The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
SWEEPER ROLE FOR ST JOHNSTONE DEFENDER
St Johnstone defender Steven Anderson helps clear the all-weather pitch at a snowy McDiarmid Park to enable the team to train ahead of tonight’s match against Celtic in Glasgow.
ST JOHNSTONE stopper Steven Anderson has revealed Frazer Wright thankfully saw the funny side after his stray boot broke his team-mate’s nose at the weekend.
Wright has been ruled out of tonight’s trip to play league leaders Celtic after Anderson caught him fully on the face during the 0-0 draw with Kilmarnock, and means Tam Scobbie is likely to slot into defence alongside Anderson this evening.
Anderson has understandably been the target of McDiarmid Park’s resident wind-up merchants since the bizarre incident but the centre-half hopes all will be forgotten in the coming days.
“I didn’t realise Frazer was there so I tried to hook the ball out instead of going for a corner and I caught him in the face,” he said.
“I knew straight away that he was hurt but the ref told us to play on.
“He was knocked out, I caught him flush right on the face and broke his nose.
“But it’s Frazer we’re talking about here, he’ll probably look better because of it.
“He’s fine about it, he was laughing when we got back into the changing room later on. That’s what he does, he’s a hardy guy and he finds things like that funny.
“He’s had that many broken noses, sore heads, cut eyes and stuff it’s nothing new to him.
“I sent him a text on Saturday night asking how his nose was and he just replied: ‘It’s big’.
“As a defender these things happen, I’ve been clattered by loads of keepers over the years.
“It comes with the job, you just get on with it and Fraz knows the score.
“When it’s something stupid like that, especially on my side, you’ve got to laugh about it. The lads have been giving me stick about it but I get it every day so it’s nothing new.
“Tam Scobbie is happy, though, because he’ll come back into the team now.”
Striking the right balance between defending and having a go at Celtic Park is always difficult but Anderson is focusing on keeping things tight early on.
That is particularly pertinent after Saints found themselves right up against it when they hosted the champions on February 14 and conceded within a minute.
“We have to start better than we did in the home game a few weeks ago,” Anderson said. “The goal we gave them that day wasn’t good from our point of view and it changes the whole game.
“So we’ll have to go there, keep it tight and try to stick to the way we want to play.
“We won’t go there just to defend but the last thing you want to be doing is chasing the game from the first couple of minutes.
“If you’re doing that then it can be a long night.
“In the recent game we played really well in the second half because we had nothing to lose, we were a goal down anyway.
“But we’ll take confidence from that and if we can match up defending well with attacking we’ll give ourselves a chance.
“You are not expected to get anything from these games so there’s nothing to lose.
“We’ve won there in the past, it’s a while ago now right enough, but we have players here who have won at Celtic Park.
“So we’ll just go there, try to play our game and hopefully frustrate them.
“Celtic won’t take their foot off the gas, they’ll want to win the league as soon as they can.
“With the run they’re on they’ll be thinking they can win every match between now and the end of the season.
“They’re going for a treble and, to be honest, nowadays a double for Celtic is probably the very minimum.”
Tonight’s match is effectively Saints’ game in hand on Dundee in the race for a top six spot, and the Perth men will view anything from the fixture at Parkhead as a bonus.
“We’re still in with a shout of the top six and that’s our focus now,” Anderson said.