Saints striker would have preferred the points

Saints: Perth striker Steven MacLean believes they have to tighten up across the pitch to get their first league win

Steven MacLean doesn’t have any time for St Johnstone’s hard luck stories.

The experienced striker took no consolation from his first goal in almost a full calendar year against Dundee at the weekend, nor the fact that many believed a draw would have been a fair Dens Park result.

Cold hard points are all that concern the Perth club’s Scottish Cup hero.

“I was happy to score but, at the end of the day, I’d rather have had three points,” MacLean pointed out.

“We can’t keep going the way we’re going.

“People are saying we’re not getting what we deserve, but I think we are.

“If you keep making mistakes you deserve to lose the game. Yes, there have been positives to take out of each game. But we’d be happy with a 1-0 and a bad performance just now.”

He added: “There’s plenty of experience in our dressing room, so we know how to come out of this at the other end.

“You’ve got to do it on the pitch and get the points on the board.

“People will look at our defence. But we have to defend as a team. That’s not just the back four – it’s the four in midfield and the strikers.

“At times we’ve looked too open as a team and we have to rectify it. It’s not the back four’s fault. It’s all over.”

Prior to last Saturday’s Tayside derby the last time MacLean had scored for Saints was the August 2014 against Aberdeen.

He spent several months out injured following that strike, but the goals dried up after his return.

As the side’s key link between midfield and attack, MacLean’s worth to manager Tommy Wright has never been measured in goals. But MacLean is greedy and wants both.

“I don’t judge my performances on goals but it’s nice to have got one,” he explained. If I’m not scoring, hopefully I’m bringing other things to the team.

“I have said to myself I do need to score more goals. If I don’t then I might not play in the team. If you look at my performance in the Scottish Cup final, for example, I got all the plaudits for scoring a goal.

“But I always said that I played better in the semi-final than the final. Football’s like that.

“Ando has a saying ‘ dinnae get too high because there’s always something to knock you down’ and it’s true. You never know what’s round the corner.

“I know that if I’m scoring goals every week I’ll probably be in the team, but I need to do other things well as well.”

Wright is blessed with more options up front than at any point during MacLean’s McDiarmid Park career.

He said: “I’ve been at clubs with six or seven strikers but in my time here this is probably the most competition I’ve had.

“It’s all good. The manager has the opportunity to freshen things up if anybody isn’t performing. You know you could be out of the team.”

MacLean was frustrated that he didn’t have an assist to his name as well as a goal at Dens, after referee Kevin Clancy penalised him for a foul in the build-up to a Liam Craig finish at the start of the second half.

“I’m not going to say too much. But I still can’t see why it was chalked off,” he said.

“The whistle went just as Ginge was about to put it into the net. It was as if he waited to see if I played a bad pass and he might have let it go. I certainly didn’t think it was a foul.”

At times we’ve looked too open as a team and we have to rectify it. It’s not the back four’s fault. It’s all over. STEVEN MACLEAN

Picture: SNS. Steven MacLean celebrates his first goal in nearly a year.