WE FACE A FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL
Tait: Relegation is a real prospect in tight table
Saints defender Richard Tait insists he and his teammates need to take a long look in the mirror.
That’s because he feels the struggling Buddies are staring down the barrel of a relegation scrap.
St Mirren went into Saturday’s clash with Motherwell hoping to fire themselves into the top half of the Premiership table.
Instead, they ended up shooting themselves in the foot, with a terrible defensive display, resulting in a 4-2 defeat to a side who hadn’t won a league game in 2022 before the Paisley side travelled to Fir Park.
Tait, who scored an own goal in the second half, believes it’s time to start focusing on simply staying in the top flight this season.
He told Express Sport: “We have to look in the mirror because it’s certainly not good enough.
“You want to focus on getting in the top six, and it’s crazy how tight it still is. We still could get there.
“But we just need to focus on getting a result now. We need to get some sort of points on the board.
“It’s starting to look like we are in a relegation fight. Mathematically, we’ve still got an opportunity to get into the top six, but it’s a massive ask to go and get all three points against Rangers.
“We’ve still got a chance, but, realistically, we need to get points on the board now to keep away from St Johnstone.
“We’re going to have to get better because that definitely wasn’t good enough.”
The Buddies started 2022 brilliantly, but have struggled to adapt to new boss Stephen Robinson’s style since the damaging departure of former manager Jim Goodwin.
Tait feels St Mirren have to get back to being a tough nut to crack in order to get this Premiership campaign back on track.
He said: “We got what we deserved in terms of how we defended.
“We defended very poorly and if you play like that you’re going to give goals away.
“An own goal isn’t what you want. “We want to be hard to beat and we haven’t been recently.
“We were a little bit all over the place. “We gave four goals away that they didn’t really have to do anything for. They just booted it long and it landed for them.
“We had chances that could have changed the game if we’d put them in the back of the net.
“But the lads at the back have to keep it tight, so that’s on us.”