Perth men’s sins laid bare in battle of Saints
Play-off peril now beckons for Davidson’s side
ANOTHER final surely beckons for St Johnstone. Unlike last season, though, there will be no glory to gain. Just a two-legged slog to prove they have what it takes to stay in the Premiership.
And do they? Right now, that’s a very valid question. Admitting his side were ‘miles off it’ on Saturday, Callum Davidson lamented the lack of fight in a game that felt like the last realistic chance to escape upwards and avoid the play-offs.
A miserable performance didn’t muster a single shot on target. At home and with so much at stake, it was an afternoon to set alarm bells clanging.
St Mirren had been feeling the heat after losing five on the bounce, yet were better in every department that mattered. Stephen Robinson and his players now stand on the brink of safety.
That’s still a distant prospect for St Johnstone. Eight points behind St Mirren and Aberdeen and five above bottom club Dundee with three games to play, they are all but wedged in 11th place. Evidence for a shift higher or lower is pretty thin on the ground.
What a fall from grace this whole campaign has been. A relegation play-off final against Arbroath, Inverness or Partick Thistle now looms large on the Perth horizon. None of those Championship clubs would discount their chances of an upset.
Davidson remains adamant his squad does have the mettle to get out of trouble in the end. But there is an urgent need for them to actually deliver — and show they are still prepared to go to the well for a manager who engineered an incredible League Cup and Scottish Cup double just 12 months ago. The pedestrian, lifeless display witnessed on Saturday was not a positive answer. After St Mirren striker Alex Greive saw a fine early chance well repelled by Zander Clark, the home fans waited for an effective response. None arrived. Callum Hendry spun to drag a right-foot shot just off target before the break, but that was as good as it got.
Greg Kiltie’s goal gave the Paisley men a deserved 53rd-minute lead in a second half they astutely managed. All the best performers wore their red away kit. Alex Gogic dominated the midfield scrap, dovetailing with the more technical talents of Connor Ronan. Up front, Curtis Main made a muscular nuisance of himself — in stark contrast to Nadir Ciftci’s statue-like contribution to the hosts’ cause.
Davidson’s substitutions didn’t shift the needle. Frustration in the McDiarmid Park stands rose sharply before an inevitable chorus of boos at the final whistle.
Wing-back Tom Sang, replaced before the hour mark, agreed St Johnstone were short on the necessary aggression — but he remains confident they will not be found wanting when the crunch arrives. On loan from Cardiff City, the 22-year-old stresses he feels no less of a burden to ensure the club stays up.
‘We’ll keep fighting for every point to stay up but there’s definitely enough fight in this group to stay up through the play-offs if that’s what it takes,’ said Sang.
‘If it is a play-off, that’s what we’ll have to go and do. On a personal note, I want to leave this club with it still in the Premiership. I want a really good end to things.
‘I’m part of the team. It’s not a case of me just coming here to develop my career on loan. I want to help us do it for the lads and the staff. There’s definitely the quality in our changing room to make sure we do.’
Before Saturday, there was a sense of St Johnstone perhaps being the team with some momentum near the bottom of the table. Two wins, two draws and a thumping from Celtic sat on their five-game form card.
But they froze when presented with a chance to drag St Mirren deep into bother. It carried echoes of February’s 3-1 loss in Dingwall that saw Ross County disappear into the distance.
‘It was an opportunity lost,’ said Sang. ‘Before the game we all knew how big this one was.
‘We weren’t on the front foot as much as we should have been and we didn’t win enough second balls.
We’ve been doing that much better in previous games. We didn’t have many chances but we need to be better in the box as well.
‘That fight for second balls is something we’ll need to get back, especially in our next game at Livingston, who are a very aggressive team. We all know we needed to be better than we were. The fact we could have pulled one, or maybe two, teams back to reaching distance adds to the disappointment. But we need to put it behind us quickly.
‘We’ll just have to focus on our own performances in these last three games and try and get nine points from them.’ ST JOHNSTONE (3-5-2): Clark 6; Rooney 6, Gordon 5, McCart 5; Sang 4 (MacPherson 59), Davidson 5 (May 75), Hallberg 5, Crawford 4 (Middleton 59), Booth 5; Hendry 5, Ciftci 3 (Bair 75). Subs not used: Parish, Mahon, Cleary, Butterfield, Brown. Booked: Gordon. ST MIRREN (3-4-1-2): Alnwick 6; Fraser 6, Shaughnessy 6, McCarthy 6; Tait 6, Gogic 7, Ronan 7, Tanser 6; Kiltie 7 (Flynn 81); Main 7, Grieve 6 (Brophy 90). Subs not used: Power, Brophy, Henderson, Erhahon, Lyness, Smith. Booked: Fraser, Tait. Man of the match: Alex Gogic. Referee: Andrew Dallas. Attendance: 4,253.