Wright: Our defending was woeful

ST JOHNSTONE manager Tommy Wright insisted the last thing on his mind was passing up on an opportunity to savour the rare sight of the Perth side enjoying second place status in the Premiership.

After losing all three points to a late hammer blow delivered by Partick Thistle captain Abdul Osman, the Ulsterman was more concerned with terrible defending within the McDiarmid Park ranks rather than sliding to fifth spot.

‘That doesn’t bother me. We’re on 18 points, which is a good start,’ said Wright (below).

‘Going into second would have meant nothing to us. I was more concerned with having 21 points rather than 18.

‘But we know this league is tight. There are ways of losing games and we shouldn’t have lost it the way we did.’

Experienced midfielder Liam Craig was guilty of failing to mop up the danger in the build-up to substitute David Amoo’s cross for the winner.

Wright said: ‘If you defend like we did for both goals, you concede goals like that.

‘Both teams probably had an equal number of shots, although we didn’t work their keeper hard enough.

‘You get into injury time and you should see the game out — but we don’t because we make bad mistakes.

‘We get punished for it and rightly so. We were the architects of our own downfall. Liam shouldn’t be there, I don’t know why he’s there. You see the game out and get a point.’

Delighted Thistle manager Alan Archibald maintained his players got the reward for chasing a win rather than settling for a draw.

‘It has been a good week,’ he declared. ‘After dropping points against Ross County at home, it looked tough but we’ve taken seven points from three fixtures. We go into another tough run of games but we’ve given ourselves a platform now to go and perform.’