Mcghee wants a crack at bringing Dens men back
Bottom club Dundee’s interim manager Mark Mcghee revealed that he expects St Johnstone to avoid automatic relegation, even though it’s mathematically possible for the Dark Blues to overtake the team in 11th position and make the play-off final.
He would also like to remain at the helm at Dens Park to oversee a promotion bid next season.
Saints are currently six points and seven goals better off than their Ta y s i d e rivals with two games left to play. And Mcghee, who took charge following the dismissal of James Mcpake in Febr uar y, believes that the Perth club will save themselves.
“We have to think St Johnstone will take at least a point from the two games ( at home to Aberdeen on Wednesday and away to Hibs a week today),” he said.
“We’re at home to Hibs on Tuesday and we have to play for pride, be professional and turn up properly, roll up the sleeves, do the things we have been doing until today.
“We have to show the supporters who bother to come on Tuesday that they care. I believe that they do care, regardless of how the performance w a s. T h e b oy s have shown that in recent weeks and we have to show it again.
“I came here hoping to stay but I’ve no idea really ( what happens next). We’ve not discussed it.
“I’d like to stay but we’ll see.”
Mcghee also refused to blame yesterday’s defeat on Charlie Adam’s bizarre assist for St Mirren’s opening goal.
“We had the whole match to get it back so it could have been any kind of goal,” he said. “We had 86 minutes left to turn it round. The disappointing thing was we never looked like getting back – that was the surprise and disappointment.
“C h a r l i e held his hand up at the time and again when he came off. It was an aberration: I don’t know what he was thinking. I thought he was just going to play it out to the far side. He said he tried to play it to the ’ keeper and he’s just got it wrong.
“We had some chances early in the second haif and if we’d taken one of them it changes things but we can’t say we deserved anything. Last week I raved about the first half and thought we’d carry it into today. We put forward players in to get a goal and had just one shot.
“Where did that go wrong? We need to look at that – was it the shape, the combination of players we put out, individual players? Is it us, is it them, is it a bit of both? We need to understand why it was like this. As good as last week was, this was hugely disappointing.”