Wright has unfinished business at Saints
AMANAGER whose teams consistently punch above their weight, Tommy Wright is viewed by many as the ideal candidate to fill the vacant Rangers hotseat.
The St Johnstone boss has a chance to further burnish his credentials as a builder of sides that can bridge the gap on bigger, wealthier rivals when his side head to Ibrox tomorrow.
In three encounters with Mark Warburton, the Northern Irishman’s Saints knocked Rangers out of the League Cup at Ibrox last season, then secured home and away draws in the Premiership during this campaign.
Despite being flattered to be linked to the Ibrox post in the wake of Warburton’s acrimonious departure, however, Wright won’t allow the issue to distract his focus from prepping his team to be a thorn in Rangers’ side once more.
‘It’s all speculation,’ shrugged the Saints boss. ‘I have said before that it shows how good a job we must be doing if I am being linked with a club the size of Rangers. ‘But my focus and commitment is totally to St Johnstone. I signed Brian Easton on a new deal on Friday and I am meeting a player this week to try to get him on a pre-contract.
‘So I am planning for St Johnstone and the future. I still have a lot of unfinished business here.
‘I am trying to improve the squad and I am planning for next season, working closely with the chairman.
‘The speculation doesn’t come into my thinking or that of my players. They would never use that as an excuse for why we didn’t play well. We are all focused on doing the job.
‘You could say Rangers players might look a bit distracted, but a professional player doesn’t go into games thinking about the managerial situation.’
Since drawing at McDiarmid Park back in December, Rangers have won just once in six matches in the league. But Wright (below) believes the Ibrox side’s lack of a cutting edge is undoing their good work in other areas.
‘They are not on a good run, but I saw them at Inverness on Friday and they could have been three up in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘They didn’t take their chances and that is maybe why they are sitting third and not in second place.
‘I am hoping they don’t find their scoring boots on Wednesday night. Rangers will get chances against us and we have to hope they don’t click and start finding the net.
‘We have to be wary of them because they are good in possession of the ball. But so far this season, they have not transferred creating chances into scoring goals. ‘Maybe at home, the crowd can get a bit impatient if they don’t get the first goal and that can have an effect on players. But the supporters were behind Rangers at Inverness.’ St Johnstone head to Ibrox after a 2-0 defeat at home by Kilmarnock. Wright described the first 45 minutes as the worst of his six years at the club. After a rare clear-the-air meeting, he expects a reaction from his side. ‘If you’re going to be bad, you might as well go the full hog and be terrible,’ he said. ‘That is certainly what we were in the first 45 minutes. But it was one horrible day and I have had something like 170 games as a manager. ‘We had the players in on Sunday. That’s not something I’ve done during my time here. We had a chat, but it wasn’t about banging heads. It was positive. ‘If we had been better at home, quite clearly we would have been putting even more pressure on Hearts and Rangers. ‘My players are hurting. They can’t wait for Wednesday.’