The knitting together of St Johnstone’s new-look team won’t be an overnight job.
But one of the eight summer recruits who played at the weekend, Drey Wright, believes there were encouraging signs as the 10-man Perth side came close to holding out for a season-starting draw against Hibs.
And the wing-back doesn’t fear a relegation battle, the like of which nearly cost Saints their Premiership status a few months ago.
“It’s a slow build when you get a lot of new players,” said Wright.
“You need to work on relationships on the pitch. These things do take time but there was a lot of good in what we did.
“Sticking together and going right until the end are definitely things to build on.
“We know we can be braver on the ball to get ourselves into good attacking positions but that will come.”
Nine players new to a Callum Davidson team
Add Theo Bair into the equation and there were nine players starting a Premiership match for the first time as a Saints player under Callum Davidson, among them a goalkeeper and a centre-back who only arrived on Wednesday.
“Everyone has settled in brilliantly,” Drey Wright added.
“Just look at Mitch (on loan defender, Alex Mitchell) – he only trained for a day or two and was brilliant.
“For me, there are still a lot of familiar faces behind the scenes so I knew the type of club I was joining and that I’d fit right in.
“The last time I signed this was the first time I’d come to a new team. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
“It’s been seamless this time.”
Few of those, if any, who put Saints down as relegation favourites on Friday night will have changed their mind after the following day’s defeat.
“Nobody would have tipped St Johnstone to win two cups so there are plenty of predictions people have got wrong,” said Wright.
“Everyone knows it was disappointing what happened last year but I’m very confident it won’t be like that for us this season.
“We’ve got lots of good players and we’ll only get better as a team the more we play with each other.”
‘Similar’ not the right word
There was (justifiable) anger in the Saints dressing room at Murray Davidson being sent off and Hibs full-back Marijan Cabraja later escaping with a yellow.
Wright had an even stronger opinion than his manager, who had hit out at differing rulings for similar offences.
Definitely worse than Davidson's. Is there a half-decent ref out there? Starting to seriously doubt it https://t.co/tpgXpW4EmO
— Eric Nicolson (@C_ENicolson) July 30, 2022
“Similar isn’t a word I’d use,” said the Englishman. “It was a lot worse.
“That’s not me with blue-tinted glasses. It’s how I saw the incidents.
“If the ref and his officials have seen Muzz’s as a red then it’s absolutely a no-brainer that their one is.
“It was obviously massively disappointing. Muzz is gutted and so are the rest of us.
“We knew we needed to be better on the ball in the second half but we’d kept ourselves in the game and were looking to impose ourselves more.
“When a decision like that goes against you it’s back against the wall and you just have to try and ride it out.
“Unfortunately we couldn’t see it through.
“It didn’t feel as if they were going to get past us and the lads aren’t happy we conceded a sloppy set-piece (it was Wright who lost his man at the back post).
“That’s something we’ll look at.
“The game-plan after the red was working because I can’t really remember them having a clear-cut chance before the goal.
“The boys worked their socks off.”
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