Saints eye longer run in Europe

Craig believes Perth club are ready to make their mark

St Johnstone’s motivation doesn’t begin and end with qualifying for Europe, according to midfielder Liam Craig.

The Perth men want to make their mark if they get there.

In the four Europa League qualifying campaigns in a row between 2012 and 2015, Saints never managed to win more than one tie.

Craig was part of the first one, when they were unable to overturn a two-goal deficit from the away leg against Turkish side Eskisehirspor.

There were some stand-out results that followed but the former Falkirk and Hibs man believes the current team is capable of going deeper into the competition if they finish above Hearts and Partick Thistle when the post-split Premiership fixtures are completed.

“The disappointing thing is we’ve never really got that far in the Europa League,” Craig said.

“We were disappointed to go out to Eskisehirspor the year I played, and the club would have been disappointed at other times, like after they beat Rosenborg, for example.”

SAINTS AIM TO MAKE MARK: Continued from page 56 “Aberdeen got to the group stages a few years ago and they’re getting to the play-off stages.

“And look at the Irish teams. I played with Stephen O’Donnell who was in the Shamrock Rovers team that did well. And he was captain of Dundalk last year.

“The manager and the players have got experience of dealing with these European occasions.

“We’d be in a much better position to handle them if we do get there.”

Craig added: “Aberdeen beating Hibs means the manager can set up a pre-season programme for that scenario, if we get there.

“And, despite the talk you hear of European football being a hindrance, the club has shown it can cope with coming back early in the summer.

“It’s just a case of making sure we get the job done now and finish fourth. It’s in our hands but there’s a lot of work to do.

“You never know, if we go on a run, we haven’t given up hope of catching Rangers. But that’s obviously in their hands to lose.”

The points total needed to get Saints across the line is guesswork but Craig is pretty sure they can’t afford a repeat of the run-in that led to his one European campaign.

“We ended up losing every game after the split but there were more places in those days and Rangers were penalised that season,” he recalled.

“If we lose every game this time I don’t think we’ll get into Europe!

“We’ve put ourselves in a great position to do it. Four points clear going into the split is something we would definitely have taken. We’d have taken it at the start of 2017 as well after getting beaten 3-0 at Dens Park.

“At that time people were thinking Dundee had maybe turned a corner and we’ve maybe gone the other way.

“For this club to be competing for Europe for the sixth year in a row is a great achievement.

“There’s a lot of hard work to get fourth but it’s great to know that if we do get there, it will mean European football.

“We’ve got two tough away games but it will be good to finish with three home matches.”

Saints have another clash with Aberdeen to look forward to at the weekend and they will be looking to make a faster start at Pittodrie than they did at McDiarmid Park.

“We were disappointed with the first half-hour to 40 minutes last time,” Craig said. “But in the second half we were more like ourselves and caused them problems. We’ll be looking to do that again on Saturday.

“Obviously they’re going well and now have another cup final to look forward to. It will be difficult but we know that it’s a game we can win.

“No disrespect to Inverness or Ross County but we could have been going to play them in a relegation battle. You’d much rather be going to Pittodrie and Parkhead.

“We just hope we can have the same performance levels as we produced last year at this stage of the season when we won four and drew one.”