St Johnstone goalkeeper Peter Enckelman has been praised by his manager for bouncing back impressively from his Aberdeen howler.
The veteran Finnish international saw a clearance sent back past him from the half-way line for the Dons’ second goal of a 2-1 victory in Perth a week ago.
He was back to his best when Celtic visited McDiarmid Park on Sunday and boss Steve Lomas described his performance as ”magnificent”. It was little consolation to Enckelman though, as injury-hit Saints still suffered another home loss.
He said: ”You can appreciate a good individual performance later but it was disappointing to lose to Celtic, especially after the two previous home defeats. It was a bad week for us.
”I know it was Celtic but despite playing well we again conceded goals and that was frustrating. We beat them at their place when we played well and took our chance.
”We concentrated the way you have to against Celtic but we didn’t get the result we wanted. They didn’t really get in behind us so that was pleasing.
”After the Aberdeen game, I didn’t read the papers so it was easy to get away from it! You know you’re going to get the criticism when you make a mistake.
”That is always the way for goalkeepers. It is always going to happen. That won’t ever change.
”It was great everyone has been so supportive. All players go through bad spells and it is all about how you react. From past experience I know that in every game you start with a clean slate.
”Dunfermline is going to be another big game and we have to go there in a positive frame of mind, defending well and being disciplined. We have to get going again after three disappointing results at home.”
Meanwhile, Lomas is getting a crash course on injury crisis management at the moment and things don’t look like improving significantly anytime soon.
Midfielder David Robertson is already ruled out of the Dunfermline trip after suffering concussion. He was clattered by Daniel Majstorovic a challenge described as ”not nice” by Lomas.
Fran Sandaza’s abductor/hamstring is still causing the Spaniard problems, while Frazer Wright is out for a further three weeks and Sean Higgins and Jamie Adams are also sidelined, along with loan striker Cillian Sheridan.
Lomas hopes Callum Davidson will be back after a bout of sickness kept him out on Sunday and skipper Jody Morris should resume training this week, with the Pars match not being ruled out.
Lomas said: ”Three weeks ago we had 24 players in a training session at Stirling. In the one before the Celtic game we had just 12 senior players.
”That is one of the reasons I am so proud of my lads despite having a tough week and a couple of indifferent results against Motherwell and Aberdeen.
”We have lost to teams which are second and third in the SPL and in hindsight the Aberdeen game was a lottery and probably shouldn’t have gone ahead.
”Of course it’s disappointing to lose three games and especially at home but we weren’t outplayed in any of them. Now we have to rectify the individual errors.
”We are trying to juggle things but because of the injury situation here it was very hard to freshen things up and give some of them a break.
”So full credit to lads playing in unfamiliar positions and I thought Alan Maybury and David McCracken were top drawer.
”We are still in fourth place so it’s certainly not all doom and gloom. I would like more lads fit and available, especially at this time of the season.
”But we went toe to toe with a Celtic side with probably 20 times our budget here. They seemed to have more backroom staff than we had players!”