Killie make Saints suffer, but Wright won’t sympathise
ST JOHNSTONE manager Tommy Wright wasted no sympathy on his players after they had lost to an untidy second-half goal scored by Kilmarnock substitute Scott Boyd.
‘We had loads of chances, particularly in the first half and didn’t take them. Their keeper also made a couple of great saves,’ said Wright. ‘But in the second half, we played into their hands in terms of the tempo of the game.
‘We upped the tempo again after we went behind and nearly got back into the game. But overall, with the amount of possession we had, we have to be disappointed that we lost.
‘Fair play to them how they defended. The only corner they got they scored from it and I don’t think Zander (Clark) had a save to make, so we should have won.
‘But that’s football. We’ve done the same to others plenty of times and we’ll take it on the chin and bounce back.’
The home side should have had a first-half penalty when Boyd barged Saints skipper Steven Anderson off the ball.
How referee Steven McLean failed to point to the spot, given he was just yards from the incident, is beyond reasonable logic.
Wright agreed, but he refused to bemoan the injustice and pointed instead to his team’s inability to make the most of several chances.
He said: ‘We have to look at ourselves and realise that we had to do better in the second half and go on and dominate the game.
‘The fact that we didn’t do that means we have only ourselves to blame for the result.’
St Johnstone went desperately close to taking the lead after 19 minutes and were prevented from doing so by a superb piece of goalkeeping.
Liam Craig’s powerful header from Richard Foster’s cross from the right looked destined to squeeze in at the far post only for Jamie MacDonald to throw himself spectacularly to his right and produce a superb one-handed save.
But the Killie keeper would not have been able to reach Blair Alston’s low angled drive across the face of goal a minute or so later had the ball been a foot closer to the goal-line.
Saints’ striker Steven MacLean had the ball in the net but was adjudged to have been offside and the same player also threatened close to half-time when he just missed the target after Murray Davidson and Alston had combined to set up the chance.
Kilmarnock’s solitary meaningful response was delivered by Jordan Jones, who conjured up a shooting chance out of very little and executed a powerful finish that flashed past the junction of the crossbar and far post.
The second half was no more appealing than the first had been in terms of the quality of the play, but all that mattered to Kilmarnock was that Boyd managed to bundle the ball over the line from inside the six-yard area in the 76th minute after the defence had failed to deal with Jones’ corner kick.
The visitors survived a late scare when they were forced to scramble the ball clear from Graham Cummins’ attempt at an equaliser.
So Kilmarnock, who recovered from the loss of Jonathan Burn after 17 minutes with a broken nose, kept their first clean sheet of the season to move from 11th to ninth in the Premiership while Saints slipped a place to fifth.
Kilmarnock’s success followed some frank soul searching in the wake of heavy defeats by Celtic and Aberdeen.
Manager Lee Clark revealed: ‘We had a debriefing after the Aberdeen game about where we felt we had gone wrong in the previous two matches.
‘At the end of it, while we were all still disappointed with what our output had been, there was also a sense of realisation about who we had been up against.
‘Aberdeen and Celtic are two outstanding sides poles apart from us in various aspects.
‘But we still felt that we could have done better in these games and we’ve come here and shown that against an extremely good side.
‘We’ve also achieved our first clean sheet and I’ve told the players that’s what it’s all about when you are prepared to put your body on the line to get results.’
Clark also praised man-of-thematch MacDonald for denying the opposition.
He added: ‘Jamie is outstanding in every game and too often has to make too many saves. But he’s a real top keeper and I’m delighted for the club that we have him.’