David Wotherspoon has had enough of family talk about his lack of goals in a St Johnstone shirt.
And he wants to put an end to it before baby Mia starts getting in on the act.
The former Hibs man didn’t have a problem finding the back of the net in his time at Easter Road, chipping in with a respectable seven while at Easter Road.
There has been just the one competitive strike in 50 appearances for his hometown club, however. And that was scored back in August of last season.
The 24-year-old is set to start his first game in a number of weeks against St Mirren this afternoon, and he wants to mark the occasion by breaking his goal drought.
“Everyone is mentioning it to me all the time,” he admitted.
“All I keep getting is ‘any chance of you scoring a goal?’
“I’m getting it from my brother, my missus, the rest of the family. I’m half expecting my daughter to be next, and she’s only 16 months old!
“Her first words could be ‘any chance of you scoring?’
“I definitely want to score goals.
“Hopefully I’ll get a run of games where I can get more shots off.
“Getting in higher positions will help that, and I felt I was unlucky not to get one against Ross County last weekend.
“The manager and the players are telling me to keep shooting. It’s frustrating. I want to grab a goal every now and again. I’m happy setting them up, but I want to score a few as well.”
When Wotherspoon was being struck down by illness (twice) and then injury, just getting back on a football pitch was his primary aim.
He explained: “I had tonsillitis, and then a sickness bug straight after it. Then after I came back from my illnesses, the international break was coming up.
“I trained for a couple of days and I got the hamstring injury on the second of them.
“It was a bit of a nightmare for three weeks. Hopefully that’s me got everything out of the way in one go.
“The Dundee match was a good one for me after coming back. It was great to get 45 and I felt it went well.
“Then to get on in the second half of the cup game last week was good as well.
“I’m fully fit now and I’m wanting to play.”
Wotherspoon is keen to play his part in the Saints revival that is gathering momentum.
“The team have had a good run of results and it would be great to get back in,” he pointed out.
“It hasn’t gone to plan for me so far this season.
“We went on a bad run of results while I was playing and I haven’t been in the team much since we’ve kicked on.
“I was watching all the games on the TV or in the ground and you could see that the energy and hunger was back in the side. We’ve been creating chances and looking like a proper team again.
“Now we need to carry that on.
“The next thing is for us to do it for a whole game, because we’ve controlled games for long spells and made it hard for ourselves in other spells.
“Maybe we’ve backed off a bit. We need to carry on when we’re on top and not let teams back in.
“Hopefully our start is behind us. Top six is do-able but we need to keep this run going.
“And you have to remember that we’ll have players to come back from injury and suspension. We’ve definitely got a squad that can be in the top six.”
Wotherspoon is expecting a highly motivated opposition today given the criticism St Mirren have been taking from their own fans and the media of late.
He said: “They’ve got important players back in their team and will be looking to turn a corner against us.
“We have to be ready for whatever they throw at us.
“They’ll be fired up but we have to focus on our own game.”
As well as Wotherspoon, Gary McDonald is also available today.