CAUSE FOR PRIDE AND OPTIMISM

The dream of three cup finals in a row for Saints is over – but after the defeat to Celtic there’s cause for pride and optimism.

Three semi-finals, two finals and four European ties – the biggest nine matches a St Johnstone boss or players can expect to be faced with. Nine matches in which Callum Davidson has got his team selections and tactics pretty much spot-on and in which the men he has sent out on to the pitch have delivered for him.

All you can reasonably ask on these high-pressure occasions is that footballers rise to them rather than wilt under the spotlight.

To have the last of those nine encounters on a knife-edge going into the final 20 minutes, with their goalkeeper having barely been troubled, was a collective triumph. The problem is, in contests like this against higher quality opposition than Hibs, Livingston and St Mirren, the margin for error is so small.

Zander Clark made a halfmistake, referee Nick Walsh made a full one and that was the game.

Approaching the end of a calendar year like no other, there should be no “what ifs” swirling around the Saints dressing room. They have turned up every time and no more can be demanded.

Davidson would have hoped to engineer more set-piece opportunities. There wasn’t a single Saints corner. And he would have hoped to engineer some more crossing opportunities in open play. They were scarce as well.

But one tactic the Perth side did carry out to the letter was shooting when the opportunity presented itself. Craig Bryson and Chris Kane both took the right option in the first half from 25 yards, the former with a shot Joe Hart struggled to keep hold of and the latter an angled drive that scraped the post.

Ironically, the defining decision in an attacking sense proved to be a moment when a pass was a better bet. Had Ali Crawford looked right a minute or so before Celtic’s winning goal he’d have seen Michael O’halloran in space and a two v one opening up.

Trying to lob Hart from 40-odd yards was a one in 10 chance. Picking out his team-mate would have been a one in two. Much like Glenn Middleton being through on goal in Austria at 1-0 up, this was a pivotal sliding-doors moment.