to be ruled out of both through injury (Shane Sutherland), Billy Dodds’ options are more limited than he would care for.

By contrast, Callum Davidson is playing with a much stronger hand.

He’s got a choice to make in midfield and another up front but if it turns out that the original 11 isn’t working, there are options for a selection plan B on the night or back in Perth for the second leg.

Apart from the long-term injured crew, Davidson has arrived at the play-off start line with pretty much all of his key men good to go.

● Football styles – If Dodds doesn’t throw a formation curve-ball in Davidson’s direction, this will be a tactical match-up that should suit Saints.

The system that has served Caley Thistle well of late – and has got them to this stage – is a 4-2-3-1.

Significantly, it’s the same as Aberdeen’s at McDiarmid Park last week.

On that occasion Saints produced their best football since February’s 2-1 victory against Hearts.

The ‘styles make fights’ aspect of this play-off may even edge Davidson towards picking the same men who produced such a controlled performance in beating the Dons.

● Form and faith – These are the big imponderables.

Like Kilmarnock last season, Saints were in better fettle in the second half of the season than the first, with positive recent results to hang their hat on.

But the defeat to St Mirren – and the nature of it – speaks to a potential fragility that can’t be dismissed.

There is no way of being sure about the size of the gap between the standard of the Premiership’s 11thplaced side and the Championship’s third until after they’ve played.

Inverness have only lost once in their last 12 fixtures, nine of them being victories. That in itself is an in-built advantage.

So too is the impact of coming through four games of play-off football and feeling like there’s a bit of destiny aiding your cause when you’ve won a penalty shoot-out after going down to nine men.

A team that has been involved in a relegation battle simply can’t come close in terms of momentum and the stars supposedly aligning.

But they do have it in their power to quickly make that results-based and fate-based confidence feel hollow.

The importance of doing so can’t be overstated.

It’s another reason that Saints have to be bold and aggressive.

Strip Caley Thistle of the ‘it’s meant to be’ cloak that they picked up at Gayfield and make sure they never get the chance to try it on for size again.

Inverness defender Kirk Broadfoot, who will soon be 38, celebrates with team-mates after scoring the winning penalty in the shoot-out against Arbroath at Gayfield.