St Johnstone’s Premiership predicament is undeniably a bleak one at present.
As the bottom side in the league, lowest scorers and lowest chance creators, the Perth side are in a dark hole, with their manager admitting “hard work” needs to be put in to dig themselves out of it.
There are shafts of light, however.
And two of those are provided by the club’s recent free agent signings, Jacob Butterfield and Viv Solomon-Otabor.
Butterfield builds on his Ibrox debut
Two starts in four days for a man who hasn’t been played competitive football for five months was always going to be an unrealistic ask.
Callum Davidson will want to get Butterfield on the pitch as often as possible and for as long as possible but he wisely resisted the temptation to include him from the off at Ibrox on the Wednesday and Fir Park on the Saturday.
You would hope and expect Butterfield will have 90 minutes, or very close to it, in his legs by the end of the festive fixtures.
For the moment, it’s about making an impact in shorter bursts.
After an impressive debut, when his team was operating on scraps of possession against Rangers, the former Derby County man was able to get on the ball far more regularly and further up the pitch with Motherwell as the opposition.
A touch total of 37 in just over half-an-hour of football was encouraging, as was the fact Butterfield only gave the ball away on four occasions.
That was eight more touches than his 79 minutes the previous midweek.
Butterfield being deployed regularly as a number 8, or even a number 10, will surely result in assists and goals for his team.
Solomon-Otabor’s eye-catching numbers
It hasn’t happened yet but it is looking increasingly likely that if anybody is going to be the door-opener for St Johnstone up front in the current squad, it will be Solomon-Otabor.
The short-term recruit’s ability to keep an attack going is unparalleled for Saints at the moment.
Before Saturday he had been given four substitute run-outs – two for just a few minutes (Hibs and Aberdeen) and the other two for a quarter of the game (Dundee and Rangers).
His accumulative passing accuracy percentage was a blemish-free 100%.
The Motherwell match proved that you can’t just put that figure down to a small sample size.
At the weekend it only dropped to 89%, basically meaning he has wasted just two passes as a St Johnstone player.
And the former Wigan Athletic man’s final third passing accuracy total remains flawless.
The Saints Opta heatmap highlights the contrast between attack on Solomon-Otabor’s left and Glenn Middleton’s right.
And the fact that Callum Booth to the 25-year-old was the highest passing combination on the day (17) speaks to a relationship with promise on that side of the pitch.
Like Butterfield, Solomon-Otabor is genuinely two-footed and plays with his head up.
Both men are likely to see their game-time increased in the last four matches before the mid-season break.
And expect to see them start against Ross County.
